NARRATIVE WRITINGJane GenesilaMa. Josel serranoKathlyn Ann VillanuevaTeo Salvador Santero BEED IV-A

Narration is a form of discourse that tells a story with events in a series or gives an account of an event from one point of view.

In telling a story, the writer may have vested interest in the material or may assume a more subjective attitude.

A story that uses “I” as the narrator adopts a technique called “first person narration”.

This technique makes the author a part of the story.

Another technique is the “third person narration” which allows the examination of experience more varied than that of an individual.

Writers using this technique do not place themselves within the stories they tell (Vesterman, 1988)

POINT OF VIEW

In narrative writing, as there is need for adopting a point of view (Weaver, 1957). One does not jump about aimlessly in telling a story any more than in writing a description; the reader must know from what angle he is expected to follow things.

The action must be in such a way that we understand the relation of the narrator to it.

Omniscient Point of View The most generally used point of view in narrative writing is the omniscient.

Omniscience means the condition of knowing everything about the series of events and furthermore “everything” means everything relevant.

This enables writers to include anything that could have been seen by any observer at any time.

When historians prepare to write an event, he does an extensive amount of research, reading the accounts left by many participants and eyewitnesses, digesting other contemporary sources and studying official records.

When they have done this, they assume that they have a reasonably complete knowledge of all the particulars and when they writes, they presents the entire event as passing under their view.

Limited Point of View Another technique of presentation is

the limited point of view. By this method, writers hold

themselves to what one person might have seen or experienced.

Sometimes that person is the chief character of the story, so that we see the action through the eyes of the one principally involved.

Sometimes, the writer is a person having but a slight connection with the story- a minor character- though he/she must be someone in a position to see the significant happenings.

The narrator makes it a point not to go outside this person’s experience but to construct the entire story out of what appeared to him/her from his/her point of view.

THE ANECDOTE

An Anecdote is a short narrative usually told for the purpose of bringing out some interesting or odd characteristics of a person or place (Weaver, 1957).

It does not contribute to the main movement of a story, though the point which it makes may add something to the background or the atmosphere of the whole.

Its interest does not depend upon a dramatic infolding but upon the future idea it is meant to disclose and this usually appears near the end. Its chief characteristic is that it presents individuals in an action, which illustrates some definite ideas, some aspects of personality or character.

Example of Anecdote

“ I remember years ago attending a public dinner to which the governor of state was bidden. The chairman explained that His Excellency could not be present for certain” good and real reason” what the “ real” reasons were the presiding officers said he would leave us to conjecture. This distinction between “good” and “real” reasons is one of the most clarifying and essential in the whole realsm of thought. We can readily give what seem to us “good” reasons for being Catholic or a Mason, a Republican or Democrat, an adherent or opponent of the League of Nations. But the real “reasons ”are usually on a quite different plane.Of course the importance of this distinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely, recognized. The Baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the Buddhist is not such because he happened to be born in a Buddhist family in Tokyo.

But it would be treason to his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is due to the fact that his mother was a member of the First Baptist Church of Oak Ridge. A savage can give all sorts of reasons for his belief that it is dangerous to step on a man’s shadow and a newspaper editor advance plenty of arguments against the Bolshevik. But neither of them may realize why he happens to be defending his particular opinion.”

-On Various Kinds of Thinkingby James Harvey RobinsonA Complete Course of Freshmen English by Harry Shaw, p.

452

THE INCIDENT

The incident has the same self-contained character, but its interest depends upon the unusual vivid or illuminating character of the action itself (Ibid., 1957).

What it narrates is exciting or appealing for its own sake rather than for a dramatic structure or a point of interpretation.

A small but interesting bit of action from a rescue, a police raid or something like these might constitute matter for an accident.

“ There is a story which is credible enough, it may not be true of a practical joker who seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out ‘Attention’ where upon the man instantly brought his hands down and lost his mutton in the gutter. The drill has been thorough and its effects had become embodied in man’s nervous structure.”

-Habit by JamesA complete Course in Freshmen English

THE SKETCH

The Sketch is usually a study of character, setting or mood.

It is included in narrative writing though it gives little space to action.

It is developed through highly selective detail and it may use a narrative framework of action or make some use of action in passing from one part of the subject to another.

Its aim is to present, more rapidly and selectively than the full description, the significant features of something.

It can be used to furnish background or atmosphere for a larger piece like the anecdote and incident ( Ibid., 1957).

Example of the Sketch

“Any white who dares to be free of the myths of the race faces awkwardness and risk and a need to defend himself, even ironically, against Negroes themselves. For many Negroes prefer, unconsciously or not, a continuation of the double standard; their preference sometimes wears the guise of an insistence on interpreting lack of prejudice as itself evidence of prejudice. Negroes are too accustomed to prejudice that many find it easier to deal with it a single standard of judgement for all men. It requires strength and courage for whites to persist in the face of such rejections. “ It is temptation to retreat into sentimentality instead and to be caught in the net of condescension, to say, “ I would not want to hurt you because you are a Negro and to suffocate the Negros with respect.

Any white who refuses to be trapped into such an escape and reaches the point of total liberation, will see and understand and act freely. He can never retreat no matter what the threats, either to the sentimental lie or to traditional racist lie; for the Negro is watching and waiting despite his cynicism and his suspension with the beginning of trust.”

- A complete Course in Freshman English by Kenneth B,. Clark, Park Ghetto

THE PROFILE

The Profile is a form of writing that shows the chief features of the person being described in the outline (character interpretation).

It does not pretend to be exhaustive, though it may treat key facts about the life and character in considerable detail.

In this way, profiles often try to leave a dominant impression of their subject.

When we finish a good profile, we have the feeling that we have met and individual personally. It takes the quick perceptive look to bring out some striking details of the man’s career, discuss his habits and characteristics ways of tough, perhaps show him in action and finally estimate him or summarize the general opinion of him.

It mingles praised and criticism in such a way that it gives a detached and balanced view. It is realistic, but it usually depends on the interest upon playing up the extraordinary, exciting or unconventional facts in the life of the subject (Ibid.,1957

It is realistic, but it usually depends on the interest upon playing up the extraordinary, exciting or unconventional facts in the life of the subject (Ibid.,1957)

Example of Profile

“Thinking as a Hobby”William Golding

William Gerald Golding (1911) Was born in Cornwall, England and was educated at Oxford University. During World War II, he served in the British Navy (1940-1945). In recent years, he has devoted himself to writing and teaching, his hobbies being self-described as “thinking classical Greek, sailing and archeology”. Among his highly original writings are Lord of the Flies(1954) a symbolic narrative of schoolboys who revert to savagery when marooned on an island; Pincher Martin (1956); The Spire (19545); The Pyramid (1967); The Scorpion God (1972).