2/22: Narrative Essays and Telling a Good Story

At this point, you should have joined the class Slack, introduced yourself, and registered as a member of the class blog (a.k.a. this very website). In addition, in the next day or so, you'll get a reply from me to your homework email.

If you haven't received these invitations, or haven't joined the Slack and the Wix blog thing, you'll be missing out on course content, so get that sorted.

This week, we'll be working on a minor assignment (basically, worth homework points) but all the procedures we do in the next week--drafting, peer review, professor feedback, and blog adaptation--are practice for what we'll do with the major, graded papers. In other words, this week is sort of a practice round on what the course will look like.

This week, you'll:

Select a true story about yourself, or that you experienced, that has some sort of point or lesson.
Draft a brief essay where you use the story as evidence to prove that point.
Turn in the draft, getting feedback from me and from your peers during peer review on Thursday.
Make changes, revisions, and expansions and then turn in the final version.
Write a brief version of that essay--expressing the main points--for the class blog (tutorial video at the end of this post).

Genre: Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is an essay that uses a narrative to prove a point (or thesis). Narrative essays typically (but not always) feature the author/speaker as the subject of the narrative.

A narrative is a story, but specifically, the way that story is told. For example, both you and I could summarize the 3rd season of the Netflix series She-Ra to our friends. We'd both be telling the same story, but we'd produce different narratives, since we're distinct people and tell stories differently.

An essay is any form of writing which seeks to prove or explore a main idea (or thesis) using an organized series of points.

So a narrative essay is an essay that uses a narrative as its evidence.

This genre should be mildly familiar, since we use it in speech all the time--whenever you have to explain why you are the way you are, you usually tell a story about your past to explain, right? You may also have encountered this genre in your college applications, since "personal statements" are a sort of narrative essay (though typically they're less "narrative"-ey and more direct.)

Narrative essays are typically structured like this:

State the main thing you want the reader to get (the thesis) from your story.
Tell the story, using good storytelling techniques, like details, character, scenes and pacing.
Wrap up with a "zoom-out" sort of conclusion, where you talk about the key lesson and why it's important to you, and maybe also relevant to the reader.

That middle part--the story--is typically the longest component of the essay.

Content: How Narratives Work

So, the big challenge right now is: what should I write about?

Narrative essays are creative nonfiction, which means they're technically true events, but that you can make some changes for ease of storytelling. For example, if the story you want to tell is about how you and 8 of your friends went camping, but only 3 of your friends are actually important to the story, you can choose to alter the story so only the 3 of you go camping. The Story Police are not going to kick down your door and arrest you for lying.

Narrative essays do not have to be very serious. Not all important lessons are serious lessons: your narrative essay can be funny and charming even if it's just about how you learned to tie your shoes. In choosing a story and a point, keep this in mind. If you've got a serious, impactful life lesson expressed by the story, that's nice, but if the story is just a funny narrative about the time you discovered you were afraid of spiders, that's valid too. The point should be a discovery, realization, or lesson that your reader will appreciate, but it doesn't have to be an EPIC EPIPHANY OF RADICAL LIFE-CHANGING PROPORTIONS!

Think of the narrative essay as a story sandwiched between an intro and conclusion paragraph (more on that below). You probably learned about the narrative arc in high school, but if not:

Image courtesy of blog.reedsy.com.

This arc describes the components of a story (the series of events that happen), and is sometimes called the "three act structure" when it's used as a narrative pattern. However, when telling a story, your narrative doesn't have to begin at the beginning (like how some stories are told starting with the crisis/climax, and then stops and says "wait, so let's talk about how we got into this mess" and goes back to the inciting incident.)

This is true of narrative essays as well: conventionally, a narrative essay has an introduction paragraph (or paragraphs) that describes the lesson and sets up the grounds for the narrative (the "exposition" or initial set-up). Then it has the multi-paragraph narrative. Then it has a conclusion paragraph that talks about why this is relevant and important to your reader.

BUT! You don't have to do that. If your narrative is really exciting (or you want it to seem really exciting), sometimes it's a good idea to jump right into the story, before pausing briefly to describe the setup, and then save your description of the lesson, and its relevance, for the very end.

Basically, what I'm saying is that you have choices of structure and shape.

While the story in a narrative essay is often brief (you only have 1000-1500 words for this assignment), structural choices like the one above, along with things like good descriptive language for events, places, and people and strong characterization let you get the most impact out of a limited space.

Some tips for using narrative well:

Very importantly: if you don't tell your reader things, your reader does not know those things. Always make sure to introduce, name, or describe important characters, places, and things.
Not everything has to get the same level of narration: choose the events you want to show your reader (to dramatize or dramatically describe in real-time) and the events you want to tell (summarize) your readers about.
Reader attention is limited: people care about stories if they're exciting, relevant to them, or if they have interesting characters. Give your reader something to invest in. If your story is meant to prove a minor, funny point, you'll have to emphasize humor and humorous interactions between named characters to bring the funny. If the characters had sucked, nobody would have watched Game of Thrones for 8 years. Investing in interesting characters or dramatic events creates dramatic tension, or that feeling that you want to know how it all turns out.
Name the baby: a good title can make a big difference.
Descriptions of behavior are more effective than descriptions of thoughts. It's more interesting to say "her nose scrunched up like she smelled something rotten" than to say "she was grossed out" because now we can see it. Generally, it's better to describe reactions than feelings, because we can see/hear reactions: "he slumped his shoulders and sighed" is more engaging than "he was disappointed."

Shapes: Ingredients and Conventions

Stories have ingredients that you probably learned about in high school: character, setting, events, details, pacing, scene structure, dialogue, et cetera. We're going to cover some of that here, just so you're thinking about it.

Characters are people in your stories. Major characters are active participants in the events. These characters should have names and clear personalities. These things can be described at the beginning of the narrative, to help build reader investment. Three main points:

Personality can be expressed through how you describe characters' actions and behaviors better than if you just say "my friend Kevin was afraid of everything."
Dialogue is one of the best ways to give characters flavor. More on dialogue below.
Characters shouldn't just suddenly appear. You do not want to tell a whole story and then have to say "oh yeah, Kevin, who's been here the whole time even though I forgot to mention him, did X."

Setting refers both to the location/time of the narrative, but also to how you contextualize or set-up the story. Setting is what the readers need to know before the story can work.

Events, Details, and Pacing: so, you have a story you want to tell. Not every scene is exciting, so sometimes you'll summarize ("we walked from the car to the campground without trouble") to get to the good bits faster. That's pacing--controlling where the reader spends time and how they see the story in their head. If you summarize too much, the pacing can get too fast, and the story feels shallow. If you over-describe everything, the reader perceives a lot of time passing without event, and the pacing feels slow and boring.

Structure: because of how pacing works, you can manipulate sentence and paragraph structure to give things a sense of time. For example, when reading this class, you "hear" a pause in your head between paragraphs, while your eyes find the next line, right? In one famous example, James Joyce's short story "The Dead," the narrator extensively describes the food on the buffet table at a party in a way that slows everything down and is extremely boring. Gradually, you as the reader realize that the narrator is really bored at this party and itemizing all the food as a way to keep from being bored, without the narrator saying "hey I'm bored!" which would be faster but wouldn't make the reader experience it.

You can use sentence structures to control pacing. For example, long, run-on sentences with lots of subordinate clauses, like this, create the impression that things are slow and time is passing. Run-on sentences without any pauses or with chaotic language--like this--sound hyperactive and panicked instead, so you can use that to express when a narrator is freaking out, oh no! Short, staccato sentences (short sentences structured similarly) give the impression of rapid action and shock. It's short. It happened suddenly. We were stuck. Trapped in a sentence!

Dialogue is showing people talking, rather than describing. Dialogue should be used when the exact wording of what someone says is important or reveals something about their personality. On the other hand, short exchanges work better as summary. For example:

"Yes," he said.

might just be better as:

He said yes.

The reason for this is because of how dialogue is formatted and how you read it.

Pro-Tips: Dialogue and Description with Personality

In a story, when a new person talks, a new paragraph starts. For example:

It was a long walk to the campsite. While we were walking to the campsite, my cousin Karen started complaining.

"This sucks!" she said, drawing out the second word for several seconds.

"Yeah, I know," I replied, secretly annoyed. I was carrying Karen's tent, so I didn't feel like listening to her complaints.

We crunched along the gravel trail for several more minutes.

"Like, how much does this suck?" she added, looking around as if other people were there to agree with her. "It's so lame!"

Notice how, in the example above, when a new person talks, we start on a new line, like a new paragraph. Descriptions of tone, thoughts or actions that a person has while talking can stay in the same paragraph, though.

Also, note the technical formatting: the attribution tags--the "she saids"--are part of the sentence with the dialogue, and not capitalized when they come after the speech. The part where I reply is written as "Yeah, I know," I said. with the comma at the end of my spoken sentence. That's because the tag, going after the dialogue, is part of the sentence with the quote. It's the same with the "Like, how much does this suck?" she said, at the end. The "she" is lowercased on purpose.

The real pro-move here, though, is in the last line's tag placement. Karen talks, pauses, and then talks again. Instead of noting that Karen pauses, I put the "she said, looking around..." description there, so that you hear the pause in your head without me mentioning it. That's an example of using structure to control pacing.

The detail of her "looking around" actions also gives Karen some personality by describing her physical behavior, rather than just saying "she's theatrical and annoying," which sounds boring and judgmental. Descriptions of behavior let readers form the judgments you want, without forcing it on them.

Another example is the non-dialogue line about "crunching along the trail"--this creates the impression that some time has passed, but the use of a single, not-very-descriptive statement sounds tense, like I really don't want to be on this trail with Karen. Notably, this sentence also substitutes a normal verb "walking" with "crunching," which adds bodily or visceral detail to the scene, making it more familiar to the reader.

Dialogue and physical description are powerful storytelling tools, and little tricks like three I just described are what separates amateur stories from professional "you tell really good stories!" stories.

The Assignment

Your assignment is to draft a narrative essay by Wednesday at midnight (really anytime before Thursday at 2pm is fine.) The final version of the essay should be about 1000-1500 words and be mostly narrative. The draft does not have to comply with this length, but it should have most of the parts of the essay, even if there's an occasional "describe this part better later" note in there.

As a general rule, drafts for this class don't need to be totally finished, but they should have all the parts they need so that a peer/professor can see where you're going.

On Thursday 2/25, instead of a lesson post, we will have a peer review session from 2pm to midnight. For this first peer review session, you'll be placed into randomized groups of 4-5 students, and assigned a private channel on the class Slack. There, you can chat and share links to your drafts (I recommend drafting in Google Docs and sharing a "can edit" or "can comment" link.) I have access to each private group, and I will put my feedback on your draft along with your peers, but I won't join into (or even read) the conversation unless you ask me a direct question by @ing me.

You do not have to be online at the same time--the 10-hour window from 2pm-midnight should allow you to comment on your peers' drafts, and receive feedback on yours, when you have time.

After that, the finalized, complete essay is due Sunday 2/28 at midnight. You will have to save your essay as a pdf or .doc or .docx and turn it in on Canvas.

At the same time, you'll want to write a much shorter (500 words or less) version of your narrative essay, describing the point and briefly summarizing the most important bits of the story, and post this to the class blog. If you have a visual component that would work with the narrative (like, if the story is about your dog and you have a cute photo of the doggo), you may wish to include that in your blog post. This is the first of three Wix.com blog assignments you will do this semester.

A tutorial on writing and posting the blog is below:

Final note: if you have questions, I'm around on the Slack and via email, and don't forget to do the Participation Quiz for this class, now that you've finished it.