Narration

1. Narration • A narrative relates a series of events, real or imaginary, in an organized sequence. It is a story, but it is a story that makes a point. • Provides human interest, entertainment, sparks our curiosity, and draw us closer to the storyteller. They can also create a sense of shared history, link people together, and provide instruction in proper behavior or moral conduct. • Samples p. 229 and 235

2. Narration • Elements of a Narrative • Thesis (a point or purpose; lesson learned or truth discovered) • Organizational Pattern • Dialogue • Physical description • Characters • Conflict (build up tension and then resolve)

3. Narration • A narrative makes a point. The point may be to describe the significance of the event or events, make an observation about life/humanity, or present new information. • Explicit thesis statement  the point is stated directly at the beginning or at the end of the essay • Implicit thesis statement  the point is implied, but not directly stated.

4. Narration • Sequencing Events (2 methods) • Chronological order • Flashbacks

5. Narration • Dialogue • Use dialogue to reveal things about characters (personalities, motives, etc.), dramatize the action, and emphasize the conflict • Meaningful and natural • Start a new paragraph for each change of speaker

6. Dialogue Example from Wiesel’s Night: “They think I’m mad,” he whispered, and tears, like drops of wax, flowed from his eyes. Once, I asked him the question: “Why do you want people to believe you so much? In your place, I would not care whether they believed me or not.” He closed his eyes, as if to escape time. “You don’t understand,” he said in despair. “You cannot understand. I was saved miraculously.”

7. Narration • Point of View • 1st person (“I”; most common) - allows you to assume a personal tone and to speak directly to the audience; attitudes, feelings, and your own interpretation/commentary on things can be easily accomplished by writing from this point of view. • 3rd person - gives the narrator more distance from the action and often provides a broader, more objective persona

8. Narration • As you begin to generate ideas for a narrative, think about... • 1. An experience that caused you to learn something about yourself • 2. An incident that revealed the true character of someone you know • 3. An experience that helped you discover a principle to live by • 4. An experience that explains the personal significance of a particular object

9. Narration • 5. An incident that has become a family legend, perhaps one that reveals the character of a family member or illustrates a clash of generations or cultures • 6. An incident that has allowed you to develop an appreciation or awareness of your ethnic identity

10. Narration • Make sure the experience you write about is memorable and vivid and that you are comfortable writing about it. • Consider your purpose, audience, and point of view • Choose relevant sensory details about the place where the experience occurred to allow your readers to feel as if they are there. • Choose actions that create tension, build to a climax, and then resolve

11. Narration • Concentrate on the appearance and actions of those people who were directly involved - describe the important people and places, not everything • Include dialogue that is interesting, revealing, and related to the point of the story

12. Reading Narration Critically • 1. Examine narrative elements and ask yourself the following questions: • What is the writer's thesis? Is it stated directly or implied? • What is the role of each participant in the story? • What does the dialogue reveal about or contribute to the main point? • What is the conflict? How does the writer create tension? • What is the conflict? How is it resolved?

13. Reading Narration Critically 2. Examine the sequence of events --> how does the author structure the narrative? Is it effective? 3. Examining meaning and purpose • What is the author's purpose? • For what audience is it intended? • What is the lasting value or merit of the essay? What does it tell me about life, people, jobs, friendships, etc.? • What techniques does the author use to try to achieve his or her purpose?

14. Reading Narration Critically • 4. Reactions --> what is your reaction to the piece as a whole, the events, participants, message, etc.? • 5. Tone --> what is the author's tone in the essay? Look carefully at word choice, sentence structure, formal vs. informal language, choice of dialogue, etc. • Also, pay attention to those things that are spoken as well as those things that are left out or are unspoken. How objective is the writer?

15. Reminders… • Focus on a limited, specific period of time • Include meaningful, natural dialogue • Include a thesis at the beginning or end of the narrative (make the lesson learned clear to your reader via an implicit or explicit thesis) • Consider how you will structure the narrative • You can’t describe everything in detail, but you should focus on describing those people, places, and objects that are central to your thesis

16. Narration • Drafting the Essay… • Introduction - should catch the reader's attention, provide useful background information, and set up the sequence of events. You can also place your thesis somewhere in your introduction • In medias res  start in the “middle” with a piece of dialogue, description, action, etc. • Narrative as a straight line with sentence one appearing somewhere beyond the start of the line – ideally near the middle. At some point, you will return to the beginning of the straight line and catch the reader up on the situation – how and why “X” has gotten himself into a conflict with “Y”.

17. Famous First Lines… “Medley” “I could tell the minute I got in the door and dropped by bag, I wasn’t staying.” “Forgiveness in Families” “I’ve often thought, suppose I had to go to a psychiatrist, and he would want to know about my family background, naturally, so I would have to tell start telling him about my brother, and he wouldn’t even wait until I was finished, would he, the psychiatrist, he’d commit me.” “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel AurelianoBuendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” —Gabriel GarcíaMárquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

18. Famous First Lines… “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” —Franz Kafka, The Trial “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

19. Narration • Drafting the Essay… • Story - should build tension and generate interest for your reader; be conscious of paragraphing, devoting a separate paragraph to each major action or distinct part of the story. Use transitional words or phrases to connect events and guide readers along (During, After dinner, Finally, etc.). • Be consistent with the use of verb tense. Most narratives are told in the past tense.

20. Narration • Drafting the Essay… • Ending - final paragraph should conclude the essay in a satisfying manner. Rather than summarize, try to… • 1. make a final observation about the experience or incident (state your thesis and expand on it), • 2. conclude by posing a question to your reader, 3.) refer back to the beginning and make everything come full circle

21. Narration • Drafting the Essay… • 4.) suggest a new but related direction of thought • 5.) apply your lesson to your audience and how this lesson can benefit everyone and not just you. • Student piece on p. 248-50

22. Description • Successful description offers readers more than just a list of sensory details or a catalog of characteristics. In a good description, the details work together to create a dominant effect or impression (an overall attitude, mood, or feeling about the subject).

23. Description • Describing a box from childhood --> you decide you want to emphasize memories of childhood • Descriptions that achieve this: • "A box filled with treasures from my childhood brought back memories of long, sunny afternoons playing in the backyard." • "Opening the box was like lifting the lid of a time machine, revealing toys and games from another era." • "When I opened the box, I was eight years old again, fighting over my favorite doll with my sister, Erica."

24. Description • Emphasize the five senses! • Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch • Use active verbs and different sentence structures Example: • The team captain proudly accepted the award. • The team captain marched to the podium, grasped the trophy, and gestured toward his teammates.

25. Description • Using Figurative Language • When describing a person, place, or an object, you can help your readers by comparing the person, place, or object to something else. 1. Simile - indirect comparison that uses “like” or “as” • Ex:) "biting into a tabasco pepper is like aiming a flame thrower at your parted lips."

26. Description • Using Figurative Language • 2. Metaphor - direct comparison that describes one thing as if it were another; saying something "is" something else • Examples: “Eating chili peppers is a descent into a fiery hell.” “My love is a red rose.”

27. Description • Using Figurative Language • 3. Personification - when a nonhuman object is given human qualities or characteristics. Examples: “The television screen stared back at me." “The wind howled though the trees.”

28. Beginnings - New writers often find beginnings difficult, because they take the word “beginning” too literally. • Your narrative can begin with dialogue, narrative summary, description, whatever, but it should begin in medias res. It’s important that you resist the temptation to give the reader too lengthy an explanation as to how things got to this point. You want to try to hook your reader’s attention! • Another stumbling block to beginning a narrative is that new writers think they have to know where their story is going and how it will end – before they begin. - “If you start with a real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen, and you don’t have to know what before you begin. In fact, it may be better if you don’t know what before you begin. You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don’t probably nobody else will.” – Flannery O’ Connor

29. - What about the beginning of the story? • Well, each story has a history; all characters have past; the plots of most stories or novels are affected by something that happened before sentence one on the first page. Yet this history is woven so skillfully into the narrative of the story that most of the time we don’t realize we are actually reading about the past of the story. • It is helpful to think of a the story as a straight line with sentence one appearing somewhere beyond the start of the line – ideally near the middle. At some point, most stories or novels dip back into the past, to the beginning of the straight line and catch the reader up on the situation – how and why “X” has gotten himself into a conflict with “Y”. • This is kind of how it is in real life when we meet people. We don’t know everything about someone when we first meet them; in fact, this would make relationships kind of boring. Rather, we learn more and more about people as time goes on slowly discovering their past, personality, etc.