Writing Our Inner Narrative
Ready for what I consider the dessert of the course? Well, that's what this module is all about: writing the narratives of our lives. Not an easy task, but an honorable one. It's another step up the identity ladder. It helps us examine the meaning in our experiences. It brings a sharper focus to our world. As Socrates said, "the unexamined life is not work living." Ok, lets examine.
So, what's a narrative? Well, simply, it is a story about our lives, told with lots of detail and description. And heart. For the purpose of this class, you'll be writing non-fiction narratives about a time when you, or someone close to you, disappeared. Now, this might not necessarily be a physical missing, it might be an emotional missing or even a spiritual one.
Narrative writing not only tells a story, it makes a point. It gives the reader a detailed, vivid account
of a personal experience. Writers use narration to present an idea that transcends the story,
an idea that is larger than the experience itself. An idea often presented through metaphor or symbol. You will use your descriptive skills here as narrative writing only works with LOTS AND LOTS of concrete, specific detail.
Telling a good story isn't easy. Often you have to go back and pull the experience out of your memory
bank. And pull is the operative word here as frequently it is hard to look at what's there. But writing is
a wonderful tool for self-exploration. It can actually free us from our past, can actually set the experience in another light when we share it with others. Telling our stories is a powerful way to acknowledge and accept who we really are.
Actually, poetry can be narrative (yes, back again to poetry.) Take a look at the following poem.
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Let Go of It When the wind came up that day I was holding the job, I was holding it tight like Harriet said to and it was something to be flying over the bright water, the wind with us, the shore becoming small, then green, then a dark line. It was my first time and I was glad that it was easy, my job steady, the boat light as a toy, the water slipping by with a slipping sound. And then the wind changed, turning like a face in anger, darkly, and hurled itself at the side of us. Harriet said, "Let go of it," but I couldn't, I kept pulling the job tighter while the mainsail she let go of clapped over my head and the rope tying everything to everything dug deep into my hands. Disaster is to me now this perfect symbol, that boat kneeling, Harriet leaning backward over starboard, arching her neck as far as it will go into the wind, the volume of the wind, the Atlantic spilling in, again her cry, "Let go of it!" and myself when I couldn't, when it was more than terror, I already believed I was stronger, bigger than the wind and could not see how not holding on would save us, now letting go is holding on. |
While this is an excellent poem, it is also a great story. The poet uses lots of figurative language together with concrete specific details. She uses dialogue to move the story along. She creates a conflict and resolves it. She pulls at our emotions. The experience transcends itself into something higher, something more than just the present story. There is an invisible reality supporting the visible one. Remember that.
Another poem (one many of you may have read before) by Robert Frost entitled, "Home Burial" is certainly in a lot of ways like a story, incorporating many of the elements of a narrative.
Ok, now here comes the sigh, I can hear it. You guys are saying " a story? About my life? My life is boring! I don't have anything interesting to write about. There is no deep meaning in my life! What am I going to do?" I have never been missing. What does that mean?
First of all, forget the "my life is boring line." No one's life is boring. Your life is full of meaning and writing this essay and others in this class will help you to find it. You don't have to have swum the English Channel or climbed Mt. Everest to find interesting writing material. You have only to look inside and out. Oh, by the way, you might need to bring a flashlight. Sometimes the really good stuff is hiding. Let's see how to uncover it.
Toby Fulwiler says in his book College Writing:
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Writers find ideas to write about in one of two places: inside or outside. The inside ideas come from people's own memories, imaginations, and insights. The outside ideas come from books, people, objects, and events. To write about personal experience, writers go inside, retrieving impressions, images, and words buried somewhere in their memories; from these resources writers create personal narratives, informal essays, autobiographies, and a variety of personal manifestos. To write about something unfamiliar, where memory has no stock of stored information, writers must go elsewhere--to additional reading, fresh observation, or new research. From these resources stem much of the writing we call academic--term papers, critical essays, laboratory reports--as well as most of the writing in the working world. Of course, these inside/outside categories are too simplistic. Many serious writers mix and match sources of information...so that few pieces of writing are strictly one category or another. |
You are probably wondering why I highlighted that last line. I did it because I want to remind you that you are serious writers and as such will follow the dictates of serious writing: mixing and matching sources of information.
There are many components to a good story. Let's take a look at them.
Good narrative writing contains many elements that make it believable and should incorporate some, if not all, of the following:
action - something must happen in your story, some sort of movement from one place to another. Now, don't let the word action mislead you. There is internal action and external action (back to Fulwiler's blend of outside and inside). Many excellent narratives, in fact most of those you will read in this section, contain only internal action, emotional action. A shifting of the inner landscape. Action doesn't mean army-green men with night vision goggles on slamming thought plate glass windows 1000 feet from the ground. |
conflict - every story has a conflict, a problem that needs to be solved. It is this problem that drives the action, because events happen as the character(s) seek to solve the problem. Without conflict, there is not story. Again, the conflict can be either internal or external, or both. Here are some examples of conflict: person against person (external) person against self (internal) person against nature person against fate person against society or idea |
climax - the moment when the tension reaches a peak and something happens. You might call it the moment of truth, the moment the characters have been preparing for, have been seeking. It is the moment when something changes forever, when the main character has an epiphany or an awakening. It is usually the most intense point in the story. And it does not have to be a "big" moment. It is often just a small shift of focus. |
dialogue - again either internal or external, dialogue helps us to know the characters in the story better. It allows us to "see" and "hear" the characters, just as we see and hear each other in our every day lives. It creates dimension to the characters, fills them out, offers a new avenue to reveal information about the characters. For example, if I want to get across that a character is judgmental, rather than simply stating "she was very judgmental," I could show her being judgmental. "That guy's not like the rest of us," I said, picking up my bent plastic spoon and stabbing it into the potato salad. "He shouldn't even be here." |
detail -concrete and specific detail will add life to your writing in the same way dialogue does. Again, details add dimension, depth to your writing. Detail anchor. The more concrete and specific you are, the lower the levels of abstractions, that you use, the more powerful the writing. Again, show, don't tell. Here is tell: She looked very upset. Here is show: She cradled her head in pale crook of her right arm, the black lashes of her eyes fluttering in time with the clock's ticking. |
resolution - shortly after the climax (actually very shortly), the story ends. Once the tension has reached a peak and something has happened, then the story is essentially finished. The resolution is, quite simply, how the story ends. Here is a hint: often beginning writers try to wrap things up at the end for the reader, assuming the reader won't "get it." Not necessary. Just let the story end. No moral is necessary. If you have done your work, the reader knows what you think you need to tell her. |
startling first line - beginning your essay right in the middle (en media res) of the action is a great way to hook the reader. Often, it is not necessary to give a lot of back ground information right away. That can be worked in later. Just get into it, reach out and grab a hold of your reader and pull her into the middle of your writing. |
symbolic meaning - when something (person, place or thing), represents more than its single state, it becomes symbolic. A bird could be symbolic of freedom, a candle of illumination, a child of innocence. Using figurative language to create the invisible reality supporting the visible one. |
thesis - your story must have a point to it, a message for the reader. As in the descriptive essay this point can be either an implied thesis or a stated thesis. |
It is important, when describing something, to use concrete, specific language. The more concrete, the clearer the picture. It's like turning the focus on a camera until the picture cracks with clarity. You should always strive for the more specific word you can find. The following comes from colleague J. Strever from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington:
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Adding Vividness To Your Writing ! |
Most writing contains a range of abstraction levels, but successful professional writers draw heavily on Level 1 abstractions. Sophistication of thought deals in the realm of abstraction, but sophistication of writing is achieved through supporting those abstractions with concrete details. Specificity allows a writer to truly communicate meaning.
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Levels of Abstractions |
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Level 4: Abstractions: Examples: life, beauty, love, time, success, power, happiness, faith, hope, charity, evil, good. |
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Level 3: Noun classes: broad group names with little specification. Examples: People, men, women, young people, everybody, nobody, industry, we, goals, things, television. |
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Level 2: Noun categories: more definite groups. Examples: teen-agers, middle-class, clothing industry, parents, college campus, newborn child, TV comedies, house plants. |
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Level 1: Specific, identifiable nouns. Examples: House Speaker Tom Foley, Levi 501 jeans, my three bedroom house, In Living Color, Bud commercials, African violets, Tina's newborn sister, Mina. |
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Sample Abstraction Ladder |
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Level 4: |
society |
human endeavors |
economy |
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Level 3: |
most people |
industries |
farm assets |
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Level 2: |
spoiled child |
cosmetic company |
cattle |
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Level 1: |
my sister Tracy |
Max Factor, Inc. |
Bessie the cow |
(*based on the work of Hayakawa's ladder of abstractions)
In the simplest terms then, the more Level 1 abstraction you use in your writing, the more you will be understood by your audience. Also, the details that you use will save you much work. If you are trying to describe a person, and you mention that she wore Berkenstock's and a jeans skirt, you have evoked an image in your reader's mind; whereas, if you say the woman was dressed in casual attire, the reader's impression
of the woman is not as strong, and the audience will be free to interpret your meaning in ways that you may not mean. Wearing a green and pink housecoat with flip-flops would mean casual to many people. So using the levels of abstractions carefully will help convey meaning to your audience.
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"We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative--whose continuity, whose sense , is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs and lives a narrative, and that this narrative is us, our identities." --Oliver Sacks |
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