Narrative writing is fundamentally storytelling. It encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, and can exist in the gray area between them, like semi-autobiographical tales, historical fiction, or dramatic recreations of real events. If a piece of writing tells a story with a narrative structure, it qualifies as narrative writing.
Types of Narrative Writing
There are several approaches to crafting a narrative. The most suitable type for your story or essay depends on your writing’s purpose.
Linear Narrative
A linear narrative unfolds events in chronological order. Most books, films, television shows, and other media employ linear narratives. In this format, each scene logically follows the previous one. There can be time jumps between scenes, such as a chapter taking place years after the preceding one.
A specific type of linear narrative is the quest narrative. This tells the story of a character’s journey to achieve a goal. It usually involves traveling to a distant place and overcoming obstacles. Shrek exemplifies a quest narrative. Besides following the standard structure, it also satirizes tropes like a princess in a dragon-guarded tower.
Another type is the historical narrative, which follows a linear timeline to recount an actual event or series of events.
Nonlinear Narrative
In contrast, a nonlinear narrative presents events out of chronological order. House of Leaves is a well-known example, using first-person narration, recovered documents, and footnotes.
Nonlinear narratives allow you to emphasize characters’ emotions and perspectives. You can highlight key events and include details that wouldn’t fit into a linear timeline.
Viewpoint Narrative
A viewpoint narrative focuses on the narrator’s perspective. These stories are generally more character-driven than plot-driven. The Catcher in the Rye is a classic example. By placing the reader inside Holden Caulfield’s mind, J.D. Salinger creates a unique, firsthand experience of Holden’s journey through New York City. Imagine the novel as a linear narrative in the third person—it would be a very different experience.
Viewpoint narratives allow exploration of the protagonist’s personality and thoughts. This approach works well for personal essays and stories with themes of perspective and personal growth.
Descriptive Narrative
A descriptive narrative emphasizes the appearance and atmosphere of the story’s setting, characters, and objects. The goal is total immersion in the story’s world, unlike a viewpoint narrative’s focus on a character’s inner world. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is a notable descriptive narrative. The narrator, after murdering someone and hiding the heart, hears a louder and louder thumping, eventually confessing to the crime. The narrative is structured like a conversation, with Poe’s word choice and sentence structure conveying the narrator’s mental state.
When writing a descriptive essay, you use descriptive narrative techniques to discuss your topic. This includes vivid imagery, personification, and similes.
Characteristics of Narrative Writing
Each type of writing has unique characteristics, and narrative writing is no different. Here are key characteristics of most narratives:
- Descriptive language: This evokes feelings rather than stating facts, using metaphors, similes, personification, and onomatopoeia.
- Characters: A story can have one character or many. The narrator tells the story from their perspective and may or may not interact with other characters.
- Almost every narrative needs a protagonist, or main character, who works toward a goal or faces a challenge.
- Another common character is the antagonist, who presents obstacles for the protagonist. This can be a person, nature, society, or even an aspect of the protagonist’s personality.
- Plot: The plot is the series of events in the narrative, ranging from simple to complex.
- Narrative structure: Every narrative, even nonlinear ones, is organized. This is how the main character pursues their goal or faces the challenge. There are three distinct parts:
- The beginning: This hooks the reader’s attention.
- The middle: This is where the action happens. The protagonist faces conflicts and reaches the climax.
- The end: This wraps up loose ends and positions the protagonist for life after the story.
Tips for Awesome Narrative Writing
Use Your Narrative to Build Characters
When writing in the first-person, use the narrator role to shape the character through word choice, perspective, and reactions. Experiment with an unreliable narrator, a limited point of view, or alternating narrators.
Listen to How People Tell Stories
Pay attention to how people tell stories. Notice the jumps, asides, tangents, and changes in volume and animation. Some parts get “fast-forwarded,” while others involve more descriptive language. Use word choice and pacing to create these effects in your writing.
Mix and Match Narrative Styles
A linear narrative can incorporate elements of descriptive or viewpoint narratives. If your essay calls for a passage that shows the reader everything you saw and smelled, write that passage.
Play!
Give yourself permission to play. Invent onomatopoeia. Describe the same building from different characters’ perspectives. Write their conversation. Follow your stream of consciousness.
This playful writing, called freewriting, helps you get into a creative mindset and create a world on the page. There are no rules or grammar worries. The writing becomes the raw content you shape into a narrative later.
Make Your Writing Shine
Grammarly can help you tell your story with confidence, ensuring your writing is mistake-free and conveys the tone you intend. It’s a built-in editor that helps you hone your craft as you write.
