what is narrative essay in history

The Ultimate Narrative Essay Guide for Beginners

A narrative essay tells a story in chronological order, with an introduction that introduces the characters and sets the scene. Then a series of events leads to a climax or turning point, and finally a resolution or reflection on the experience.

Speaking of which, are you in sixes and sevens about narrative essays? Don’t worry this ultimate expert guide will wipe out all your doubts. So let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Everything You Need to Know About Narrative Essay

What is a narrative essay.

When you go through a narrative essay definition, you would know that a narrative essay purpose is to tell a story. It’s all about sharing an experience or event and is different from other types of essays because it’s more focused on how the event made you feel or what you learned from it, rather than just presenting facts or an argument. Let’s explore more details on this interesting write-up and get to know how to write a narrative essay.

Elements of a Narrative Essay

Here’s a breakdown of the key elements of a narrative essay:

A narrative essay has a beginning, middle, and end. It builds up tension and excitement and then wraps things up in a neat package.

Real people, including the writer, often feature in personal narratives. Details of the characters and their thoughts, feelings, and actions can help readers to relate to the tale.

It’s really important to know when and where something happened so we can get a good idea of the context. Going into detail about what it looks like helps the reader to really feel like they’re part of the story.

Conflict or Challenge 

A story in a narrative essay usually involves some kind of conflict or challenge that moves the plot along. It could be something inside the character, like a personal battle, or something from outside, like an issue they have to face in the world.

Theme or Message

A narrative essay isn’t just about recounting an event – it’s about showing the impact it had on you and what you took away from it. It’s an opportunity to share your thoughts and feelings about the experience, and how it changed your outlook.

Emotional Impact

The author is trying to make the story they’re telling relatable, engaging, and memorable by using language and storytelling to evoke feelings in whoever’s reading it.

Narrative essays let writers have a blast telling stories about their own lives. It’s an opportunity to share insights and impart wisdom, or just have some fun with the reader. Descriptive language, sensory details, dialogue, and a great narrative voice are all essentials for making the story come alive.

The Purpose of a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is more than just a story – it’s a way to share a meaningful, engaging, and relatable experience with the reader. Includes:

Sharing Personal Experience

Narrative essays are a great way for writers to share their personal experiences, feelings, thoughts, and reflections. It’s an opportunity to connect with readers and make them feel something.

Entertainment and Engagement

The essay attempts to keep the reader interested by using descriptive language, storytelling elements, and a powerful voice. It attempts to pull them in and make them feel involved by creating suspense, mystery, or an emotional connection.

Conveying a Message or Insight

Narrative essays are more than just a story – they aim to teach you something. They usually have a moral lesson, a new understanding, or a realization about life that the author gained from the experience.

Building Empathy and Understanding

By telling their stories, people can give others insight into different perspectives, feelings, and situations. Sharing these tales can create compassion in the reader and help broaden their knowledge of different life experiences.

Inspiration and Motivation

Stories about personal struggles, successes, and transformations can be really encouraging to people who are going through similar situations. It can provide them with hope and guidance, and let them know that they’re not alone.

Reflecting on Life’s Significance

These essays usually make you think about the importance of certain moments in life or the impact of certain experiences. They make you look deep within yourself and ponder on the things you learned or how you changed because of those events.

Demonstrating Writing Skills

Coming up with a gripping narrative essay takes serious writing chops, like vivid descriptions, powerful language, timing, and organization. It’s an opportunity for writers to show off their story-telling abilities.

Preserving Personal History

Sometimes narrative essays are used to record experiences and special moments that have an emotional resonance. They can be used to preserve individual memories or for future generations to look back on.

Cultural and Societal Exploration

Personal stories can look at cultural or social aspects, giving us an insight into customs, opinions, or social interactions seen through someone’s own experience.

Format of a Narrative Essay

Narrative essays are quite flexible in terms of format, which allows the writer to tell a story in a creative and compelling way. Here’s a quick breakdown of the narrative essay format, along with some examples:

Introduction

Set the scene and introduce the story.

Engage the reader and establish the tone of the narrative.

Hook: Start with a captivating opening line to grab the reader’s attention. For instance:

Example:  “The scorching sun beat down on us as we trekked through the desert, our water supply dwindling.”

Background Information: Provide necessary context or background without giving away the entire story.

Example:  “It was the summer of 2015 when I embarked on a life-changing journey to…”

Thesis Statement or Narrative Purpose

Present the main idea or the central message of the essay.

Offer a glimpse of what the reader can expect from the narrative.

Thesis Statement: This isn’t as rigid as in other essays but can be a sentence summarizing the essence of the story.

Example:  “Little did I know, that seemingly ordinary hike would teach me invaluable lessons about resilience and friendship.”

Body Paragraphs

Present the sequence of events in chronological order.

Develop characters, setting, conflict, and resolution.

Story Progression: Describe events in the order they occurred, focusing on details that evoke emotions and create vivid imagery.

Example: Detail the trek through the desert, the challenges faced, interactions with fellow hikers, and the pivotal moments.

Character Development: Introduce characters and their roles in the story. Show their emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Example: Describe how each character reacted to the dwindling water supply and supported each other through adversity.

Dialogue and Interactions: Use dialogue to bring the story to life and reveal character personalities.

Example: “Sarah handed me her last bottle of water, saying, ‘We’re in this together.'”

Reach the peak of the story, the moment of highest tension or significance.

Turning Point: Highlight the most crucial moment or realization in the narrative.

Example:  “As the sun dipped below the horizon and hope seemed lost, a distant sound caught our attention—the rescue team’s helicopters.”

Provide closure to the story.

Reflect on the significance of the experience and its impact.

Reflection: Summarize the key lessons learned or insights gained from the experience.

Example: “That hike taught me the true meaning of resilience and the invaluable support of friendship in challenging times.”

Closing Thought: End with a memorable line that reinforces the narrative’s message or leaves a lasting impression.

Example: “As we boarded the helicopters, I knew this adventure would forever be etched in my heart.”

Example Summary:

Imagine a narrative about surviving a challenging hike through the desert, emphasizing the bonds formed and lessons learned. The narrative essay structure might look like starting with an engaging scene, narrating the hardships faced, showcasing the characters’ resilience, and culminating in a powerful realization about friendship and endurance.

Different Types of Narrative Essays

There are a bunch of different types of narrative essays – each one focuses on different elements of storytelling and has its own purpose. Here’s a breakdown of the narrative essay types and what they mean.

Personal Narrative

Description: Tells a personal story or experience from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Reflects on personal growth, lessons learned, or significant moments.

Example of Narrative Essay Types:

Topic: “The Day I Conquered My Fear of Public Speaking”

Focus: Details the experience, emotions, and eventual triumph over a fear of public speaking during a pivotal event.

Descriptive Narrative

Description: Emphasizes vivid details and sensory imagery.

Purpose: Creates a sensory experience, painting a vivid picture for the reader.

Topic: “A Walk Through the Enchanted Forest”

Focus: Paints a detailed picture of the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings experienced during a walk through a mystical forest.

Autobiographical Narrative

Description: Chronicles significant events or moments from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Provides insights into the writer’s life, experiences, and growth.

Topic: “Lessons from My Childhood: How My Grandmother Shaped Who I Am”

Focus: Explores pivotal moments and lessons learned from interactions with a significant family member.

Experiential Narrative

Description: Relays experiences beyond the writer’s personal life.

Purpose: Shares experiences, travels, or events from a broader perspective.

Topic: “Volunteering in a Remote Village: A Journey of Empathy”

Focus: Chronicles the writer’s volunteering experience, highlighting interactions with a community and personal growth.

Literary Narrative

Description: Incorporates literary elements like symbolism, allegory, or thematic explorations.

Purpose: Uses storytelling for deeper explorations of themes or concepts.

Topic: “The Symbolism of the Red Door: A Journey Through Change”

Focus: Uses a red door as a symbol, exploring its significance in the narrator’s life and the theme of transition.

Historical Narrative

Description: Recounts historical events or periods through a personal lens.

Purpose: Presents history through personal experiences or perspectives.

Topic: “A Grandfather’s Tales: Living Through the Great Depression”

Focus: Shares personal stories from a family member who lived through a historical era, offering insights into that period.

Digital or Multimedia Narrative

Description: Incorporates multimedia elements like images, videos, or audio to tell a story.

Purpose: Explores storytelling through various digital platforms or formats.

Topic: “A Travel Diary: Exploring Europe Through Vlogs”

Focus: Combines video clips, photos, and personal narration to document a travel experience.

How to Choose a Topic for Your Narrative Essay?

Selecting a compelling topic for your narrative essay is crucial as it sets the stage for your storytelling. Choosing a boring topic is one of the narrative essay mistakes to avoid . Here’s a detailed guide on how to choose the right topic:

Reflect on Personal Experiences

• Significant Moments:

Moments that had a profound impact on your life or shaped your perspective.

Example: A moment of triumph, overcoming a fear, a life-changing decision, or an unforgettable experience.

• Emotional Resonance:

Events that evoke strong emotions or feelings.

Example: Joy, fear, sadness, excitement, or moments of realization.

• Lessons Learned:

Experiences that taught you valuable lessons or brought about personal growth.

Example: Challenges that led to personal development, shifts in mindset, or newfound insights.

Explore Unique Perspectives

• Uncommon Experiences:

Unique or unconventional experiences that might captivate the reader’s interest.

Example: Unusual travels, interactions with different cultures, or uncommon hobbies.

• Different Points of View:

Stories from others’ perspectives that impacted you deeply.

Example: A family member’s story, a friend’s experience, or a historical event from a personal lens.

Focus on Specific Themes or Concepts

• Themes or Concepts of Interest:

Themes or ideas you want to explore through storytelling.

Example: Friendship, resilience, identity, cultural diversity, or personal transformation.

• Symbolism or Metaphor:

Using symbols or metaphors as the core of your narrative.

Example: Exploring the symbolism of an object or a place in relation to a broader theme.

Consider Your Audience and Purpose

• Relevance to Your Audience:

Topics that resonate with your audience’s interests or experiences.

Example: Choose a relatable theme or experience that your readers might connect with emotionally.

• Impact or Message:

What message or insight do you want to convey through your story?

Example: Choose a topic that aligns with the message or lesson you aim to impart to your readers.

Brainstorm and Evaluate Ideas

• Free Writing or Mind Mapping:

Process: Write down all potential ideas without filtering. Mind maps or free-writing exercises can help generate diverse ideas.

• Evaluate Feasibility:

The depth of the story, the availability of vivid details, and your personal connection to the topic.

Imagine you’re considering topics for a narrative essay. You reflect on your experiences and decide to explore the topic of “Overcoming Stage Fright: How a School Play Changed My Perspective.” This topic resonates because it involves a significant challenge you faced and the personal growth it brought about.

Narrative Essay Topics

50 easy narrative essay topics.

• Learning to Ride a Bike
• My First Day of School
• A Surprise Birthday Party
• The Day I Got Lost
• Visiting a Haunted House
• An Encounter with a Wild Animal
• My Favorite Childhood Toy
• The Best Vacation I Ever Had
• An Unforgettable Family Gathering
• Conquering a Fear of Heights
• A Special Gift I Received
• Moving to a New City
• The Most Memorable Meal
• Getting Caught in a Rainstorm
• An Act of Kindness I Witnessed
• The First Time I Cooked a Meal
• My Experience with a New Hobby
• The Day I Met My Best Friend
• A Hike in the Mountains
• Learning a New Language
• An Embarrassing Moment
• Dealing with a Bully
• My First Job Interview
• A Sporting Event I Attended
• The Scariest Dream I Had
• Helping a Stranger
• The Joy of Achieving a Goal
• A Road Trip Adventure
• Overcoming a Personal Challenge
• The Significance of a Family Tradition
• An Unusual Pet I Owned
• A Misunderstanding with a Friend
• Exploring an Abandoned Building
• My Favorite Book and Why
• The Impact of a Role Model
• A Cultural Celebration I Participated In
• A Valuable Lesson from a Teacher
• A Trip to the Zoo
• An Unplanned Adventure
• Volunteering Experience
• A Moment of Forgiveness
• A Decision I Regretted
• A Special Talent I Have
• The Importance of Family Traditions
• The Thrill of Performing on Stage
• A Moment of Sudden Inspiration
• The Meaning of Home
• Learning to Play a Musical Instrument
• A Childhood Memory at the Park
• Witnessing a Beautiful Sunset

Narrative Essay Topics for College Students

• Discovering a New Passion
• Overcoming Academic Challenges
• Navigating Cultural Differences
• Embracing Independence: Moving Away from Home
• Exploring Career Aspirations
• Coping with Stress in College
• The Impact of a Mentor in My Life
• Balancing Work and Studies
• Facing a Fear of Public Speaking
• Exploring a Semester Abroad
• The Evolution of My Study Habits
• Volunteering Experience That Changed My Perspective
• The Role of Technology in Education
• Finding Balance: Social Life vs. Academics
• Learning a New Skill Outside the Classroom
• Reflecting on Freshman Year Challenges
• The Joys and Struggles of Group Projects
• My Experience with Internship or Work Placement
• Challenges of Time Management in College
• Redefining Success Beyond Grades
• The Influence of Literature on My Thinking
• The Impact of Social Media on College Life
• Overcoming Procrastination
• Lessons from a Leadership Role
• Exploring Diversity on Campus
• Exploring Passion for Environmental Conservation
• An Eye-Opening Course That Changed My Perspective
• Living with Roommates: Challenges and Lessons
• The Significance of Extracurricular Activities
• The Influence of a Professor on My Academic Journey
• Discussing Mental Health in College
• The Evolution of My Career Goals
• Confronting Personal Biases Through Education
• The Experience of Attending a Conference or Symposium
• Challenges Faced by Non-Native English Speakers in College
• The Impact of Traveling During Breaks
• Exploring Identity: Cultural or Personal
• The Impact of Music or Art on My Life
• Addressing Diversity in the Classroom
• Exploring Entrepreneurial Ambitions
• My Experience with Research Projects
• Overcoming Impostor Syndrome in College
• The Importance of Networking in College
• Finding Resilience During Tough Times
• The Impact of Global Issues on Local Perspectives
• The Influence of Family Expectations on Education
• Lessons from a Part-Time Job
• Exploring the College Sports Culture
• The Role of Technology in Modern Education
• The Journey of Self-Discovery Through Education

Narrative Essay Comparison

Narrative essay vs. descriptive essay.

Here’s our first narrative essay comparison! While both narrative and descriptive essays focus on vividly portraying a subject or an event, they differ in their primary objectives and approaches. Now, let’s delve into the nuances of comparison on narrative essays.

Narrative Essay:

Storytelling: Focuses on narrating a personal experience or event.

Chronological Order: Follows a structured timeline of events to tell a story.

Message or Lesson: Often includes a central message, moral, or lesson learned from the experience.

Engagement: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling storyline and character development.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, using “I” and expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a plot with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Focuses on describing characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Conflict or Challenge: Usually involves a central conflict or challenge that drives the narrative forward.

Dialogue: Incorporates conversations to bring characters and their interactions to life.

Reflection: Concludes with reflection or insight gained from the experience.

Descriptive Essay:

Vivid Description: Aims to vividly depict a person, place, object, or event.

Imagery and Details: Focuses on sensory details to create a vivid image in the reader’s mind.

Emotion through Description: Uses descriptive language to evoke emotions and engage the reader’s senses.

Painting a Picture: Creates a sensory-rich description allowing the reader to visualize the subject.

Imagery and Sensory Details: Focuses on providing rich sensory descriptions, using vivid language and adjectives.

Point of Focus: Concentrates on describing a specific subject or scene in detail.

Spatial Organization: Often employs spatial organization to describe from one area or aspect to another.

Objective Observations: Typically avoids the use of personal opinions or emotions; instead, the focus remains on providing a detailed and objective description.

Comparison:

Focus: Narrative essays emphasize storytelling, while descriptive essays focus on vividly describing a subject or scene.

Perspective: Narrative essays are often written from a first-person perspective, while descriptive essays may use a more objective viewpoint.

Purpose: Narrative essays aim to convey a message or lesson through a story, while descriptive essays aim to paint a detailed picture for the reader without necessarily conveying a specific message.

Narrative Essay vs. Argumentative Essay

The narrative essay and the argumentative essay serve distinct purposes and employ different approaches:

Engagement and Emotion: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling story.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience or lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, sharing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a storyline with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Message or Lesson: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Argumentative Essay:

Persuasion and Argumentation: Aims to persuade the reader to adopt the writer’s viewpoint on a specific topic.

Logical Reasoning: Presents evidence, facts, and reasoning to support a particular argument or stance.

Debate and Counterarguments: Acknowledge opposing views and counter them with evidence and reasoning.

Thesis Statement: Includes a clear thesis statement that outlines the writer’s position on the topic.

Thesis and Evidence: Starts with a strong thesis statement and supports it with factual evidence, statistics, expert opinions, or logical reasoning.

Counterarguments: Addresses opposing viewpoints and provides rebuttals with evidence.

Logical Structure: Follows a logical structure with an introduction, body paragraphs presenting arguments and evidence, and a conclusion reaffirming the thesis.

Formal Language: Uses formal language and avoids personal anecdotes or emotional appeals.

Objective: Argumentative essays focus on presenting a logical argument supported by evidence, while narrative essays prioritize storytelling and personal reflection.

Purpose: Argumentative essays aim to persuade and convince the reader of a particular viewpoint, while narrative essays aim to engage, entertain, and share personal experiences.

Structure: Narrative essays follow a storytelling structure with character development and plot, while argumentative essays follow a more formal, structured approach with logical arguments and evidence.

In essence, while both essays involve writing and presenting information, the narrative essay focuses on sharing a personal experience, whereas the argumentative essay aims to persuade the audience by presenting a well-supported argument.

Narrative Essay vs. Personal Essay

While there can be an overlap between narrative and personal essays, they have distinctive characteristics:

Storytelling: Emphasizes recounting a specific experience or event in a structured narrative form.

Engagement through Story: Aims to engage the reader through a compelling story with characters, plot, and a central theme or message.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience and the lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s viewpoint, expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Focuses on developing a storyline with a clear beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Includes descriptions of characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Central Message: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Personal Essay:

Exploration of Ideas or Themes: Explores personal ideas, opinions, or reflections on a particular topic or subject.

Expression of Thoughts and Opinions: Expresses the writer’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives on a specific subject matter.

Reflection and Introspection: Often involves self-reflection and introspection on personal experiences, beliefs, or values.

Varied Structure and Content: Can encompass various forms, including memoirs, personal anecdotes, or reflections on life experiences.

Flexibility in Structure: Allows for diverse structures and forms based on the writer’s intent, which could be narrative-like or more reflective.

Theme-Centric Writing: Focuses on exploring a central theme or idea, with personal anecdotes or experiences supporting and illustrating the theme.

Expressive Language: Utilizes descriptive and expressive language to convey personal perspectives, emotions, and opinions.

Focus: Narrative essays primarily focus on storytelling through a structured narrative, while personal essays encompass a broader range of personal expression, which can include storytelling but isn’t limited to it.

Structure: Narrative essays have a more structured plot development with characters and a clear sequence of events, while personal essays might adopt various structures, focusing more on personal reflection, ideas, or themes.

Intent: While both involve personal experiences, narrative essays emphasize telling a story with a message or lesson learned, while personal essays aim to explore personal thoughts, feelings, or opinions on a broader range of topics or themes.

A narrative essay is more than just telling a story. It’s also meant to engage the reader, get them thinking, and leave a lasting impact. Whether it’s to amuse, motivate, teach, or reflect, these essays are a great way to communicate with your audience. This interesting narrative essay guide was all about letting you understand the narrative essay, its importance, and how can you write one.

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Narrative History Essay

Knowing stories about history is really interesting. You will be able to come across with old traditions and cultures and the people’s way of life in the old times. Sometimes, a good story lies on our most compelling history. History plays a vital role in our lives where we are able to compare how we are living today versus how they used to live before. With all their strategies for survival during the old times, would it be amazing to know everything about it? In this article, you will get to know about narrative history and how to create history essays.

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What is a Narrative History?

A narrative history teaches you how to tell stories about the past. It contains when, where and why it happened, the importance of the event and who are the people involved in it. It basically allows us to understand the events in time. A narrative history focuses on the most substantial moment in the past which focuses on the actions and the causes that contributed to the outcome.

Why Narrative History Matters?

• Narrative history establishes the identity of their authors and readers.

Narrative histories are may be about a story of a family, community, experience of a person, etc. It gives credits to the authors and provides life with the information to the readers.

• Narrative history represent language and literature .

It makes reading available and easy to organize because it allows everyday life to center on historical orientation.

• Narrative history gives people the chance to take action from what they have learned over the past.

The purpose of a narrative history is to make people aware of the past actualities. It allows people living for today to take action as individuals or groups with regards to their historical knowledge.

How to Write a Narrative History Essay

Just like any other essay , creating a narrative history essay should also follow a certain format. Since you are going to tell a story of history, you add more components to the structure itself.

– Know the narrator of the story. Whose voice will perform in the narrative? Usually, the voice will be the author’s but using the 3rd person to describe events. You may also use 1st person to account a communication event or to describe an experience over looking for some historical facts.

The author is known as the one who controls the narrator. All that is happening in the story must not be in the narrator’s account because you should be able to see from different perspectives to undergo observations to see possible errors.

– Make sure that all the sequence of the events are connected to each other. It should have a beginning, middle and end. This contains what you are going to include in the story and take time to know the pace or the tempo of the story.

– Narratives should contain accounts of action. This means that it is the place where the elements of the story would gather.

– A good narrative has characters that is developed from forces on all sides of choice and has a tension between the person and his or her time and the way they resist.

– You have to put in mind that a narrative is not just any writing, rather it responds to accuracy. It should have coherence and fidelity that brings truth to the experience of a reader.

Why is history a narrative?

History is a narrative representation of the past that can be communicated in different methods as a form of expression. It tells stories so that the people living in modern times will be able to know what kind of life they had been living in the old times.

What makes a good historical narrative?

Narrative history should be organized in chronological order. You will not be able to understand the sequence of the events if the stories were not arranged by time.

What is the most important element of a narrative?

The most important element of a narrative is the conflict . It is the part where you are torn between having the idea that an ending would be a tragedy or something happy.

You just have to worry less about writing your narrative history essay. You just have to put the story on your paper, see if you have left out something and work artistically in your work.

Narrative History Essay Generator

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

Write a Narrative History Essay on the impact of a major invention.

Create a Narrative History Essay about a pivotal moment in civil rights history.

Types of Writing Assignments

Narrative History

• Response Papers
• Creative Approaches
• Annotated Bibliographies
• Book Reviews
• Historiographic Essays
• Research Papers

Basic Considerations When Writing on History

• Cause and Effect
• Establishing a Broader Context
• Common Fallacies

Types of Sources

• Secondary Sources
• Primary Sources
• Fiction/Art/Poetry
• The Internet

Critical Reading

• Historiography
• Bias/Prejudice
• Evaluating Contradictory Data and Claims

Preparation and Writing

• Time Management
• Note-Taking Tips
• Developing a Thesis
• Organization
• Formulating a Conclusion

Basic Quoting Skills

• Quotation/Annotation
• Bibliographies
• Advanced Quoting Skills
• The Ethics of Quoting

Style and Editing

• Drafts and Revisions
• Common Stylistic Errors

Narrative history allows you to master the art of good storytelling that lies at the heart of most compelling history.

In a nutshell, narrative history asks you to tell a story: when, where, and (hopefully) why a certain event occurred, its larger significance or context, and who the important participants were. This is one of the more basic types of assignments you are likely to encounter, well-suited for (although not limited to) a short paper assignment.

Usually (in the context of a "W" class, for example) your professor has already covered the event. You have read about it and discussed it in class, and the assignment's objective is simply 1) to get you writing and, 2) to allow you to display, in writing, your mastery over the material.

Often - especially in a "W" course - the professor will ask you to limit your sources to those used in class, to use a system of annotation of his or her choosing, and to display basic quoting skills . Most likely, the professor will also require you to provide a "Works Cited"-page, or bibliography . (In the event that your professor asks you to access sources aside from those used in class, go to types of sources ).

Such an assignment will invariably require you to develop a thesis (a basic claim, or question, your paper seeks to prove or answer) and to formulate a conclusion . In between, in the main body of your paper, you will tell your story: what happened, when, and why.

Chart the foreign policy of Adolf Hitler from his appointment as German Chancellor in 1933 until the eve of World War II in 1939.

The events that marked the pre-WWII foreign policy of Nazi Germany, although complicated, are well-documented (they are listed below ). You will find them briefly explained in any standard textbook of European, World, or American history. Most likely, your professor expects you to introduce your topic, to establish a broader context , to place the relevant events into chronological order, to explain each one briefly, and to draw a conclusion.

A thesis, in the case of narrative history, can be modest: "The foreign policy pursued by the Nazi government under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1939 paved the way for World War II." A more ambitious thesis might add a statement along the following lines: "The unwillingness of the League of Nations or the United States to challenge Hitler's foreign policy may have emboldened him in his increasingly aggressive tactics. Ultimately these mutually reinforcing strategies culminated in the major confrontation that became World War II."

For more on this sample assignment, see Establishing a Broader Context .

• 1933 Hitler becomes Führer ("leader") of Germany; leaves the League of Nations.
• 1935 begins re-building the German navy and increasing troop strength of German army in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
• 1936 Hitler remilitarizes the Rhineland, placed under French control for 20 years in 1919's Treaty of Versailles.
• 1936 Hitler signs the Rome-Berlin Axis Pact, creating an alliance with Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
• 1936-39 Along with Mussolini, Hitler aids Franco's Nationalists (the "falange") against the Republicans (or "Loyalists") in the Spanish Civil War.
• 1938 Hitler annexes Austria in the so-called Anschluss ("annexation").
• 1938 September, Britain and France appease Hitler by granting him the right to occupy the Sudetenland, an ethnic German-populated western province of Czechoslovakia; Hitler asserts that his territorial claims in Europe are satisfied.
• 1939 March, Hitler takes the rest of Czechoslovakia.
• 1939 September 1, Hitler attacks Poland.
• 1939 September 3, Britain and France declare war on Germany: World War II officially begins.

• Scriptwriting

What is a Narrative Essay — Examples, Format & Techniques

I was in the Amazon jungle the first time I wrote a narrative essay, enlightened and enraptured by the influence of ayahuasca. That’s not true. I’ve never been to South America nor have I ever taken ayahuasca. The purpose of that opening is to show how to craft a narrative essay intro — hook, line, and sinker. Narrative essays rely on hooking the reader, and enticing them to read on. But what is a narrative essay? We’re going to break down everything you need to know about these essays — definition, examples, tips and tricks included. By the end, you’ll be ready to craft your own narrative essay for school or for publication.

What’s a Narrative Essay?

First, let’s define narrative essay.

Narrative essays share a lot of similarities with personal essays, but whereas the former can be fictional or non-fictional, the latter are strictly non-fictional. The goal of the narrative essay is to use established storytelling techniques, like theme , conflict , and irony , in a uniquely personal way.

The responsibility of the narrative essayist is to make the reader feel connected to their story, regardless of the topic. This next video explores how writers can use structural elements and techniques to better engage their readers. 

Personal Narrative Essay Examples With Essay Pro

Narrative essays rely on tried and true structure components, including:

• First-person POV
• Personal inspiration
• Focus on a central theme

By keeping these major tenets in mind, you’ll be better prepared to recognize weaknesses and strengths in your own works.

NARRATIVE ESSAY DEFINITION

What is a narrative essay.

A narrative essay is a prose-written story that’s focused on the commentary of a central theme. Narrative essays are generally written in the first-person POV, and are usually about a topic that’s personal to the writer. Everything in these essays should take place in an established timeline, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. 

Famous Narrative Essay Examples

• Ticker to the Fair by David Foster Wallace
• After Life by Joan Didion
• Here is a Lesson in Creative Writing by Kurt Vonnegut

Narrative Writing Explained

How to start a narrative essay.

When you go to sleep at night, what do you think of? Flying squirrels? Lost loved ones? That time you called your teacher ‘mom’? Whatever it is, that’s what you need to write about. There’s a reason those ideas and moments have stuck with you over time. Your job is to figure out why.

Once you realize what makes a moment important to you, it’s your job to make it important to the reader too. In this next video, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker J. Christian Jensen explains the power of the personal narrative. 

Narrative Writing and the Personal Narrative Essay  •  Video by TEDx Talks

Anything and everything can be the topic of your essay. It could be as benign as a walk to school or as grandiose as a trip to the moon — so long as that narrative exists within reality. Give your thoughts and opinions on the matter too — don’t be afraid to say “this is what I think” so long as it’s supported by storytelling techniques. Remember, never limit yourself as a writer, just keep in mind that certain topics will be harder to make engaging than others.

Narrative Essay Outline

How to write a narrative essay.

First step, game plan. You’re going to want to map out the story from beginning to end, then mark major story beats in your document.

Like all stories, your narrative essay needs a clear beginning, middle, and end. Each section should generally conform to a specifically outlined structure. For reference, check out the outline below.

Narrative Essay Format  •  How to Write a Narrative Essay Step by Step

Make sure to reference back to this outline throughout the writing process to make sure you have all your major beats covered.

Purpose of narrative essay writing

Narrative essays give writers the ability to freely express themselves within the structure of a traditional story. Nearly all universities ask applicants to submit a narrative essay with their formal application. This is done for two reasons: they allow institutions to judge the linguistic and grammar capabilities of its applicants, as well as their raw creative side.

If you’re considering studying creative writing in an undergraduate or graduate program, then you’re going to write A LOT of narrative style essays. This process may seem indomitable; How am I supposed to write hundreds of pages about… me? But by the end, you’ll be a better writer and you’ll have a better understanding of yourself.

One thing that all successful essayists have in common is that they make radical, often defiant statements on the world at large. Think Ralph Waldo Emerson, Virginia Woolf, and Langston Hughes for example.

Being a professional essayist isn’t easy, and it’s near-impossible to be one who makes a lot of money. Many essayists work as professors, editors, and curriculum designers as well. 

This next video features the late, award-winning essayist Brian Doyle. He explains all the things you need to hear when thinking about writing a story.

Narrative Essay Examples “Lecture” via Boston University

We can learn a lot from the way Doyle “opens” his stories. My favorite is how he begins with the statement, “I met the Dalai Lama once.” How can we not be interested in learning more? 

This brings us all the way back to the beginning. Start with a hook, rattle off the line, then reel in the sinker. If you entice the reader, develop a personal plot, and finish with a resolute ending, you’ll have a lot of success in essay writing. 

 Up Next

Narrative essay topics.

We've curated a collection of narrative essay topics that will spark your creativity and bring your experiences to life. Dive into the rich tapestry of your memories, explore the unique threads of your life, and let your narrative unfold.

Up Next: Narrative Essay Topics →

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The system format you using on line is very concise ,I encourage to those who are talented to continue puplish their examples of essays so that we student we can crasp.

This site has one of the best narartive writing techniques anyone can need

This was really helpful and insightful

What is narrative

Sounds great thanks

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Narrative History

Historians have always crafted narratives. War. Peace. Political battles. Feuds in the hollers. Floods on the Mississippi. Hurricanes. Strikes. Assassinations. Voyages to known and unknown places. Trials of the century. Personal quests. Leaders with uncommon touches and tragic flaws. This is the stuff of great narrative and the stuff of narrative history—stories about the past told with verve and drama but also with strong arguments and thick footnotes.

Over the years, historians—and here we’re talking largely about American, university-trained and -based scholars—have produced numerous libraries’ worth of moving tales spiced with telling details set against carefully drawn backdrops and built around scrupulously fleshed-out characters. Just like any good nonfiction instructor, Samuel Morison, one of the 20th century’s most brilliant and widely read historians, urged his Harvard graduate students to read more than academic books and journals. According to a recent article in The New Yorker, Morison told them to study the art of the novel and the grace of the essay. Without this grounding, he feared that his students would write only “dull, solid” monographs. Now Morison wasn’t a self loathing historian, just a realistic one. Each “dull, solid” book and article, he knew, added to the base of historical knowledge, but that was it. No one outside the small cohort of scholars in a subfield would ever read them. For most historians, this was OK. Tenure and promotion came through deeply researched accounts of wars, trials and political campaigns targeted at other academics—not through broadly conceived narratives aimed at large audiences.

The scope of the historical profession narrowed a bit more in the 1960s and 1970s. Borrowing techniques and approaches from social scientists, historians churned out streams of studies tightly focused on the daily lives of ordinary, often forgotten people and on long-term patterns of work, mobility and reproduction that showcased method, data sets and argument over plot, suspense and character development. Some deliberately shied away from artful storytelling, fearful that the hints of play and performance that came with narrative would take away from the veracity and seriousness of the accounts. Better in this professional climate to construct tables and long, discursive footnotes than chiseled characters and in-depth scenes.

Journalists, features writers and biographers quickly stepped into the narrative void left by the historians’ social-scientific turn. Skilled storytellers and diligent researchers like J. Anthony Lukas and Robert A. Caro told gripping tales of race and disappointment, city building and power brokers. Audiences came running. David McCullough recounted the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and John Barry traced the floodwaters of the Mississippi, and people turned the pages. Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose—Ambrose started out as a university-based historian but chafed under the academy’s narrative and political constraints, or so he said—retold sprawling national narratives of good and evil, and book-buyers swarmed. Taylor Branch and Edmund Morris buried themselves in the archives and produced gripping, authoritative accounts of the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Teddy Roosevelt, and the scribes of The New York Review of Books debated their insights.

Just as Samuel Morison had predicted, strong writers of compelling narratives had, by the 1980s, taken over the popular market for history. Unwilling to concede the past to nonprofessionals, some historians looked to strike back. But they knew that this meant rediscovering their field’s deep narrative traditions. It also meant taking on the big topics. And it meant imitating the narrative strategies deployed so well by journalist-historians like Goodwin and Caro—with, of course, fatter footnotes and longer bibliographies.

Reflecting the trend, in 1989, Princeton professor James M. McPherson crafted “Battle Cry of Freedom,” a vivid, even moving account of the military history of the Civil War. In the following decade, Joseph Ellis of Mount Holyoke College published “American Sphinx,” an elegant look at the private Thomas Jefferson. This triggered a sort of founding fathers revival, as professors—this time with the journalists following—raced to see who would get out the next book on Hamilton, Jefferson and Adams. Others who missed this bandwagon turned their attention to Lincoln and the noble grunts of World War II. As these accounts started to appear on The New York Times’ Best Sellers List, other historians hired agents and looked to capture a slice of this growing audience. But even more, the renewed interest in narrative—and royalty checks—trickled down. Graduate programs from Princeton to North Carolina to Southern California started to offer writing seminars alongside methods classes, featuring the work of Lukas and McPherson as well as of Gay Talese and Philip Roth.

But the grand narrative of the big event and the big leader wasn’t the only thing happening in the history business. The freedom movements of the 1960s rocked the academy. African-Americans, women, Native Americans, Chicanos, gays, lesbians and transgendered people demanded not just equity before the law but also a place in the nation’s past. Yet, including the “others” upset some firmly established master narratives. Things weren’t so clear anymore. Whose story was true, historians wondered? The answer depended on the perspective.

Some historians concluded—with great misgivings—that truth was subjective. It wasn’t that there wasn’t truth but that truth—the past—looked different depending on where you stood. For some historians, this insight freed them from the restrictions of the omnipresent third-person narrative—the detached and commanding position adopted by historians. Some scholars, then, began to experiment with voice and structure. With a novelist’s eye for detail and phrasing, James E. Goodman, in “Stories of Scottsboro,” retold the tragedy of the wrongly accused Scottsboro boys from a multiplicity of angles with each chapter changing perspective. In his follow-up book, “Blackout,” an account of the night the lights went out in New York City in 1977, he retells the event in a frenzy of over 50 short-story blasts. Never does he step in and say which account is true and which is not. The complexity of experience is what matters to him.

Others have injected themselves into their stories. Art historian Eunice Lipton went searching for Manet’s model in “Alias Olympia” and found herself. In “Blood Done Sign My Name,” Timothy B. Tyson recalled a racially charged murder in his southern hometown to reinterpret the Civil Rights Movement and the politics of his minister father. And John Putnam Demos—a Yale professor and highly respected colonial historian—ran into some dead ends in the archives, but rather than give up his stories, he imagined his way into the heads of his characters, writing brief fictions as history in “The Unredeemed Captive.”

Creative nonfiction writers have been slow to pick up on historians’ narrative experiments. But this—and perhaps some advice about conducting research—is perhaps the most valuable thing historians have to offer. Truth is precarious, unstable and elusive, and this—as Goodman, Demos and the others show—is the real drama of the past. The search for truth, the battle for whose truth matters and what truth gets codified into official histories, textbooks and monuments, is the stuff of stories—tense, suspenseful stories—the stuff of both creative nonfiction and narrative history.

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Narrative Essays

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What is a narrative essay?

When writing a narrative essay, one might think of it as telling a story. These essays are often anecdotal, experiential, and personal—allowing students to express themselves in a creative and, quite often, moving ways.

Here are some guidelines for writing a narrative essay.

• If written as a story, the essay should include all the parts of a story.

This means that you must include an introduction, plot, characters, setting, climax, and conclusion.

• When would a narrative essay not be written as a story?

A good example of this is when an instructor asks a student to write a book report. Obviously, this would not necessarily follow the pattern of a story and would focus on providing an informative narrative for the reader.

• The essay should have a purpose.

Make a point! Think of this as the thesis of your story. If there is no point to what you are narrating, why narrate it at all?

• The essay should be written from a clear point of view.

It is quite common for narrative essays to be written from the standpoint of the author; however, this is not the sole perspective to be considered. Creativity in narrative essays oftentimes manifests itself in the form of authorial perspective.

• Use clear and concise language throughout the essay.

Much like the descriptive essay, narrative essays are effective when the language is carefully, particularly, and artfully chosen. Use specific language to evoke specific emotions and senses in the reader.

• The use of the first person pronoun ‘I’ is welcomed.

Do not abuse this guideline! Though it is welcomed it is not necessary—nor should it be overused for lack of clearer diction.

• As always, be organized!

Have a clear introduction that sets the tone for the remainder of the essay. Do not leave the reader guessing about the purpose of your narrative. Remember, you are in control of the essay, so guide it where you desire (just make sure your audience can follow your lead).

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Article contents

Narrative theory.

• Didier Coste Didier Coste Universite Bordeaux Montaigne
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.116
• Published online: 28 June 2017

The narrative mode of world-representation and world-building is omnipresent and far exceeds the domain of literature. Since literature is not necessarily narrative and narrative not necessarily literary, the study of narrative in a literary context must confront narrative and literature in a dual way: How does the presence of narrative affect literature? And how does literariness affect narrative? The basic terminology needs to be clarified by comparing English with the vocabulary of other natural languages. No consensus has been reached, even in the West, on the nature of narrative discourse.

The entire history of poetics shows that, before the middle of the 20th century, little attention was paid to the narrative components of literary texts qua narrative—that is, insofar as the same narrative elements could equally be found in non-aestheticized uses of verbal and non-verbal languages. Aristotelian poetics, based on the mimesis of human action, keeps its grip on narrative theory. The post-Aristotelian triad separated more sharply the lyric from the epic and dramatic genres, but modern narrative theories, mostly based on the study of folk tales and the novel, have still failed to unify the field of literary narrative, or have done it artificially, dissolving narrative discourse into the undifferentiated experience of human life in linear time.

The Western “rise of the novel,” in Ian Watt’s sense, and its worldwide expansion, turned the question of fiction, not that of narrativity, into the main focus of narrative studies. Later, the emergence of formalism and semiotics and the “linguistic turn” of the social sciences pushed the narrative analysis of literary texts in the opposite direction, with all of its efforts bearing on minimal, supposedly deeper units and simple concatenations. The permanent, unresolved conflict between an analytical and constructivist view grounded in individual events and a holistic view concerned with story-worlds and storytelling leaves mostly unattended such fundamental questions as how narrative is used by literature and literature by narrative for their own ends.

Literary narrativity must be thoroughly reconsidered. A critical, transdisciplinary theory should submit to both logical and empirical trial—on a large number of varied samples—and narrative analyses that would take into account the following concepts used to forge methodological tools: discrimination (between the functions of discourse genres and between pragmatic roles in literary communication); combination rules (whether linear or not); levels (as spatial placing, as interdependence and hierarchical authority); scale and spatiotemporal framing and backgrounding , especially the (dominant) time concepts in a particular cultural context. The preconditions for analysis begin by investigating the relation between aesthetic emotions and narrative in other cultural domains than the West and the English-speaking world.

Literary narrativity and social values concur to link the rhetorical manipulation of narrative with its aestheticization. The pleasure and fear of cognition combine with strategies of delusion to either acquiesce to the effects of time and violence or resist them; routine and rupture are alternatively foregrounded, according to needs.

• literary aesthetics
• narrativity
• reader response
• spatiotemporal framing

If we can agree on the common transcultural intuition that literature is another name for verbal art, we will also readily accept that many and indeed most other channels of communication, expression, and information can and do “tell stories,” or at least contain fragments of narrative discourse. The visual arts and instrumental music also often use their non-verbal means to convey narrative meaning beside the symbolic value or emotional significance brought about by formal features. There is no need for a title to perceive that a pietà , a crucifixion, or a Rape of the Sabine Women iconically refer to a particular event, real or imaginary, just like bullet marks on a wall refer to a shooting indexically, in Charles Sanders Peirce’s terms. Some instrumental music (Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eroica , a military march) and elaborate Maori war cries refer emotionally and or symbolically to the narratable event or collection of events of war. Should we examine verbal communication, oral or written, with no detectable intended aesthetic manipulation and little or no aesthetic added value (when a policeman reports on his night patrols in the morning, when a technician tells you how your computer system crashed), we will equally find that they more often than not tell complete or fragmented stories, or at least propose elements to put to work some kind of narrative program, a more or less open coded pattern that can be played with interactively; such everyday acts of verbal communication are frequently motivated by the narrative drive of the sender or its presupposition in the receiver and simultaneously point to it.

Verbal art may be considered as another anthropological universal. We can easily speculate that it began with the first rhyme, the first pun, the first chanting modulation—in other words, that it was nearly coetaneous with the appearance of articulate speech in homo sapiens sapiens . But rhymes, puns, chanting rhythms are not narrative acts: they can indirectly, through symbolism and sensorial association, evoke, announce, or recall a narrative without formulating one any more than the hand imprints of the prehistoric Cueva de las Manos . We could even say that they may run counter to the narrative potential of the text, like the recurring couplets of a ballad or an insistent leitmotiv in narrative (“program”) music. Repetition establishes constants; it can smother events. Lyric, argumentative discourse, critical commentaries, the questioning, speculative discourse of the essay can be implicitly or explicitly motivated by a subjacent or projected narrative; they can be interspersed with narrative utterances and even sequences without conveying any properly narrative meaning by themselves. The same applies to descriptions that, taken together, can combine and contrast to stimulate or generate the production of narrative but, taken separately, present by definition a static, tabular vision of the world of reference, not a dynamic one.

The logical asymmetry of narrative and verbal art must not be offset by the quantitative prevalence of the former in the latter, from comedy and tragedy to modern drama and film scripts, from myth and epic to the novel and artful historical narratives, from hagiography to autobiography, from fairy tales to fantasy, from anecdote and fable to concise hyperrealist fiction. Even if the use of narrative discourse is the most ordinary and widespread expression of human awareness of life and its transience, of the will to be part of its dynamics, verbal art develops other means to the same effect and also in order to resist transience and refuse to participate in dynamics it cannot control. Synchronic history would be one example of this resistance. Mysticism is not only a quest; it is fascinated by the absent presence of God or the beloved; it does not always lead to silence; it can manifest itself in repetition, verbosity, and verbiage that blur or even destroy any possible kind of narrativity. Incantation and enchantment are part of an arsenal to fight the corrosive action of perceived linear time. Verbal art is sometimes bent on deflecting or turning its back on the sense of mortality involved in narrative just as it can celebrate and enhance the eventfulness of life; it can use devices such as the regular return of certain signifiers and structures in order to conjure up a cyclic notion of time (eternal return), as well as disruptive devices in order to highlight the wonder of birth, innovation, and metamorphosis.

The fundamental disconnection of narrative and literature is often not recognized by Western theorists, mainly because the novel became the dominant genre there between the 17th and 19th centuries and has conquered the rest of the world in the last one hundred and fifty years. This disconnection makes it an obligation to denaturalize, investigate, describe, and sometimes question the workings of narrative in literature and the role of aestheticization in narratives (like those of historiography, cosmology, or biology) that do not a priori require an aesthetic supplement to fulfill their cognitive, social, political, and ethical purposes.

Straightening the Terminological Maze

Since the infancy of modern narratologies, the very notion of “narrative” has never been a consensual object of study. From their reputedly “classical” formalist and structuralist development to the huge diversification of the so-called “post-classical” phase and beyond, with the rise of cognitive theories and the impact of neuroscience, “the appropriation of narratological frameworks by non-literary disciplines often results in the dilution of the narratological basis, in a loss of precision, and the metaphoric use of narratological terminology.” 1 In fact, literary disciplines, bending toward “fiction,” are largely responsible for this tension, and the definitions of “narrative,” whether literary or not, vary enormously. They often remain contradictory in themselves and incompatible with those used in other fields of knowledge and practice: linguistic definitions are not shared by law or business. This severe lack of consensus implies that any description of literary narrative results from difficult preliminary theoretical choices heavily influenced by historical circumstances and particular philosophical and ideological positions. In the West and through the global expansion of Western rationalization, such discrepancies may find their origin partly in the persistent authority of Aristotelian poetics. According to it, the enunciative factor, the impersonation or not of the acts of speech that construct a story by the actors of the same sharply divides epic from drama (tragedy or comedy). The tragic mode of drama has curiously provided the prevalent paradigm to analyze and interpret the structures of narrative genres, such as the tale, the short story, and the novel, that use one or more external narrators and thus, if we follow Aristotle, belong to epos , not drama. Aristotle denies poetic and even narrative interest to historia , the plain factual recounting of verifiable events in the world as it is or was; therefore, fiction, in the narrow sense of the representation of possible human action, has come to stand as the most significant type of literary narrative, cut off by a more or less high partition from other narrative texts, on the one hand, and indiscriminately packed with non-narrative fiction (such as imaginary descriptions) on the other hand. The classical Indian aesthetics of rasa , although it concentrated, like Aristotelian poetics, on performed narratives, has had a unifying effect across the arts, but, since it seems to be more concerned with a hierarchic value system of human emotions and the techniques of their representation than with the nature of events and their sequence, it brings closer narrative and non-narrative texts instead of separating clearly the representation of a static world from katha , or the mimesis of an evolutive world. This does not mean that “narrative” should forever remain something completely elusive or that the immense modern investment of the human sciences (from sociology, anthropology, history, and law to the science of literature through linguistics) in its theory, analysis, and interpretation is a futile, wasted effort. It rather means that we should henceforth abstain from talking of “narrative” in any vague or all-embracing sense; instead, we should select and test the approaches that will prove most productive in the critical study and appreciation of literary phenomena. If, for instance, a certain approach helps us to make more sense of complex, borderline generic formations such as the lyrical novel, the prose poem, personal and literary diaries or notebooks, the anecdote, the Hadiths or the Upanishads, if it contributes to enhancing our enjoyment of literary and non-literary expressions alike, bringing enough genres under one roof while maintaining and justifying their functional specificities, we will deem it, for now, appropriate to literary studies and reader education.

The Word “Narrative”

The word “narrative,” in contemporary English, can be either adjective or substantive, as in the expressions “narrative poetry” or “a vivid narrative.” Without any surface determinant, the noun “narrative” further objectifies and universalizes the characteristics contained in the acceptation of the adjective when we say, for example (no matter whether it is true or false): “Narrative is present in every speech act.” “Narrative,” in this case, becomes the concept of the set or sets of features that allow us to call some texts or acts of communication “narrative,” and names the open corpus of all the extant, recorded, or possible/potential texts or acts of communication that do or would manifest “narrative features.”

The identity of signifiers between the English adjective and the two aspects (grammatically determined and not determined) of the noun entails a particular way of apprehending the narrative phenomenon. What this way might be, we can begin to infer from a comparison between the lexical uses outlined in contemporary educated English and those found in other states of the English language and in other languages. Suffice it to note the asymmetry of French and English in this respect: in French, even though the adjective “ narratif” could be nominalized like any other similar adjective, this potential nominalization has not been actualized: although the English and French adjectives “narrative” and “ narratif” are fully equivalent, we translate the English noun “narrative” as “ récit .” This substantive etymologically evokes memory, repetition, quotation, a posteriori telling; it refers more to the oral, written, or visual text of narratives through which the telling is done than to the teller of the tale, who is not necessarily a “ récitant ”—especially in modern times—and is technically tagged “ narrateur ” or would be called a “ conteur ” in an older or an oral context. This fact is all the more important in view of the impact of French or French-inspired structuralism on the worldwide development of narratology and its early insistence on dismissing the figure of the author from this field of study.

Comparison with other languages would show that the terminology in the semantic field of “narrative” is culturally and historically determined and therefore generates large numbers of “untranslatables” in Barbara Cassin’s sense. The semantic field of “narrative” is covered and divided differently in each language, which does not make it easy for us to speak of “narrative” from the standpoint of modern English while purporting to discuss it as an anthropological universal. If the Arabic word qissa covers virtually any kind of story, anecdotal stories or records of matters of the Minor Way ( xiaodao ), considered as “fiction” because they did not carry a relevant moral message, seem to be separated from other narrative genres in pre-Ming China.

The use of the same signifier, in English, for the adjective and the concrete and conceptual nouns, and the presence of the same Latin etymon in a large spectrum of the semantic field (with “narrate,” “narrator,” “narration”) involve a serious risk of considering narrative phenomena as naturally unified in space, time, and the logic at work. The Proto-Indo-European root gno , unconsciously shared with “know,” can also perpetuate a confusion of informing and knowledge acquisition in general with narration and its reception. Overlooking heterogeneity is as dangerous as denying the possibility of anthropological universals.

The Word “Literature”

Contemporary uses of the words “literature” and “literary” are fraught with difficulties at least as great as those of “narrative.” The variation of social and philosophical values in the present context of fragmented cultural globalization and acts of resistance to these variations contributes to this vagueness. Where people of widely different backgrounds and persuasion, in different languages, could readily agree that (a) “Peter and Mary got married yesterday” is a narrative utterance, even the closest friends and collaborators might well disagree on whether the above sentence, or, alternately, (b) “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,” can be literary at all. An affirmative answer, for the first example, would always depend on a relaxation of exogenous and/or inbuilt aesthetic criteria; with the second example, it would depend on the relaxation of the principle of non-contradiction in the name of an aesthetics of surprise or an anti-rationalist stance. One could say that literariness is subject to much wider socio-cultural and historical variations than narrativity. From the standpoint of the early 21st-century West, the criteria and inclusiveness of verbal art (as opposed to verbal non-art and non-verbal art) might perhaps be reduced to four phases for didactic purposes.

In Greek- and Latin-dominant poetics—more Aristotelian than Platonic—and their afterlife, “poetry” or “poesie” would cover the artful verbal (written and oral) imitation of human action in the two large genres (drama and epic) acknowledged by Aristotle, with the necessary addition of the lyric, not considered extensively in Aristotle’s Poetics . From the low Middle Ages onward, with the development of European vernacular languages in writing, with the first traces of secularization and individualization of art, and with the nostalgia and revival of classical know-how, the belles-lettres gradually separated from popular verbal art, tending to include rhetorical and didactic genres (sermon, discourse, eulogy, apology, essay, etc.) in the field. The novel use of the word “literature” in the 18th century did little more than legitimate a process of integration of written narrative fiction that had begun in the 13th century and had seen successively the transformation of the popular tale into the short story, the gentrification of the novel (including the “romance” as supposed sub-genre), and the defense of the epic in prose as a noble art form. “Literature” (or “poetry”), verbal art—although it had always been opposed or sometimes hated and despised since the times of Plato—had on the whole steadily accumulated a huge capital of prestige by the first half of the 19th century . “Literature,” mostly in its narrative guise, had come to embrace almost all domains of knowledge and expression, except those that made use of specific formal languages rather than natural languages. The fourth phase, of which we have generally become intensely aware only from the late 20th century , had already begun in the second half of the 19th century , under the combined pressure of scientific faith and growing distrust of “the word” associated with manipulation, propaganda, exploitation, war-mongering, and genocide.

The formation of a concept of literariness no longer tied to questions of moral and social value coincided with and probably contributed to the accelerated rise of a disinterested and above all non-mimetic vision of literature. Roman Jakobson’s “poetic function,” for example, conveniently condoned a renewed sharp separation between high and low, abstract and concrete, pure and pragmatic uses of aestheticization, favoring self-reflexive poetry or the formal structures of narrative over any “referential” semantic contents or conative intention and effect. The polysemy criterion of Mircea Marghescou anticipated a post-communist attitude at odds with the actual or imagined demands of the city; 2 Roland Barthes’s “readerly” regime, reception aesthetics, and reader-oriented criticism, as well as the demise of the author and the foregrounding of the unconscious, all tended to turn literature into a playground for language games. The denunciation of universals by many postcolonial and “decolonial” theorists, together with the postmodern deconstruction of a coherent logos and the bewildering changes in the human perception of time and practice of memory—all these factors combined to support the idea that literature, at least as we had known it in our lifetimes, was indeed coming to an end. If we are to talk of literature at all, were it to accept or rejoice that it is no more, it is nevertheless a logical necessity to either describe “what was literature” or define what it could be in a differently configured world. It would be meaningless to declare dead a concept that was always empty. Moreover, there are too many traces and records of it—whether official, secret, or unacknowledged—in ordinary language and our everyday lives not to attempt to propose some ample but not vague working definition of what is literary in literary communication. It is a basic requirement here when the current corpus of what passes for “literature” is more dominantly narrative than ever, thus tightly, if unduly, conjoining two universals.

“Literature” must not be equated with the sum of supposedly literary genres any more than “narrative” with the sum of genres conventionally labelled “narrative” in any one cultural context. The fact that, before, during and after the rise of structural narratologies, the theory of literary narrative was always rooted in the study of a limited number of emblematic genres, such as the epic and the fable in the neoclassical period, the fairy tale 3 and then the novel 4 in the long structuralist period, or historiography, comics, and digital games more recently, 5 never stopped generating as many conceptual distortions as useful insights. The diversity of historically inscribed genre-based theories should, on the contrary, motivate us to work our way toward features that have a chance to be anthropologically, transculturally, and transhistorically shared.

Here, then, an act of literary communication is any cooperative speech sequence that fulfills three minimal conditions: (a) its effectiveness depends on intertextual linkage at least as much as on its internal coherence and its reference to a non-textual world; (b) the resolution of ambiguities and the reduction of tropes and other figures leave a positive surplus to the act of communication; (c) this act of communication actually generates or has the potential to generate some kind of aesthetic satisfaction in the empirical or virtual participant subjects. Literariness, thus broadly defined, can be historically modulated; it is not a static, immutable property of some classes of “texts” that other classes would not possess, but its existence does not depend on particular historical circumstances or on a grand evolutionist narrative of progressive achievement or rise and decay.

A Brief Narrative of the Poetics of Narrative

The word “poetics” rather than “theory” is preferred: first of all, narrative meaning and resonance are held to be the result of a making, a collaborative fabrication, not a given of a “text” as it stands in its own space, as early textual structuralism saw it, or a ready-made code or pattern that would reside in the minds of both receiver and sender and could be called upon, activated at will without undergoing important modifications, as some cognitivist views, like those popularized by Jonathan Gottschall would have it. 6 Second, a poetics has a normative aspect that a theory lacks: until the second half of the 20th century , all concepts of literary narrative were largely motivated by a quest for moral and/or aesthetic added value, even when they purported to be amoral or immoral and cultivated ugliness or negligence. In fact, the demand for such values or their deliberate denial still weighs upon most contemporary theories of narrative. Even though Lubomir Doležel validly argued that a change of paradigm in Western poetics, 7 from an anatomical, taxonomic view to a morphological, organicist one, emerged in the Romantic period, it is obvious it has been and is still, two centuries later, at pains to replace the earlier one.

The Aristotelian Conundrum

Aristotle’s Poetics remains, after twenty-four centuries, by far the single most influential treatise of its type in the West and, by colonial extension, worldwide. What were the motivations of such a persistent impact in spite of the Judeo-Christian revelation and revolution, when a very different attitude to the Book was now carried by the three monotheisms, when divine authorship and its truth-value imposed a unique, linear master narrative of the history of mankind always already pre-written by God? The Enlightenment; the destabilizing, iconoclastic avant-gardes; the formalist, structuralist, pragmatist, cognitivist, and deconstructionist perturbations of the basic Aristotelian tenets have also proven unable to uproot them. Whether this inexpugnable resistance is due to an ever-renewed tragic vision of life that neither eschatological monotheism nor radical skepticism could seriously alter, or whether it was propitiated by the foundational character of the Poetics , by an incompleteness that gave rise to a number of equally plausible interpretations, or on the contrary by the often schematic pronouncements it makes, pre-figuring a culture of manifestos, its system is still at the heart of contemporary narrative theories that do not refer to it at all.

“Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation.” 8 If man is a born imitator, if this is one of his key defining features, his dignity and his limit, he can imitate good or evil and his innate imitation skills must be guided: the main function of art, itself imitative qua human, will be to guide imitative behavior by the receiver. And the role of poetics will be to guide art—for which a description and an evaluation are necessary. Evaluation selects the best objects and the most adequate manner within each kind of means/vehicles. But Aristotle, in these lessons, considers only the art or set of arts that uses language as its means, independently of music or meter, prose or verse, a subset that still lacked a name. We could say that this field delimitation is the one in which the notions of “poetry” and later “literature” originate. The focus is not on the materiality of the signifier but on the process of signification and how it achieves the goals of mimesis in the minds and hearts of the receivers, influencing their view of themselves in the world and therefore their actions.

“The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who are necessarily either good men or bad.” 9 “Action” ( praxis ) or actions, “human affairs” ( pragmata ), are at the core of Aristotelian poetics. The mimesis of human actions is for Aristotle at once the shared and the sole determinant feature and primary purpose of all the arts, considered themselves at all levels as “makings of,” practicing a technique to pursue a goal. Regarding “narrative,” this choice has wide-ranging philosophical implications and hermeneutic consequences that will always complicate and sometimes hamper the task of contemporary narrative theory. On the one hand, it potentially unifies all the arts under the common denominator of narrative, allowing and even encouraging inter-artistic and trans-medial comparison; on the other hand, it excludes from the artistic domain and aesthetic enjoyment, in an unjustifiable way according to our modern view and practice, any act of expression and/or imitation that is either conceptual or merely descriptive or yet refers to natural, non-human events. Unless the making of a house, a decorative frieze, or a symphony is taken as imitation of human action, which is certainly not the primary purpose, an architectural realization, a landscaped garden, or a piece of non-imitative music are not objects of art.

Second, but more important, if non-human events such as meteors, geological, astronomical, physical events at large, or the life events of animals and plants are not valid objects of representation by literary language (unless they serve as metaphors of human actions, as in some parallels and allegories), a radical dichotomy is maintained between human nature and culture, on one side, and nature (what there is or what might be without mankind or discounting man’s action on it) on the other; we could even wonder whether this severance of man from the rest of the universe is not constitutive of the tragic condition that motivates for Aristotle the highest form or genre of “poetry.” Catharsis would serve as the fantasized healing of the repressed but active subconscious separation.

Third, the confusion of event with (human) action limits the scope of narrative discourse to its transactive level (A acts on B, there is an agent and a patient), making strangely irrelevant to poetry/literature those events and processes that involve only one (human) entity without any necessary and knowable action on its part, such as being born, growing, falling in love, becoming sick, old or stupid, and dying. Moreover, all human events that occur without the intervention of a third human party would have to be caused by the action of one part or side of a human being on another part or side of the same: the human, causal, and transactive Aristotelian notion of event paradoxically implies the universal responsibility of a subject that is at the same time inevitably fractured. Freudian psychoanalysis could be seen in this light as an attempt not only to explain and overcome the tragic burden, but to open up the Western poetics of narrative to alternate stories in which responsibility is measurable and the purgation of guilt is not the only answer.

Fourth, if the restriction of literary (meaningful) narrative to the telling of human action implies a tight bond to ethos , to character (as a quasi-person), there can be no proper narrative without the continuity demanded and provided by individual human lives and consciousnesses and their continuous interactions: the unity of argument or story line and its successiveness, conveniently reflected by textual unity and/or unity of performance (“the work”), the careful disposition of parts, the clear framing of the whole, all point at a narrativity that depends on the role of the narrator (in epic) or the concerted conjunction of players (in drama). Fragmentation, unsolved riddles, the breaking up of a spatiotemporal continuum, precisely what an event does as such according to most narrative theories, would appear as detrimental to narrativity.

Finally, since faithfully, neutrally imitating uninterpreted past human action, as in historia , would be useless from a moral and social point of view that actively concerns itself with the present and the future, the Aristotelian literary narrative is bound to embrace at least a certain degree of fictional world-making: this narrative, whether it is based on historically recorded facts, on supposed facts, or on myths and the imagination, needs fiction as much as faction, and its storytelling implies a willing suspension of disbelief, a “let us suppose that,” virtually experiencing “what it’s like.” 10 Planning a future is always, after all, a conspiracy.

It is no great surprise then that, although Aristotle’s Poetics focused on drama, it could still easily fit the semiotics of tale and the theory of the novel, as long as they could be forcibly reduced to some form of compositional and referential unity (a storyline and a story-world), and as long as their perceived purpose could be held as at least partly social, ethical, educative, and therapeutic. But, when these two conditions appeared increasingly difficult to fulfill with the formal contortions, the self-referentiality, and the proclaimed disengagement of a not so large but widely publicized and very visible fraction of 20th-century experimental writing—narrative by default—some literary theorists with an interest in narrative were forced to discard post-modern, non-“prototypical” narratives from their investigative scope, assuming also that a lower “consciousness factor” lessened the narrative experience. 11 They are doubly wrong when they treat the French nouveau roman, American metafiction, or other unconventional 20th-century prose forms as alien to the representation of consciousness, and when they think that its conventional representation, as in the “psychological” novel, enhances narrativity. From Homer to James Joyce and beyond, the contours of literary narrative cannot be drawn by story fetishism. Literary narrative uses it and questions it at once, as it swings between defamilarization and re-familiarization. 12

Problems in Contemporary Western Narrative Theory

A comparative history of modern and contemporary narrative theory remains to be written. It could certainly not be linear and its findings would doubtless be somewhat puzzling, but many of these difficulties have to do with four persistent, rarely challenged beliefs: (a) that narrative discourse and “story” or “plot” are coextensive; (b) that narrative is a kind of “language” and it has some sort of universal “grammar” or “logic”; (c) that narratives, especially literary ones, are necessarily about humans and human kind; (d) that narrative interest is provided by anomalous, unexpected events, developments, and resolutions rather than by the repetition and confirmation of standard schemata. These beliefs impose undue limitations on the theory of literary narrative.

Event, Change, and Action

The notion of “action” is related to the philosophy of action or ethics, and it is etymologically cognate to those of “author” and “actor.” It assigns an identifiable origin to the telling of the tale and also to the events told, or at least it manifests the relevance of origin and launches a regressive quest of origins that has no reason to stop or pause unless an all-powerful, all-embracing deity makes the search redundant, since every event then belongs to a self-caused world. The only difference between author and actor being that between a gesture that will be repeated and the imitation/the serious or playful repetition of this gesture, “action” tightly binds the authorial figure with character, and those two with a reader or receiver who will identify with them and re-enact what was acted by the character in the presented world. Since, additionally, one cannot just act but has to act, retroactively or proactively, on something or someone, all the elements of plot (sequentiality; connectivity; interactivity; plurality of actants; actual or potential causality; directionality, i.e., time-oriented events with a finality) are already given by the notion of action. This troubles any narratology that wishes to distinguish deeper and more elementary levels, steps or stages of meaning formation from the articulations that operate at the levels of story ( fabula ) and textual actualization ( szuzhet ). Eliminating all stratification, as did Philip Sturgess, is conducive to erasing the very specificity of the texts we commonly perceive and classify as distinctly narrative together with the difference between action and mere event or process (the difference between “John starts watering the garden” and “it starts raining” or “Marcel becomes a novelist”). 13

J.A. García Landa rewrote “action” ( acción ) as “event” ( acontecimiento ) in his early forays into narrative theory; he also rewrote “action” as a collective, holistic noun, always already sequential. 14 In his later work, he fortunately denounces the illusion produced by “hindsight bias,” renamed by him “narrative fallacy”: “The configuration effected by narrative is imaginatively projected backwards and transformed into the reified structure of experience before it is narrated—and before it unfolds, actually.” 15 Nevertheless, when the same author, together with Sturgess and many others, insists on an “inherently retrospective logic of narrative,” he still collapses the post hoc of the narrated with the propter hoc of narration. A concept of narrative logic, unavowedly placed under the aegis of “action,” conflates prior narration and its pre-formation in the mind of the narrator/author with the narrated as it is concretized by the receiver. As a result, one could not take at face value the narrative present tense, let alone the use of the future: “And then the blade (of the guillotine) falls,” or “The just will be rewarded on the Day of Judgment” do not, we contend, use these verb tenses “to mask the inherent retrospectivity of narration.” 16 Indeed, the present and future tenses of testimonial, forecasting, and prophetic narratives are more effectively narrative because they point at an event as it is happening or in its promising or threatening imminence, while the past is past, as people say, and past, preterit events exist only in the form of inert traces, inscriptions, states, however hard we try to make them come to life. 17

Narrative discourse, in its most general sense, is the discourse of change, not action; it provides a transitive view of the world. 18 Daniel Punday is eager to add a spatial dimension, one of movement, to what he sees as limited to change in time in Didier Coste’s definition of narrative meaning. 19 But, if “ sic transit gloria mundi ” could be the blasé motto of narrative discourse, then the spatial dimension is ipso facto already present in the inevitable metaphors of “passing,” “going to,” and “going through” (the Catalan language strangely uses the auxiliary verb “va” for its narrative preterit). None of these conceptual features is a priori dependent upon the supposedly logical priority of narration over the narrated, but they are not intrinsically textual either: “Far from being dependent on universal, context-free structures and traits, narrativity is largely tied to pragmatic, functional, contextual, generic and cultural circumstances.” 20 Without effacing the ontological distinction between stasis and change, what counts as event or process, what is construed as change in the elaboration of narrative meaning, certainly depends on the play of foregrounding and backgrounding.

Narration and Narrated

In his foreword to Raphael Baroni’s La Tension narrative , Jean-Louis Schaeffer states, perhaps slightly hastily, that narrative theory, after a peak in the so-called “structuralist period,” had fallen into dire disgrace in the final two decades of the 20th century , since the findings of structural narratology were held by some as definitive and obvious, while, for others, “theory” itself had become a dirty word and the very idea of a general narratology chimerical. 21 Schaeffer’s vision is probably too influenced by his focus on the French and Francophone scene. Bibliographies of narrative theory in other languages (English, German, Spanish, Portuguese) show that there was a steady flow of important books and collections in the new discipline all along those twenty years. 22 What is true is that there happened a marked shift away from “deep structures” à la A. J. Greimas toward the modalities of narration and the question of fictionality, and away from intra-textual considerations toward intertextual hermeneutics, pragmatics, reader-oriented criticism, and cognitive or psychological approaches. Not all of this research has had the same impact on the discipline. Some of the newer “post-structural” research enriched the bases provided by formalist-structuralist theories, corrected their rigidities and blunders, brought enlightening inflections. But, curiously, the development of enunciative stylistics, the study of embedded and mosaic composition, metalepsis, overwriting, pastiche, parody, and metafiction did not significantly help to strengthen the non-porous, epistemic, and pragmatic border between narration and narrated.

In a glossary entry for “Narration, narrative act,” Monika Fludernik defines these (for her) synonymous expressions as follows: “The telling of a story by a narrator, who may address a narratee. The narrative act, which corresponds to Gérard Genette’s level of narration , forms the communicative framework of the narrative.” 23 Here, at first sight, a clear-cut distinction seems to be drawn between narration as act and narrated as object produced. But many ambiguities and potentially risky presuppositions derived from the central role given to experientiality mar the simple definition:

What is told is a “story,” something sequential, coherent, presumably with a beginning, a middle, and an ending—“first things first,” as Aristotle would say—implying once again that there is a pre-formed story to be told, that “telling” is primarily “re-counting,” a repetition with or without variations. Why not, if this is what happens when a child asks Grandma to tell him the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or when I was eyewitness to a cat and dog fight and I shaped the scene into an anecdote that I will re-cite to my neighbor—and much literature relies on these rituals? But a story can never be transmitted whole and intact by the narrative act, or the narrator would be reduced to the status of a robotic tape recorder. Even the story of Snow White owes its existence, like a Rorschach test, to its myriad collaborative reconstructions by the millions of receivers it has accumulated in the course of time. “Narration” should be understood as the enunciation of a discourse or parole from which it is inferred that a story might be constructed. The “narrated” is not a story, but a program to build one in agreement or disagreement with the intentions that are deemed to underlie the text in which narrative discourse is used. The juxtaposition, in one textual frame, of two incompatible descriptions—like the before and after pictures in weight-watching advertisements—is both a program of the sort and an incentive to activate it.

If the formula “narration is the telling of a story by a narrator” is not an empty tautology, it implies that the narrator is not just a role, function, or device but that he/she is a quasi-person who should be and is usually perceived as a character active in the narrative of narrating: “According to Ansgar Nünning ( 2001 ), this narrative act is often portrayed in such a lively manner that it constitutes a ‘secondary mimesis’ of the act of narration: the narrational process itself and the figure of the narrator seem to be part of a second fictional world, that of the narrator as s/he tells the story.” 24 Autobiography and autofiction are ready examples to support this remark. Such a superimposition of “stories,” even when it is a mere projective fantasy, can be profitable to complicate literary narratives and enrich their hermeneutic ambiguities, but it can also be circular and drastically reductive, if the story of narration is expected to explain the narrated contents and their form. The most banal readings of autobiographical narratives, those destabilized by Marcel Proust and autofiction , offer arch-examples of circular reasoning in this respect. We could call this convenient naiveté the “narrational fallacy,” one so successfully exploited by self-reflexive narratives of all times, fictional or not, from Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy to critical accounts of the latest terrorist attack.

It is therefore of crucial importance to avoid using the adjective “narrative” indiscriminately for phenomena and structures that pertain to narration, focalization, presented world, and gloss. In order to describe the relations between two or several narrating instances within a narrative, the unfortunate expression “narrative levels” should be replaced by “narration levels” or “narrating levels” or, better, by “narrational levels.” 25

Narrative and Narrativization/Denarrativization

If “narrative” is so pervasive in the human world that it is finally our only way of making sense of the world and of ourselves, if we are redefined no longer as mimetic (imitative) animals but as narrating animals, if speech is narrative in essence, and if we are ipso facto more human and more alive when we are more “narrative,” “tale-men” like Ulysses, there is no point in distinguishing “narrative” acts of communication from any other act of speech. Moreover, a tall tale would be more “graphic” than a sound, precise description, and the curse on the “accursed kings” a better explanation of their evil behavior than the anarchy that marked the coexistence of late feudalism with the budding nation-states of Europe.

In other words, we would deprive ourselves of the higher understanding of social and personal phenomena accrued by the two opposite mental gestures of narrativization and denarrativization, and their various modalities, depending on the shape, nature, and dimensions of time that condition these processes. Let us consider, for instance, one of the most famous among the many still renderings of the “death of the lovers” final scene from the Greek legend of Hero and Leander, a painting by Paul Rubens, c. 1604 (figure 1 ).

Figure 1. Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish, 1577–1640, Hero and Leander , c. 1604.

Its general structure is characterized by a circular or rather elliptical convolution of the figures, the visible shape of a whirlwind or a maelstrom, caught at a particular moment, but not situated in linear time and endless in principle. The decorative and erotic/anatomical values, typical of baroque art, are complemented by the presence, obscure but close to the few sunrays—a source of light often encountered in Christian devotional painting—of two tiny figures that seem to be flying above the main scene but are also embedded in a secondary marine landscape, under clouds shaped like eagle wings. These figures, whatever they are supposed to represent, contribute to an allegorical interpretation of the painting. If it were only for the livid, presumably dead male body floating on the surface of the sea and surrounded by very lively, full-fleshed Nereids, we could be satisfied with reading the scene as one more representation of “death and the young man,” the fragility of human lives exemplified and exalted by the age and beauty of the young deceased adult. But one human figure, on the far right side, departs from the overall structure and conventions in two remarkable ways: it is partly clad, in a red robe, and it is upside down, falling from nowhere toward the rocks or the foamy waves underneath; we cannot tell. This figure breaks the unity and permanence of the whole. We have to question it in the specific terms of “What is happening?”—“What happened?”—“What will happen next?”—“How will it end?” This figure therefore constitutes what we could call a “narrative prompter.” It is a readerly way of seeing what Amy Golahny already noted about Rubens’s innovations: “Rubens enhanced the dramatic content of his literary and pictorial sources—achieving a marked synthesis of action and expressiveness—by juxtaposing the two deaths and by giving such prominence to the nereids.” 26

In another painting, Romantic this time, by William Etty, first exhibited in 1829 , the naked, lifeless, livid body of a young man is stretched on a rocky ledge, the abrupt shore of a stormy sea. 27 A young woman, over him, upside down, embraces his torso and presumably touches his neck with her lips. Beside its somber and hesitant eroticism, beside the absence of warm colors and the shocking encounter of dominant verticality with the narrow horizontality of the sea horizon, and other formal and symbolic features that generate a whole set of emotions—sadness, admiration, fear, and compassion—in the beholder, the situation depicted is one that cannot last forever in human time, and it cannot have frozen a long time ago. The traumatic moment needs to be motivated in order to transcend trauma and achieve catharsis or at least some sort of moral recovery, and it also wants to be prolonged and/or transformed into an actualizable not-yet. This is when we narrativize our vision of the painting, supposing prior events and events to come without which the present of the scene would not be a present, could not be embedded in our experiential lifetime. We will say that the young man has drowned in the sea a short while before the moment depicted, that the young woman who expresses extreme grief may not survive the death of the young man she loved. The long title given by William Etty to his painting, “Hero, Having Thrown herself from the Tower at the Sight of Leander Drowned, Dies on his Body,” does half of the narrativizing. But it is the paradoxical stillness of the painting itself that accomplishes implicitly the eventual denarrativization without which the events would remain gratuitous in the ethical realm of legend and myth. The immobility of the bodies in their perfect pose, beyond any movement and defying any alteration, tells us silently that “the lovers are now united for ever (in death as they were in life).” The chain of events also needs to be denarrativized in order to transcend transience and abolish precedence and successiveness so that narrative meaning can eventually be transformed into moral law and injunction.

In a silent movie, the 1920 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , we can see successively a figure with similar features acting good, then bad, then good again: if we say that they are the same person, we also see this person as changing, transforming, time and again; we narrativize the filmic text. But, if we say that they cannot possibly be one and the same, that there are two different characters to carry out good deeds and crimes, we have two parallel, contrasting portraits, but no change; we de-narrativize the sequentiality of the movie. And, if we hesitate between these two interpretations, endlessly oscillating between ontological identity and non-identity of the two human figures, we relativize the notion of change itself as we are tempted to refuse to choose between the different meanings generated by a linear, a circular, or a spiral vision of time. Italo Calvino has played very cleverly with successive narrativization, de-narrativization, and re-narrativization in his moral tale The Cloven Viscount .

As Jan Alber noted very aptly, Hayden White and Monika Fludernik agree that the general purpose of narrativization (“giving narrative form to a discourse”) is to facilitate “a better understanding of the represented phenomena.” 28 For White, it is a manipulation of the reader with ulterior motives—the reader is always in need of coherence, reassured by a causal chain. Fludernik argues on the contrary that “experientiality both subsumes and marginalizes plot.” 29 Her “natural” vision of narrativization, that, out of basic necessity, “applies one specific macro-frame, namely that of narrativity , to a text,” aligns once more with Aristotelian thought, and fails to see how the denarrativization of possible plots, by synchronic historiography, lyrical poetry, or even the final stasis of happy and tragic endings, fulfills the equally basic human need of resisting the tear and wear of linear time and confronting mortality with the inscription of permanence: the image of Charles Bovary sitting dead on the bench at the far end of the garden is not there just for the sake of narrative coherence, but because his clumsy love of Emma is now liberated, as it enters the non-time of metaphor. 30

Narrative Mimesis: Fiction or Non-fiction?

In the West and elsewhere, the theory of narrative and narratology (the study of narratives) at large originates in a poetics of fiction, understood as the art of “as if” and the mimesis of possible worlds based on human experience and the supposed spiritual, psychological, and physical nature of man. David Gorman notes, sadly and quite rightly, that “throughout the history of literary study, the overwhelming majority of narratives of interest to critics have been fictional; indeed, the terms fiction and narrative seem often to be used as synonyms.” 31 In spite of this initial warning, though, this author proceeds as if there were a necessary link between “narrative,” “fiction,” and “literature.” But the consequences of the reification of “fiction” are disastrous for the understanding of the phenomenon of narrative. For sure, “possible worlds,” in the sense of Pavel, Ryan, or Doležel, are crafted by the human mind; they are no longer transcendent, metaphysical objects to be discovered as they were for Gottfried Leibniz, but it does not mean that they are representations of a human world. 32 A man-made tool, including computers, is first of all a tool before it can symbolize, let alone represent, the human mind and the human condition. An encounter with the non-human has always been what happens most strikingly to humans in realist narratives as well as in fantasy. Denying the narrativity of social realism, chronicles, or scientific cosmologies, as does Herman among others, bars us from understanding the full richness of the games literary narratives play with time and being. 33

With or without boundaries between fact and fiction, three assumptions are made by most theorists who place the question of fictionality at the center of both literary and narrative theory:

Fictionality depends on the intentionality of the human/anthropomorphic sender of the message, typically a non-deceptive intention to convey meaning through the fabrication of something inexistent as if it existed. This is in apparent contradiction with Lavocat’s contention that fictionality (or “fiction”—she uses the two words interchangeably) boosts the hermeneutic drive of the receiver by creating an obstacle to the automatic, straightforward transmission of information based on a strong belief in the referentiality of the message, thus de-automatizing literal comprehension. 34 In this case, the most efficient booster of interpretation should be our wariness about the sincerity and truthfulness of the sender. As far as narrative is concerned, though, Hayden White’s rhetorical approach is the most convincing at a basic level: the narrativization of the relation between discrete objects consists in supposing an ontological continuity of these objects through (linear) time, so that discrepancies of one or more features of these objects can be interpreted as events. Narrative as such could therefore be seen as a special metonymic operation that substitutes contiguity in time to spatial contiguity, while fictionalization, indifferent to the time factor, is more akin to metaphor.

The second assumption is that since human beings experience their lives as narratives, narrative discourse is the most natural or spontaneous tool to convey meaning. This idea is a generalization of a notion acquired through the analysis of myths and fairy tales and is generally supported by both psychoanalysis and causal history, based therefore on a deterministic rule of origin: a tribe is a community by kinship, a church is a community of worshippers of the same creator and the same prophet/founder; members of the community identify with a story of themselves that was already told/written before the event. But literary narratives, from the very beginning, are different from sacred texts; they are not only the repetition of a myriad-times-told tale; their looseness turns them into a breeding ground of emergence, of the unexpected. In each embodiment of a preformed story there must appear elements that are at variance with this original story; the tension between portrait and change, between different or even antagonistic spatiotemporal coordinates, opens the playing field of possibilities that is constitutive of literariness, even for Aristotle. Narrative, insofar as it leaves these options open, can serve literariness. If it does, it is not past-oriented: you cannot change the past. If fiction was that which “makes exist what does not exist,” or was “presenting as existent what is non-existent,” it could not be differentiated from lie or error. We must sever all a priori dependence, all supposedly “natural” or experiential links between fictionality, literariness, and narrativity in order to observe their interplay and the added value that this interplay can bring to human communication. To take one obvious example, look at what happens in a modern Western secular context to canonical literary narratives such as Hellenistic romances, Hamlet , Don Quixote , Great Expectations, Mrs Dalloway , or Waiting for Godot . Each of these narratives gives an unforeseen twist to temporality.

The third assumption equates the difference between fiction and non-fiction to the opposition between referentiality and non-referentiality, referentiality being taken here in the sense of pointing at something that “exists,” that belongs to the sphere of “the real.” In the framework of a reflection about literary narrative, we will provisionally leave aside the relevance of “fiction” in communication through media other than natural languages. The reduction of “referentiality” to an empirical or scientific notion of the real is highly detrimental to a historical apprehension of both narrativity and the fluctuating ontological status of the objects involved in events. If we understand fictionality as polyreference to two or more universes characterized by incompatible features, such as sacred and profane, real and imaginary, virtual and actual, or concrete and conceptual, etc., panfictionality theory does not run against the ethical “Auschwitz test.” 35 It is not liable to accusations of negationism, as Lavocat is prone to hint. 36 Nevertheless, we have to accept that, where narrative is concerned, the principle of panfictionality generates the risk of substituting pseudo-cognitive events to material events, the story of the discovery of a “hidden truth” to the story of what happened or probably happened. Since narrative meaning is not a natural given but cooperatively constructed, negotiated, narrative truth is not a given; it can only be established through an argumentative dialog.

The future remaining generally more hidden, less knowable than the past, grand predictive narratives (apocalyptic, millenarist, or on the contrary, eutopian, idealistic projections) are a privileged terrain for preferring the neatness of a narrative Gestalt to the incoherence produced by lawless chance.

Narrative Versus Non-narrative in Literature

When Genette affirmed that there was no difference of ontological status between narrative and description, he could be held partly responsible for later developments of narrative theory that would self-defeatingly hollow out the narrative specificity of certain texts. But literature uses narrative in order to fulfill its aesthetic, ethical, and political purposes, and narrative uses literature to fulfill its own political agenda, conservative or revolutionary, communitarian, cosmopolitan, or disruptive, in particular traditions and at specific cultural moments. Storytelling is of all times, but non-narrative discourses can counter it as much as they can support it.

Narrative As a Genre of Discourse

Narrative discourse is the whole set of what is said and thought, in a cooperative or conflictive fashion, when the world of reference is seen as actually or potentially transitive, subject to change. This set of communicational transactions is the locus of narrativity.

“The degree of narrativity of a given narrative depends partly on the extent to which that narrative fulfills a receiver’s desire by representing oriented temporal wholes …” 37 Discourses can be called narrative when they manifest their participant minds’ desire or acceptation of a world view according to which existents are subject to change at one or several points of a linear temporal continuum. Although story-logic adepts 38 minimalize their role in the construction of narrative meaning or experientiality and sometimes risk confusing narrational speech events with change in the presented world, 39 events—i.e., the manifestation and perception of change—are unanimously held to be the nucleus of narrative discourse, as maintained by Genette. 40 Reis also comes to this conclusion in his commentary of Van Dijk. 41 No narrative is ever self-contained; it neither can nor has to represent a temporal whole: a closed temporal whole would cut off the temporal continuum that is the possibility condition of events. Many narratologists, confusing narrative with plot, demand a sequence or series of correlated events to label a text “narrative,” but, if all these events were locked into a closed temporal whole, with no before or after, they would amount to a static world-description, uniformly valid for a certain duration, as in synchronic historiography. Narrative discourse, as the eventful or processual discourse of change, operates in specific contradistinction with various kinds of non-narrative discourses.

Figure 2. Coste’s ( 1989 ) transformational tree, from Narrative as Communication , University of Minnesota Press, 49.

Consider one of the narrative statements presented in figure 2 , “Peter died.” It reconciles in terms of an “event” the contradictory descriptions “Peter is alive” + “Peter is dead” by indicating that they describe the entity “Peter” at two discrete moments on a linear time axis. This kind of narrative is not or is little interested in action and causality; its point is not concerned with who or what killed Peter. Such narratives are more about time (and space) than about agents. The statement “John killed Peter” combines two non-contradictory but otherwise unlinked non-transactive narrative statements: “John became a murderer (or: turned out to be a murderer)” and “Peter died.” Obviously, one key locus of narrative interest, or narrative tension, is the grey zone between the two narrative levels of discourse whose analytical complexity already invites us to indulge in multiple, or even endless, interpretation, with its accompanying emotions (hence, very probably, the temptation to equate literature with the thrill of narrative discourse). 42 More intricate and more aesthetically and cognitively exciting yet is the game played by those literary narratives of process, of becoming—the Bildungsromanen of Henry James and Marcel Proust—or of decay and decline (Franz Kafka) that hesitate deliberately between mere sequentiality (chance) and a deterministic system of causality.

Narrative discourse, whose precondition is the relevance of linear time to its meaning and significance, should not only be analyzed in this respect but also contrasted with other genres of discourse, such as argumentation, commentary, and the lyric, that have little to do with linear time or at least try to negate it through strategies of effacement and dismantling of linearity. For instance, two aspects usually studied are the prevalent question of enunciation (who speaks?) and that of the presence or absence of narrative discourse and narrative programs among the lyric: “the more a poem foregrounds vocal effects, … the more powerful the image of voicing, oral articulation, … the less we find ourselves dealing with the voice of a person.” 43 In other words, the more lyrical a poem is, the less it relies on “character,” which is still a way of making out the lyric from narrative in Aristotelian, actional, and anthropomorphic terms. Thus, along the lines of a case grammar, narrative would rather be dominated by the nominative and the accusative, while the lyric would foreground the vocative and the dative, since it is primarily concerned with calling what it names to existence and presence and seducing whoever it addresses with free offerings that would hopefully generate counter-gifts. In the European 18th century , the critique of a futile rhetoric of ornament in the lyric was followed by the Romantic surge of the expressive function: the speaking subject, in a dramatic revolutionary context, became a kind of narrator as he told his transience in an accelerated time stream.

Units and Concatenation

The quarrel of minimal units.

When Prince defined a “narrative statement” as “an elementary constituent of discourse independent of the particular medium of narrative manifestation,” adding that “the discourse can be said to state the story through a connected set of narrative statements,” he seemed to accept a commonsense constructivist view of stories. 44 But the issue becomes immediately blurred by the subdivision of narrative statements into “process statements (in the mode of Do or Happen ) and stasis statements (in the mode of is ),” implying that stasis statements are also narrative. 45 True, a text certainly does not need to contain any explicit “process statement” for us to construe its meaningfulness qua narrative; when we are told somewhere that Julien Sorel climbs a ladder to court Mme de Rénal, and, somewhere else in the same volume, that his severed head lies in the lap of Mathilde, the principle of non-contradiction requires that we situate the two stasis statements at different points along a linear temporal axis. Even if both statements were in the present tense and the second were textually placed before the first, we would have to bind them in linear time and choose between the event of death, if we do not believe in miracles, or resurrection, if we believe in them. When contradictory “stasis statements” alternate randomly, the formation of consistent, safe narrative meaning is impeded by apparent textual incoherence and the lack of allegiance to a linear notion of time. The nouveau roman as well as fantasy, surrealist texts, and magical realism have often played with the juxtaposition of incompatible “stasis statements” in this way: an excellent example is found in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes ( The Erasers ), whose Spanish translation was published under the title La doble muerte del professor Dupont (Prof. Dupont’s Double Death). But the narrative drive, however unfulfilled, remains the motor of reading; its presupposition and its astute deception oblige the reader to pay attention to the dispositio of signifiers where another kind of aesthetic enjoyment will take root.

Unlike Revaz, we should therefore remain attentive at once to the rhetorical uses of narrativization/denarrativization and to the frame in which minimal narrative (or non-narrative) units are considered. 46 Both Barthes and Genette were intuitively right when they proposed that a (coherent) narrative of any size could be seen as an expansion of a single process statement (the famous “Ulysses returns to Ithaca” for The Odyssey , or “Marcel becomes a writer” for Remembrance of Things Past ), but they erred in two ways: such minimal narrative or “process” statements, nowhere to be found in the texts under scrutiny, should also be considered as condensations or summaries of many narrative and non-narrative statements rather than minimal units similar to “Zorro has just arrived.” 47 A minimal(ist) narrative ( “recit minimal” ) must be viewed as a self-contained or self-framing act of narrative communication, but minimal units are building blocks that may fit or not in a frame drawn to satisfy our anthropological needs for continuity and coherence. Narrative syntax, in the etymological sense of “syn-tax,” is the articulation of minimal narrative units in the textual, experiential, and diegetic spatiotemporal frames required to obtain coherence, sequentiality, and, eventually, sometimes, causality.

Kinds of Narrative Syntax

Narrative syntax is far from being uniform; it does not espouse a single model: for example, “states” and “events” can be textually juxtaposed (in close succession) without necessarily inferring a referential relationship between them in the presented world, or they can appear far apart and be construed by narrative memory as bearing a necessary causal relationship—without which their co-presence in a text (in a set of acts of communication that constitute a whole) could not be justified. When we read or hear that “a bird soared, the bathtub overflowed, a dart was shot,” asyndetic parataxis does not operate in the same way as in “John met Mary, Peter threw a tantrum.” If, to put it in Laurence Sterne’s own words, “Great wits jump,” they can do it in two very different ways, either jumping to the side, in order not to be crushed by the tragic demands of narrative determinism (this is when digressions occur and at times multiply), or jumping to conclusions: if we discover, after any number of pages, that “Peter threw a tantrum” and his anger cannot be explained by anything else, we might promptly relate it to the earlier statement that “John met Mary,” inferring for example that jealous Peter was secretly in love with his virtual friend Mary, but, contrary to John, never had a chance to meet this remote screen princess in real life … In classical detective stories, clues, true or false, emerge retrospectively, hindsight fabricates past omissions and dissimulation on the background of which otherwise far-fetched causal links, newly forged, shine all the more strikingly. To quote Sterne again: “It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment … This is of great use.”

Not only is narrative syntax diverse with regard to parataxis, hypotaxis, and their more or less strict separation and/or their more or less complex combination, but it can be put to widely different uses, employed as a decoy or turned into a tremendously powerful hermeneutic and heuristic machine. Whatever these uses, deceptive or enlightening, narrative syntax is one of the main means of production of aesthetic emotions in literary narratives. Loose syntactic links, those of simple verbal consecution, often require considerable effort on the part of the interpretative community and the individual receiver at the time of putting two and two together; their fatigue and frustration may lead to an entropic or a chaotic perception of the presented world and of language itself that is not infrequent in Samuel Beckett’s works or in American metafiction but was already found in the medieval Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes—not only because it is unfinished. The wasted effort to achieve narrative coherence must be compensated by another kind of reward, an aesthetic reward. Conversely, with conspiracy theories as well as tragedy, the prevalence of tight syntactic links, a high degree of indexicality (owing to the systematic use of appropriate shifters, for example) will easily lead to the notion that everything fits all too well, that nothing happens by chance, that the fatal issue (or the happy ending, why not?) were literally bound to happen, and modern aesthetic sensibility—touchy about subjective freedom—can be hurt by the authoritarian resonance of an apparently implacable, deterministic logic.

Roles in Literary Narrative Communication

Without extrapolating the roles of anthropomorphic entities (author, narrator, character, receiver) from narrative to all literary communication or reducing these roles in narrative communication to their common denominator with other forms of literary communication, it is desirable to examine them at least in one of two ways: as virtual positions filled, when possible, by actual agents, or as empirical behavioral sets (groups of actions) conceptually projected as quasi-subjects. Actual authors, storytellers, receivers and commentators, members of interpretative communities are not only the effective human beings who carry out certain roles without which narrative meaning or significance would not happen or would not be traded and transformed into world descriptions or supports of ethical and political values. They are also those who watch their own images in the narrative text, draw them from the manipulation it exerts upon them and forge flattering or disparaging self-portraits from its interpretation. Considering that the nucleus of “narrative” is a statement of change (in the world of reference), with the status of “event” if it fulfils some particular additional conditions—of relevance, irreversibility and (perhaps) unexpectedness 48 —narrative effect consists not only in breaking a temporal continuum but also in disrupting a principle of identity or consistency. The most characteristic and striking events that can affect an entity or a character, such as birth, metamorphosis, death, name change, kinship and relationship mutations, point at the paradox of narrative: they radically alter a subject at the most fundamental semantic levels (descriptive, definitional, or even ontological—“she/he has become unrecognizable,” “she is not the same,” “she is no more”)—while at the same time identifying the altered subject as the one to whom “it” happened to become other or another. The eventness of narrative defeats our need for coherence, persistence, and stable definitions in the first place; it makes us shout “What?” or exclaim “Wow!” orally or using digital emoticons and stickers, but, at the same time, it is our readiest recourse to restore coherence, the easiest prosthesis of identity. The difficult path from trauma to reconciliation, from time as killer to time as healer, with its many setbacks, cannot be trodden by a lone subject; it requires complex games of projection and introjection, identification and dissociation; it wants a dialogical, conversational cooperation that is at once polemical and geared toward conflict-solving through negotiation and role playing. Following the track opened by The Epic of Gilgamesh , Homer’s Odyssey , Don Quixote , and Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past are among the most magnificent and increasingly self-conscious illustrations of how narrative struggles with its own paradoxical assumption that the subject can only manifest itself in the alterations that make it different from itself. All the theories of narrative that assign to the teller (the enunciative instance, author, narrator, or “unmediated” performer) the entire intentional responsibility of narrativity are blind to the necessary cooperation of participants in the narrative act of communication. Their collaboration consists not only in playing their respective nominal roles (“the author writes, the reader reads”) but in trying out or impersonating all the other roles: the author reads, the teller listens, the reader writes, etc. Understanding and coming to terms have a cost. The double-edged economy of narrative communication is thus similar to the oscillation between defamiliarization and refamiliarization adumbrated by Russian formalism and Victor Shklovsky. “The better a story is, the more text-like and meme-studded, the more cognitive labour it paradoxically requires, not only from tellers , but also from the hearers who become totally engaged in the process of drawing out its multifarious implicatures. This seems … certainly true of the high literary texts of a culture, where not only individuals but institutions make it their business to obsessively interpret.” 49 The same theorist pursues: “My further … contention is that the pleasure we take in retrieving perlocutionary effects … from stories, remains observable in the most ordinary of our conversational anecdotes.” This approach comes with two very important implications. First, the visibly complex narratives of high literary culture—like Joyce’s Ulysses —can and should be distinguished from simple conversational anecdotes that they do not just amplify or load with ornament, but there is no difference of nature between supposedly natural and unnatural narratives: high narratives do not necessarily proceed from low ones, or vice versa. Instead, the production of narrative significance always engages the same cooperative processes. Aesthetic and cognitive pleasure, pathos and gnosis , are intimately linked in the training of emotional intelligence, “which is to say, our skills at interpreting, simulating, and responding to emotions.” 50 The protracted debate between a merely semantic, denotational concept of narrativity and a relative, gradational notion has to do with the separation or not of sense and intensity but also with framing, contextualization, models, intertextuality, and intermediality.

Absolute or Scalar Narrativity

“Narrative designates the quality of being narrative, the set of properties characterizing narratives and distinguishing them from non-narratives … It also designates the set of optional features that make narratives more prototypically narrative-like, more immediately identified, processed and interpreted as narratives. In the first acceptation, narrativity … is usually considered a matter of kind … In the second acceptation, narrativity is a matter of degree …” 51 According to these definitions, narrativity would depend on substantive features or properties that presumably pertain to a text in which they are somehow inscribed (or missing), features ready to be recognized by a reader before he can consider, process, and interpret the said text as (a) narrative.

At the level of elementary units (sentences or even simple clauses), the presence or absence of a predicate of change is certainly decisive. Out of context, the receiver has no choice but to perceive “John came over” as narrative and “John is a boy” as non-narrative, just like a “no smoking” or “no parking” sign posted anywhere must be understood as injunctive, if they are understood at all. When the text exceeds the single sentence or clause in extension and complexity, or when a single sentence needs context to be disambiguated, interpretation is required prior to the attribution of narrative meaning. This attribution depends on framing and selection, on the readiness, desire or fear of the individual or collective receiver: the interpretative communities to which they belong will play a key role. Narrativity, then, is no longer just a matter of verifiable presence or absence of certain features in the text but a matter of intersubjective negotiation. In this sense, there would be three rather than two modes of existence of narrativity, in literature as elsewhere: the absolute and scalar modes described by Prince, but also an optional mode that occurs when we ask: “Did something happen, or what?” or when we deny the eventness of something that did happen in the world of reference, calling it a “non-event” or commenting in a jaded tone: “nothing new under the sun.” Narratives with an open ending—those, like The Magus by John Fowles, that maintain cliffhanging suspense intact until the last word inclusively, or indefinitely, suspended searches like unresolved criminal cases or filiation quests—can by no means be deemed less narrative as a whole than a conventional love romance that in the end happily marries the suitable boy with the suitable girl. Even the disjointed structures, the elusive endings, and the probabilistic futurity of so-called post-modern literary narratives have generally not met with an appropriate revision of narrative theory.

Questioning whether we are dealing with a static world (describable once and for all for the duration of its existence), with one that is in process (becoming, growing, blossoming, or aging, shrinking, and vanishing), or open to change is an essential aspect of narrative communication. Audet, quoted by Porter Abbott, makes an important point when he proposes a notion of “eventness” (not “eventfulness”) “where the tension between a before and an after seems to generate a virtuality, that of a story to come.” 52 If narrative tenses are most commonly of the accomplished past, the orientation of narrative discourse as one genre of discourse among others, or as a mode among others, is turned toward the future , the possible but not-yet. 53 Past counterfactuals, for example, mediate analogically with possible things to come. Again for the same reason, many forms of the disnarrated (“John did not come,” “Mary would not wait for John,” “Mary did not realize that John was always late,” etc.) or juxtaposed incompatible descriptions are indeed more narrative, that is more prone to induce narrative meaning than chronological lists of events (“George W. Bush was elected president, then Barack Obama was elected president, then Obama was re-elected for a second term, etc.”). The former phenomena are pro-narrative; they imply a narrative program; they call for projective narrative thinking to make sense of them. Conversely, consistent cumulative eventfulness will automatically tend toward a static worldview: a character portrait (“as eternity changes him into himself”); descriptions; physical and moral laws (“natural disasters occur whenever man neglects his duty to the divinity”). Beyond the paradox of emplotment, but similarly to its effects, the heuristic value of narrative is equally threatened by its accumulative quest of mimetic exhaustivity: “It has often been said that narrative somehow banishes chance. Leland Monk says this in his study of chance in the British novel, that ‘chance is that which cannot be represented in narrative’ despite the manifest efforts to do so in the novel of the late Victorian and modern period.” 54 Totalization, therefore, is equally “catastrophic for the categories of choice and freedom, … even while the efforts to represent free choice have produced some of the most important developments in modern narrative technique.” 55 Narrative theory should now follow the example of such developments; it must not forfeit the unexpected to satisfy the foreseeable.

This is why a distinction between quantitative and hierarchic dominance of narrative discourse remains useful. With quantitative dominance, in narratives of adventure, travelogues, picaresque romances, surreal and fantasy narratives, biographies rich in varied experience, national histories full of Sturm und Drang , something new happens all the time (discoveries and encounters, victories and defeats, gains or losses, mysteries and explanations …). In vast architectonic epics (John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained , Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri ) or elongated Bildungsromanen ( Great Expectations , Remembrance of Things Past ), a comparatively small number of major incidents are highlighted, but all descriptions, non-events, imperceptible changes eventually converge toward the formation of a single and simple summary (“Mankind was—or will be—saved,” “Marcel becomes a writer”). Since the genre of the classical, realist short story or nouvelle (not the anecdote or the folk tale) has a vocation to concentrate on a single story line and only one or a few protagonists and must at once provide enough context to make sense of the key event or process, it will often combine the quantitative and hierarchic or qualitative dominance of narrativity, as in Stefan Zweig’s works—or Guy de Maupassant’s or Henry James’s.

But literary genres like those just evoked are not abstract, transhistorical kinds; they are deeply rooted in historically inscribed, cultural conditions of production, transmission, and reception that orient the production of aesthetic and ideological value without which narrative interest would be reduced to an empty game.

Toward an Aesthetics of Literary Narrative

When a narrative is judged to be “well formed,” its emplotment, the progression of action, the spacing and collocation of incidents (events), correspond to certain narrative patterns that recall canonical/patrimonial literary, historical, sacred, or mythical narratives stored in the collective cultural memory of a civilization and/or a natural language. This aesthetic judgment bears specifically on literary narratives as narratives. Other aesthetic aspects, such as rhetorical and stylistic ornament or the lack thereof, enunciative devices like prosopopeia, or a lyrical (vocative) mode of address, may either reinforce narrativity or run counter to it. Both ornament and the well-formedness of literary narrative have been the object of many attacks over the centuries in the West, especially in certain periods, such as the baroque, the avant-gardes, and postmodernity: we will examine these attacks and their effects under the rubric of “dissident aesthetics.” Finally, we shall confront the Western tradition of narrative aesthetics with one non-Western tradition that still keeps a hold and a creative impact on contemporary literary narrative production.

Well-formedness; or the Legacy of Beauty

Even after successive ur-narratives, foundational fictions, master-narratives, and grand historical narratives all started to crumble under the combined fire of the sciences (each with its own field restrictions and limited purpose), the defeats of utopias, the experience of disaster, and the rebellion of the masses, a global narrative vision of the world (in the sense of trying to read it as a single coherent story) keeps creeping back, recalling all the losses suffered with the death of the king, the death of God and the death of empire. Ancient mythical, religious, and genealogical narratives (or their substitutes generated by and for market economy), democracy or human self-rule, the theory of evolution, and physical cosmologies share a sense that a lost order, or one that never was, must be restored or established in the end. Once the epic and even the novel were all but stripped of their credibility and relevance, the object of nostos could no longer be a fatherland; it became the art of narrative itself, in which the deepest truth and the utmost beauty were one and the same ( anagnoresis and catharsis hand in hand). But, as the human subject, now a self-made man, no longer preexists its representation, this art in turn is also threatened to be dislocated from the mimesis of action to the mimesis of mimesis.

From the beginning of the 20th century , reactions to this state of affairs have been very diverse; they are all manifested in dominant narrative theories concurrently with the steady production of mainstream literary narrative and the prosification of the lyric. Early structural and formalist narratologies dealt preferentially with simple, popular, traditional types of narrative (Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folk-Tale , 1928 ; Andreas Jolles’s Einfache Formen , 1930 ) or with the short story (Algirdas Julien Greimas’s, Maupassant: La sémiotique du texte , 1976 ). French structuralism, in its softer, more flexible version, with Genette’s Narrative Discourse ( Figures III ) ( 1972 ) after Roland Barthes’s S/Z ( 1970 ), multiplied grids and codes to deal with the underlying structures of complex and ambiguous works. It is striking that the choice by Genette of Proust’s magnum opus to nourish, develop, and test his reading grids applies to a monument with a “good shape,” beginning with the evocation of a preterit habit and ending with salvation (the promise of the recovery of a past wasted because it had not been processed and recorded). The many characters, scenes and incidents in La Recherche appear in this light as so many single-minded moments and objects of a long struggle to retrieve (the memory of) the time lost and therefore become a writer. The condensation of the narrative skeleton into a single backbone (“Marcel becomes a writer”) and the imposition of a hierarchy between the red thread of a life story and its fleshing out with details (the level of “écriture”), was attacked by some early reviewers of Genette’s work, approved by others. 56 Both blame and praise were motivated by Genette’s openly anti-aestheticist attitude at the time. His structural method of description, like other methods introduced in the 20th century (literary psychoanalysis, sociocriticism), was an easy target for the “old” critics prone to accusing the “new” ones of ignoring the differential value of high literary language, the impact of stylistic complexities and ornament. In fact, we can now realize that Genette, his supporters, and his detractors alike had it all wrong in this respect: the aesthetic criterion was left intact but it found the quality of Proust’s monument in its overall design, in its engineering rather than in the refinement of the stained glass work of the “cathedral.”

Other major and massive narrative fictions of the first half of the 20th century , such as James Joyce’s Ulysses or Robert Musil’s Man without Qualities , were not favored by “classical” structural narratology because they did not fulfill the conditions of a successful account imposed by its methods: the outline of Ulysses purports to reproduce that of The Odyssey , but it shockingly combines the complex narrational levels and episodic elements of the epic of nostos with the unities of time and place of classical tragedy, the end product having to be read consequently as a critical, deconstructive parody of the demands of classical narrative aesthetics; Musil’s work, as a “story of ideas” and an errant quest for sense without any likely place to look for it, departs in too many respects from the goal-oriented Aristotelian notion of mimesis of actions; it was unfinishable in its principle and remained unfinished. Theorists were bound to leave most so-called postmodern and postcolonial literary narratives out of their field of inquiry, labelling them anti-narrative, if not non-narrative, or they tried rather obscurely to design specific, dissident narrative theories in order to accommodate the new dissident narrative aesthetics and the parallel oppositional tradition (Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Sterne, not The Faery Queene or Pilgrim’s Progress or even Robinson Crusoe ) on which the “new narrative” drew heavily to try and secure a place in the canon while at the same time finding in it “room for maneuver.” 57

Dissident Aesthetics

Dissident narrative aesthetics follows many different strategies of estrangement, disturbance, and renewal: foregrounding banality or accident, blurring the ontological statutory difference between objects and events, minimalism, maximalism, self-reflexivity, abstraction, fragmentation, rejection of the principle of non-contradiction, open choice between universes of reference, straining distortion or cutting up of linear time, warped frames, relative or irreversible spaces, etc. These strategies can operate at all “levels” or at any step of narrative communication, one of them can be hegemonic, or they can subtly complement each other to alter and rethink the values borne by “well-formed,” readerly, straightforward, easily recognizable narratives. An unreliable narrator (the liar, the uncontrollable chatterbox, the amnesiac, the mentally deficient, the taciturn and secretive calculating mind) will afford a ready justification for gaps and ellipses, digression, repetition, incoherence, inconclusiveness, over-information and disinformation. Conversely, ironic uses of the disnarrated, denial, and absurd maxims can build the figure of an all-powerful, manipulative author that may draw the receiver’s attention to the unconfessed manipulation carried out by whatever apparently clean narrativization of any represented world. Here, we can only sketch out a few examples of how dissident narrative aesthetics operates and how a self-labelled “postmodern narrative theory” tries to account for the varied operations of dissident narrative aesthetics. 58 Seemingly contradictory labels for the same work alert us to the high ideological stakes of tampering with the traditional ingredients of narrative significance: When Raymond Carver’s short stories are alternately or simultaneously labelled “minimalist” or “hyperrealist,” is a stock paradox like “less, sometimes, is more” sufficient to sweep off the etymological and conceptual contradiction between these terms? In the worlds of Carver’s short stories, very little happens; what is expected to happen according to the conventions of tragedy, romance, or drama fails to happen, and what does happen is reduced to triviality since it eventually does not achieve the status of story point. If we ask “so what?” the apparently pointless narrative will only echo back: “… what? … what?” The minimalist foregrounding of the trivial and/or the hyperrealist leveling out of the trivial and the non-trivial underscore the arbitrariness of the dispositio of events and the artificiality or utter lack of a causal system, the ideologically determined manipulation of literary as well as historical narratives at large.

Another interesting case is that of the comical, nihilistic, or absurdist narratives of untellability that abound in Western literature from the 18th century onward but have proliferated after WWII, with the nouveau roman, American and non-American metafiction, and Borgesian aporetic constructs. As Mark Currie remarks, “it would be misleading to describe new directions in literary theory as the cause of fictional change. There is a chicken-and-egg problem with fictional and a more general linguistic self-consciousness.” 59 If theory is not the motor of practice, or vice versa, their changes nevertheless share the same external, socioeconomic, political, or epistemological causes. The progressive but not smooth secularization of philosophical thought was concomitant with the discovery of the autonomous, exorbitant power of language and its dysfunctionality: our stories were no longer always already written by the sure hand of God, language was no longer a precious gift, the instrument of revelation, a tool meant to inform, tell the truth, and pass fair judgments; it could no longer even name mystery; its power of seduction and delusion was now other and proportionate to its inability to truly represent, to say things as they are or even as they might be, to tell (count) events as they happen(ed) or even as they might happen. When the authorship of our life stories was finally transferred to human responsibility without the means to forge a new language, fictional (and historical) literary narratives had to face the inadequacy of language, its vagaries, its constitutive incapacity to stick to experience, its usurpation of experience itself. Hence, in Tristram Shandy , the narrator’s questioning of the irresponsible behavior of his parents when they authored him, and the resolution not to do the same as the author of the book of his life. There is always an irony: the resulting theoretical fiction ponders its possible defects so thoroughly that it has to be content with describing and exemplifying the impossibility of a proper or prototypical narrative (traditionally: a mimesis of actions). The adventure (or the misadventure) of narration, as a substitute for the narrative of adventure, to use Jean Ricardou’s 60 famous chiasm once again, manifests a deep distrust of the narrative condensation of phenomena, of its facile seduction, of the relevance and accuracy of “narrative intelligence.” Theoretical fictions and metahistories deconstruct and kill narrative seduction, which may be a good thing for the critical mind and a bad one for the senses.

Are there any alternatives to this quandary? Could we find them in post-colonial narratives, and do non-Western works have a local narrative poetics of their own to rely on?

A Different, Non-Western Aesthetics? Rasa, Katha, and Narrative Emotions

Beyond implicitly recalling the principle of anthropological unity, hardcore structural semantics has little to bring to the narrative comprehension of a world increasingly divided by its push for globalization and its resistance to it. In particular, any narratology that fails to take into account the different and often complex sets of time concepts that prevail in any one culture, or its current and historical system of universes of reference, is bound to err grossly even at the elementary level of the definition and identification of narrative discourse and what it stands for.

Because some languages may foreground aspect rather than tense in verb phrases, and some cultures prefer relative to absolute dating, because some prefer to measure distances in time of transport and others in length units, we can no longer accept the diktat that the preterit or “simple past” is, generally speaking, both the natural and dominant narrative tense. Rejecting the hegemony of any one locally anchored notion of narrative does not amount to a dangerous first step toward radical cultural relativism, but to recognizing a systemic variety of contrastive processes by which narrative communication operates as a factor of negotiation—identity and consent, differentiation and dissent. While “West” and “non-West” or “North” and “Global South” may not refer to anything more than historically restricted cartographies of power and values, the objects and methods of narratology have, by definition, an anthropological dimension that makes them responsible to both the unity and diversity of humankind.

Narrative, as we already knew before Benedict Anderson, is heavily involved in the socio-historical processes of colonization and freedom struggles, globalization and resistance. Inevitably it is also, as testimony and as interpreted retelling, at the heart of discourses produced by the social sciences and/or the humanities about these modern cultural and political phenomena. In his suggestive but cautious advocacy of a “postcolonial narratology,” Gerald Prince states that “just as it endeavors to trace explicitly the definitional boundaries of narrative … , narratology tries to account for narrative diversity (for what allows narratives to differ from one another qua narratives).” 61 He insists that categories of time, tense, space, and person should be investigated across cultures. Nevertheless, no sustained effort has yet been made to relate postcolonial or non-Western practices and poetics of literary narrative communication to their respective aesthetic traditions or linguistic conceptualizations.

Indian aesthetics and poetics can be located at a safe and measurable but obvious distance from the Western (Aristotelian) tradition, with which it shares Indo-European linguistic structures and the centrality of the dramatic and epic modes of representation but not the same hierarchy of emotions or time concepts. At first sight, the combination of rasa (flavor, emotion, mood) and dhvani (suggestion) 62 that appears to be prevailing in long eras of Indian aesthetic thought in the past (although with marked variations of status) and has made a forceful comeback since the middle of the 20th century is much more closely associated with music, dance, and the performing arts, especially stage drama, than it is with verbal narrative, or narrative qua narrative. One contemporary theorist goes as far as saying that “in Indian aesthetics, the moral function of art has never been given a primary place as in the West (e.g., Plato, Aristotle et al .). Bharata in Natya Sastra … justifies dance, which fulfills the simple function of being beautiful, for leading us to delight.” 63 And again: “Morality has never been the main issue. One might find this strange. But … the rasa experience is a kind of delight that transcends ordinary levels of reality … Nonetheless [with] santa rasa … rasa experience does serve a moral function—it helps one overcome one’s worldly desires and achieve transcendence to a higher level.” 64 There are however, even in ritual practices, forms of katha that are told with an avowed moral, didactic purpose, and there are prayers, forms of puja (worship), that require the story of the prayer to be told in order to make the devotion efficient.

When Priyadarshi Patnaik applies rasa theory to Western narrative literature, he tends to denarrativize it, or at least to substitute a mimesis of mind events for a mimesis of actions. 65 This is particularly obvious in his choice of Albert Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus and its proposed interpretation, 66 according to which purity of mind and detachment through the experience of emotions and their universalization lead to santa , the rasa of bliss: “he is superior to his destiny and stronger than his rock,” writes Camus. The presentation of Sisyphus accepting his absurd destiny as a victory is not a narrative reading; a narrative reading would show that, by eternally repeating the same useless action, Sisyphus at best defines himself and depicts his (our) world as totally iterative, unchanging.

If we take it for granted that the essence of Indian art (verbal or of any other kind) lies in a total identification of the receiver with the work of art, be it a monument or a performance, “frozen at a moment of time for posterity [or] live for the moment in specific duration,” 67 and that it always and only moves outward in expanding circles from the still center so as to return to it, we would find it difficult to accommodate in this aesthetics any of the constitutive elements of what we have called narrative communication and narrative significance so far. Furthermore, Kapila Vatsyayan insists that “neither character nor plot is important in itself. They are interwebbed as a labyrinth and drama is always cyclic in nature.” 68

When one cares to demonstrate the autonomy of Indian narrative by listing aspects, such as interiorization, serialization, fantasization, cyclicalization, allegorization, anonymization, elasticization of time, etc. 69 —some of which are supposed to be present in all Indian narratives but all being in principle absent from Western narratives unless they were influenced by the former—there is nothing much left to compare, and the anthropological notion of narrative itself is dismembered. But, as Amya Dev observes pointedly, a closer analysis would probably show “that there is more in common between the Indian itihasa [epic] and the Homeric epic than not.” 70 He explains immediately that he cannot “fully understand the distinction … between temporal and spatial narrative. All narrative to my mind is an excursion in time.” Amya Dev had detected that the nationalist effort of dedicated Sanskritists to free the roots of Indian poetics from any proximity or affinity with the West is counterproductive insofar as it enforces a radical discontinuity between Vedic and medieval narratives, on the one hand, and modern narratives, on the other, while continuities exist and should be found, also in the permanent hybridity of all cultures, India included. Sri Aurobindo’s successful fusion of Milton, Ramayana , and modernist narrative poetry in Savitri is a striking piece of evidence to support Amya Dev’s views. Paniker, while acknowledging the deficiencies of Indian “critical discourse on fiction [that] was somewhat stillborn in the Indian tradition,” takes the notion of narrative for granted and limits himself to proposing a typology. 71 However, several of the listed features, such as serialization, provide very vivid insights into universal functions of the more participative narratives, from African griot epics to interactive digital stories. We might suggest that anthropological continuities of narrative functions across cultural spaces and historical times could be found in a non-dualistic or a minima a dialectical relationship between body and mind that are shared by Greek tragedy and the ever-revisited tragicomedy of Shakuntala , in which the key events of abandonment, encounter, loss, and recognition are all present and bodily inscribed, however differently they are ordered and with whatever different outcomes.

When Rukmini Bhaya Nair dismantles the metaphysics of the one and ineffable event presented by Maurice Blanchot in The Writing of the Disaster as “the ultimate experience, because it is indescribable,” she confirms the necessity of reintroducing affect and individuation in historical telling: “Numbers make history … But in order to render emotion, you need the individual mode, which can only be literary and artistic. That is the paradox.” 72 Handling this paradox is exactly what has made the modern Western novel since Cervantes possible. Rather than a free-floating postcolonial narratology, this is a good example of a hybrid, glocal narrative theory, one that reintroduces traditional Indian aesthetics along with carrying out sophisticated discourse analysis and displaying a self-reflexive awareness of the theorist’s inscription as a historical (narrated) subject in argumentative dialogue. Such a narratology, fundamentally based on conversational, other-directed oral enunciation, skillfully avoids the shortcomings of both the sublime on the horizon of European romantic thinking—or on that of the suprasensuous achievement of unity in Indian philosophy—and the postmodern sacralization of antinarrative open-endedness. Narrative can easily be another opium of the people, but, if we make out its variations from the constant pleasure generated by its experience, it is also one of the best sites to investigate the verbal ways of telling and showing how self-conscious bodies change and move in space-time—that is, how to cope with the inner and mutual otherness of humans and their worlds. In Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses , the book itself metamorphoses all the time as its characters do. Genre shifting and distortions mutually correlated with narrated contents is a shared property of all but the simplest formulaic literary narratives. “Narrative is a moderately historical concept … While narrative reflects particular historical conditions in how it became an object of study and in how it is given cultural meaning at different moments, it nonetheless describes a type of discourse that transcends a number of specific historical manifestations …” 73

Perspectives

Narrative discourse or communication is about the world as it changes, about things that move and people who travel and are perceived differently as they change location. It is a way of registering past and present novelty and imagining, simulating, planning, or calculating novelty to come, for the sake of decision-making, of action and reaction, and also to experience and ponder the pain and pleasure of being alive. But patterns of change and novelty repeat themselves, identities are acquired through repetition of these patterns schematized as typical origins, destinations, and itineraries, so that change can be perceived or constructed anew. For these purposes, there are recurrent modes of telling without which a compelling complicity could not develop and generate a measure of consent on what happens, on how things go, tightening the links that forge and stabilize (narrative) communities for some time. When people start telling themselves different stories, when they start telling them differently (in writing instead of orally, or vice versa, in a monological or in a dialogical mode, in a chorus or taking turns of speech, etc.), the contours of the community itself change and there may or may not be someone left to tell this story. From cosmogonic myths to the storytelling of advertising and propaganda, narratives and narrations are always in a tension between scandal and banality. The verbal arts have several functions within the social, psychological, ideological, and political inevitability of narratives: they help memorize and naturalize them, strengthening the community; they manipulate them rhetorically, turning into an event something that has always been there—we call this a discovery—or turning an emerging phenomenon into a non-event—a revolution being seen as a return to a previous state of things. Thanks to “poetic license,” grammatical loopholes and language anomalies, artful narratives devise parallel worlds, possible or impossible, against which what is held as the real takes its specific shape; and they produce the pleasure, guilty or not, of seriously playing the emotions of the other, combining empathy with distinction, projection with introjection. But all art, narrative or not, must negotiate its way with and between the pleasure principle and the reality principle. Literary narratives are neither natural nor unnatural; they do not belong to the id any more than to the superego. “Identifying narrative as the fictional par excellence ” generates more problems than it can solve. 74

Even when an aesthetics of emotions aims at doing away with change and difference altogether, an affective narratology will always help understand why literary narrative is the privileged playfield of the anthropological game between desire and delusion, between estrangement and recognition. The claim that “story structures are fundamentally shaped and oriented by our emotion systems,” 75 if it was supported by strong evidence and eventually proved to be true, should nonetheless be complemented by an in-depth investigation of the moving frontiers and the grey zones of narrative communication. For example, if there is no such thing as a narrator-less story, one that “tells itself,” and if no story can ever exist in “real time,” since stories always rely, even in orature, on their own deferral, any narrative will still form an odd couple with its narration. The narrative of narration, cooperatively constructed by the receiver who needs to retrace the origin of information and track down the steps of its expression, may seem to duplicate the narrated; it may overlap with it or entertain a polemic, absurd, or aporetical relation with it, but in every case, the relative porosity of narration and narrated is put to test: What happens when a reputed liar recounts only historically recorded “facts”? How does the lyric generally shun narration? How does an extended metaphor, or an initially argumentative digression, almost always slip into a narrative?

Cognitivism—the many facets of the cognitive sciences in the last fifty years—has made much, perhaps too much, of “narrative” without taking into account these fuzzy borders and grey zones that play an even greater role in literary narratives than in “ordinary” (i.e., merely referential, informative) narrative communication. Jerome Bruner says that a story occurs “when you encounter an exception to the ordinary.” 76 The intuition may be right in standard conversational situations: I will not tell my family the details of my road trip if it went smoothly, but I will tell once and again how an accident occurred, how the clutch of the car suddenly broke or I saw an elephant at the gas station. But literary, aestheticized verbal creativity will often (in traditional societies as much as in modernity) make the exactly opposite move, called ostranenie by the Russian formalists, especially Shklovsky: when banality becomes oppressive, when you need to expose its terror, you invent a story to animate it. In fact, it is exactly what realism, from the picaresque or before down to Dickens, Balzac, Zola, or Premchand, has always done. Symmetrically, in times of great plague, millennial fears, or disruptive sociopolitical changes, narrative literature will need to develop reassuring tales of ordinariness.

When Daniel Dennett gloats over the stupidity of “someone, a benighted literary critic, perhaps, who doesn’t understand that fiction is fiction,” arguing that “with regard to any actual man, living or dead, the question of whether or not he has or had a mole on his left shoulder blade has an answer,” his brand of rationalism superbly ignores that the “actuality” of “Aristotle” (the man) is only inferable in a similar fashion to that of the original Eve, that no living person will ever be able to experience Aristotle’s bodily presence any better than that of those other paper creatures called Ophelia, Catherine Linton, Emma Bovary, or Molly Bloom. 77 Dennett’s axiom ignores that narrative is not about having or not having a property or feature, but about acquiring or losing it. Literary narrative intelligence remains the best safeguard against the so-called “narrative paradigm” that posits an all-embracing maxim where narrative is any verbal and nonverbal interpretation arranged logically to generate a meaning. 78 Literary intelligence teaches us that narrative, as it plays with what was not but now is and with what now is but may not be later, is as much a device used to dissimulate an unchanging nature of things as it helps come to terms with an ever-changing world, enjoying the benefits of emotional education in the process.

Further Reading

• Alber, Jan , and Fludernik, Monika , eds. Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses . Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010.
• Auerbach, Erich . Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature . Rev. ed. Translated by Willard R. Trask , with a new introduction by Edward B. Said. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.
• Boyd, Bryan . On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009.
• Bres, Jacques . La Narrativité . Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Duculot, 1994.
• Chatman, Seymour . Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
• García Landa, José Ángel . Narrative Theory . Zaragoza: University of Zaragoza, 2005.
• Herman, David . Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.
• Herman, David , ed. Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis . Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999.
• Herman, David , et al., eds. Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates . Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012.
• Hillis Miller, J. Reading Narrative . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
• Hühn, Peter , et al., eds. Handbook of Narratology . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009.
• Hühn, Peter , et al., eds. The Living Handbook of Narratology . Hamburg University.
• Jahn, Manfred . Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative . Version 1.8. English Department, University of Cologne, 2005.
• Keen, Suzanne . Narrative Form . 2d ed. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
• Phelan, James . Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology . Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996.
• Phelan, James , and Peter J. Rabinowitz , eds. A Companion to Narrative Theory . Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008.
• Polkinghorne, Donald E. Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences . Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
• Porter Abbott, H. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative . 2d ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation . Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987.
• Ribière, Mireille , and Jan Baetens , eds. Time, Narrative & the Fixed Image/Temps, narration & image fixe . Faux Titre 208. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.
• Ricoeur, Paul . Time and Narrative . vol. 3. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
• Scholes, Robert , and Robert Kellogg . The Nature of Narrative . New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
• Stanzel, F. K. A Theory of Narrative . Translated by Charlotte Goedsche . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
• Worth, Sarah E. “Narrative Understanding and Understanding Narrative.” Contemporary Aesthetics 2 (2004).

1. Monika Fludernik , “Histories of Narrative Theory (II): From Structuralism to the Present,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory , eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008).

2. Mircea Marghescou , Le Concept de littérarité: Critique de la métalittérature (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2009).

3. Vladimir Propp , Morphology of the Folktale (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968).

4. Gérard Genette , Figures III , Poétique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972), trans. Jane E. Lewin as Narrative Discourse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980).

5. Françoise Lavocat , Fait et fiction: Pour une frontière , Poétique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2016).

6. Jonathan Gottschall , The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Boston: Mariner, 2012).

7. Lubomír Doležel , Occidental Poetics: Tradition and Progress (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990); and David Herman , “Histories of Narrative Theory (I): A Genealogy of Early Developments,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory , eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 19–35.

8. Aristotle , “Poetics,” in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation , ed. Jonathan Barnes , vol. 2 of Bollingen Series 71 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2317–2318.

9. Aristotle, Complete Works , 2317.

10. David Herman , Basic Elements of Narrative (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 137–160.

11. Herman, Basic Elements , 139.

12. Victor Shklovsky , Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar , trans. Shushan Avagyan (Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2011).

13. Philip J. M. Sturgess , Narrativity: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992).

14. José Ángel García Landa , Acción, relato, discurso: Estructura de la ficción narrative (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1996), 19.

15. José Ángel García Landa , “Narrating Narrating: Twisting the Twice-Told Tale,” in Theorizing Narrativity , eds. John Pier and José Ángel García Landa , Narratologia (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 419–451.

16. Suzanne Fleischman , Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction (London: Routledge, 1990), 131, quoted in García Landa, “Narrating Narrating,” 431.

17. Jean-Paul Engélibert , Apocalypses sans royaume: Politique des fictions de la fin du monde, XXe–XXIe siècles (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), 121–134.

18. Didier Coste , “Narrative as Communication,” Theory and History of Literature , 64 (1989): 4.

19. Daniel Punday , Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 189–190.

20. José Ángel García Landa , “Emergent Narrativity,” in Linguistic Interaction In/& Specific Discourses , eds. Marta Conejero , Micaela Muñoz , and Beatriz Penas (València: Editorial de la Universitat Politècnica de València, 2010), 109–117.

21. Raphaël Baroni , La Tension narrative: Suspense, curiosité et surprise , Poétique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2007), 11.

22. Monika Fludernik , An Introduction to Narratology (New York: Routledge, 2009), 171–182.

23. Fludernik, Introduction to Narratology , 157.

24. Ansgar Nünning , “Mimesis des Erzählens: Prolegomena zu einer Wirkungsästhetik, Typologie und Funktiongeschichre des Akts des Erzählens und der Metanarration,” in Erzählen und Erzählentheorie in 20 Jahehundert: Festschrift für Wilhelm Füger , ed. Joerg Helbig (Heidelberg: Winter, 2001), 13–47, quoted by Fludernik, An Introduction to Narratology , 157.

25. Didier Coste and John Pier , “Narrative Levels,” in Handbook of Narratology , eds. Peter Hühn et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 294.

26. Amy Golahny , “Rubens’ ‘Hero and Leander’ and its Poetic Progeny,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (1990): 21–37.

27. William Etty , Hero, Having Thrown Herself from the Tower at the Sight of Leander Drowned, Dies on his Body , 1829, oil on canvas, The Tate, London. Reference no. T12265.

28. Gerald Prince , “Narrativity,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory , eds. David Herman , Manfred Jahn , and Marie-Laure Ryan (London: Routledge, 2005), 386–387; Jan Alber, “Narrativisation,” in Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory , eds. Herman et al., 386–387.

29. Monika Fludernik , Towards a “Natural” Narratology (London: Routledge, 1996), 311.

30. Fludernik, Towards a “Natural” Narratology , 34.

31. Prince, “Narrativity,” 163.

32. Lubomír Doležel , Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 14; Marie-Laure Ryan , Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 29; and Thomas Pavel , Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 50.

33. Herman, Basic Elements of Narrative , 137–160.

34. Françoise Lavocat, “ Pour une herméneutique spécialisée de la fiction ,” in “Pourquoi l’interprétation?,” Fabula-LhT14 (2015).

35. Coste, “Narrative as Communication,” 108.

36. Lavocat, Fait et fiction .

37. Gerald Prince , Dictionary of Narratology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 64.

38. David Herman , Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 27–51.

39. Herman, Story Logic , 40–41.

40. Gérard Genette , Narrative Discourse Revisited (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 19.

41. Carlos Reis and Ana Cristina M. Lopes , Dicionário de narratologia (Coimbra: Almedina, 2002), 277, quoted in Teun A. Van Dijk and Walter Kintsch , Strategies of Discourse Comprehension (New York: Academic Press, 1983), 154.

42. Charles Grivel , Production de l’intérêt Romanesque (The Hague: Mouton, 1973); Raphaël Baroni , La Tension narrative: Suspense, curiosité et surprise , Poétique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2007), 11.

43. Jonathan Culler , Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 176.

44. Prince, Dictionary of Narratology , 63.

45. Prince , Dictionary of Narratology , 63–64.

46. Françoise Revaz , Introduction à la narratologie: Action et Narration (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: De Boeck/Duculot, 2009).

47. Roland Barthes , “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits,” Communications 1 (1966): 1–27, trans. Lionel Duisit as “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative,” in On Narrative and Narratives, New Literary History 6.2 (Winter 1975): 4, 237–272, quoted in Genette, Figures III , 75.

48. Wolf Schmid , Narratology: An Introduction , trans. Alexander Starritt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 8–21.

49. Rukmini Bhaya Nair , Narrative Gravity: Conversation, Cognition, Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 181.

50. Patrick Colm Hogan , Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 77, 245.

51. Prince, “Narrativity,” 387.

52. René Audet , “Narrativity: Away from Story, Close to Eventness,” in Narrativity: How Visual Arts, Cinema and Literature are Telling the World Today , eds. René Audet et al. (Paris: Dis Voir, 2007), 7–35, quoted in H. Porter Abbott , “Narrativity,” in Handbook of Narratology , eds. Peter Hühn et al., Narratologia (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 309–328.

53. Porter Abbott, “Narrativity,” 323.

54. Mark Currie , The Unexpected: Narrative Temporality and the Philosophy of Surprise (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 148.

55. Currie, The Unexpected , 148.

56. Jean-Louis Bachellier , “La poétique lézardée: Figures III , de Gérard Genette,” Littérature 12.4 (1973): 107–113.

57. Ross Chambers , Room for Maneuver: Reading Oppositional Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

58. Mark Currie , Postmodern Narrative Theory , Transitions (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 54.

59. Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory , 54.

60. Jean Ricardou , Pour une théorie du Nouveau Roman , Tel Quel (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971).

61. Prince, “Narrativity,” 374.

62. Dhanajay Singh , “ Dhvani as a Method of Interpreting Texts,” in Sabda: Text and Interpretation in Indian Thought , eds. Santosh K. Sareen and Makarand Paranjape (New Delhi: Mantra Books, 2004), 258–26; and Surendra Sheodas Barlingay , A Modern Introduction to Indian Aesthetic Theory: The Development from Bharata to Jagannatha (New Delhi: DK Printworld, 2007).

63. Priyadarshi Patnaik , Rasa in Aesthetics: An Application of Rasa Theory to Modern Western Literature (New Delhi: DK Printworld, 1997), 48–49.

64. Patnaik, Rasa in Aesthetics , 49.

65. Patnaik, Rasa in Aesthetics , 48–49.

66. Patnaik, Rasa in Aesthetics , 186–188.

67. Kapila Vatsyayan , Bharata: The Natyasastra (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1996), 110.

68. Vatsyayan, Bharata , 110.

69. K. Ayyappa Paniker , Indian Narratology (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in association with Sterling Publishers, 2003), 1–7.

70. Amya Dev, review of Indian Narratology , by K. Ayyappa Paniker, Indian Literature 47.6 (2003): 214–217.

71. Paniker, Indian Narratology , 1–17.

72. Bhaya Nair, Narrative Gravity , 305, 208.

73. Daniel Punday , Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 185.

74. Fludernik, Towards a “Natural” Narratology , 36.

75. Hogan, Affective Narratology , 1.

76. Jerome Bruner , Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 46, quoted in Hogan, Affective Narratology , 77.

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Related Articles

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What Is a Narrative Essay? Definition & 20+ Examples

Ever wondered how life’s vibrant, personal experiences could transform into compelling stories? Welcome to the world of narrative essays, where the art of storytelling meets the essence of self-expression.

This vibrant genre paints vivid pictures, provoking emotions and connecting readers to experiences, perhaps similar to their own or completely novel. Embark on this literary journey with us as we delve into the heart of narrative essays, unearthing the magic of narrating tales spun from threads of personal experiences, historical events, and more.

Prepare to immerse yourself in the fascinating universe where life and literature intertwine.

Table of Contents

Defining Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is a genre of writing that tells a story, often from the writer’s personal perspective. In this type of essay, the author provides a series of events, characters, and settings, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the experience. Although typically written in the first person, narrative essays can be written in the third person as well.

The purpose of a narrative essay is not only to entertain but also to convey a meaningful message or lesson. These essays can be drawn from real-life experiences or fictional scenarios, but they should be engaging and create an emotional connection with the reader. Narrative essays are often used to explore personal growth, relationships, and various worldviews and experiences.

In a narrative essay, it is essential to use vivid, descriptive language and a clear structure to help the reader follow the narrative. While engaging the reader’s emotions, the essay must maintain a consistent point of view and avoid unnecessary complexity or ambiguity.

History of Narrative Essay

The narrative essay has its roots in oral storytelling traditions dating back to ancient civilizations. The art of telling stories has been present across cultures and continents as a means to communicate, preserve history, and entertain. Early examples of narratives were usually passed down through generations of storytellers, which led narratives to transform and adapt over time.

In the Middle Ages , the invention of the printing press allowed for written narratives to become more widely accessible, leading to the rise of written narrative essays. Literature, like Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and Boccaccio’s “Decameron,” showcased the importance of storytelling as a medium to understand and reflect on human experiences.

During the Romantic period in the 18th and 19th centuries , the narrative essay took on new life as authors like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe explored the genre’s creative and intellectual potential. They used narrative essays to express their individual perspectives and encouraged readers to think beyond conventions and social norms.

During the 20th century , the narrative essay became even more prevalent, with the rise of digital technology and the internet making it easier for writers to share their stories via blogs , social media , and online literary publications .

Today , the narrative essay has evolved into a versatile genre that continues to remain a popular form of expression in literature and the digital age.

Although the format of narrative essays has changed over the years, their central purpose — to share personal experiences , entertain readers , and reflect on the human condition — has remained consistent, contributing to the genre’s enduring appeal.

Functions of Narrative Essay

Storytelling.

Narrative essays serve as an effective platform for storytelling. Through these essays, writers impart exciting and entertaining tales to their readers as they incorporate essential elements such as plot , setting , and character .

One primary function of a narrative essay is to engage the audience by keeping them hooked. With its descriptive and vivid language style, it captures the reader’s imagination and evokes curiosity.

Narrative essays also play a role in imparting valuable knowledge and life lessons. They can portray real-life events and experiences that provide readers with a deeper understanding of the world.

These essays offer a medium for reflecting on personal experiences, growth, and emotional journeys, allowing both the writer and the reader to gain valuable insights from past events and decisions.

Though narrative essays primarily tell stories, they can also serve as a tool for persuasion. By presenting a narrative from a specific perspective, writers can subtly influence the reader’s opinions and beliefs on a particular topic.

Through sharing personal stories and experiences, narrative essays help build a connection between the writer and the reader. They create a sense of empathy and relatability, bridging the gap between different backgrounds and perspectives.

Exploration of Themes

Narrative essays allow for an in-depth exploration of themes ranging from morality to the complexities of human relationships. Writers can weave these themes into their stories to provoke thought and discussion.

Character Development

Character development is an essential aspect of narrative essays. By showcasing the growth and transformation of a character, the essay becomes more engaging and dynamic while also revealing insights into human behavior and psychology.

Characteristics of Narrative Essay

Narrative essay tells a story.

A narrative essay presents a story with a clear beginning , middle , and end . The writer’s goal is to engage the reader with vivid descriptions and captivating events, drawing them into the story and encouraging them to experience the emotions and events alongside the characters.

First-Person Perspective

Often written in first-person perspective, narrative essays allow the writer to share their experiences and thoughts with the reader. This point of view connects the reader with the protagonist, creating a more personal and intimate experience.

Characters and Dialogue

Well-developed characters and believable dialogue contribute to the overall authenticity of a narrative essay. The writer achieves this by creating dynamic characters with distinct voices and personalities, with the dialogue often propelling the story forward.

Descriptive Language

Using descriptive language helps paint a picture in the reader’s mind, immersing them in the story’s setting and atmosphere. Adjectives, sensory details, and imagery are essential tools in crafting a vivid narrative.

Plot and Structure

A narrative essay must have a clear, well-structured plot with a beginning, middle, and end. The writer unfolds the story in a way that builds tension and excitement, driving the reader to anticipate the resolution.

Chronological Order

Events in a narrative essay usually unfold in chronological order, following the natural progression of time. This allows the reader to follow the story easily and maintain their engagement.

Theme or Message

Narrative essays often explore themes or convey a message to the reader. The writer subtly weaves this message throughout the story, allowing the reader to understand and appreciate the underlying meaning gradually.

Conflict and Resolution

Conflict drives the story forward, creating excitement and tension that keeps the reader engaged. The narrative essay should present a central conflict that the characters encounter and, ultimately, resolve.

Narrative essays frequently include reflective moments, during which the writer pauses to consider the significance of the events, characters, or conflicts they are describing. These moments help the reader gain a deeper understanding of the writer’s thoughts and the message they are conveying.

Importance of Narrative Essay

Narrative essay enables individuals to articulate their emotions.

Narrative essays enable writers to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. They provide an opportunity for individuals to articulate their emotions and insights through storytelling. This promotes a sense of self-awareness, helping individuals better comprehend their own actions and beliefs.

Narrative Essay Engages Readers

Narrative essays engage readers by presenting stories in artistic and imaginative ways. They captivate the audience through vivid descriptions, colorful language, and emotionally resonant themes. This creates an immersive experience, allowing readers to not only learn from the writer’s experiences but also feel emotionally connected to them.

Narrative Essay Enhances One’s Communication Skills

Writing narrative essays enhances one’s communication skills. It requires clear and concise language, as well as the ability to convey ideas in an organized and coherent manner. This practice hones one’s writing ability and overall communication skills.

Narrative Essay Promotes Empathy

A well-written narrative essay promotes empathy by allowing readers to experience events from different perspectives. It encourages understanding and appreciation for the distinct viewpoints of other individuals, fostering respect and appreciation for diversity.

Narrative Essay Challenges a Writer’s Critical Thinking

Developing a narrative essay challenges a writer’s critical thinking ability to evaluate experiences and draw meaningful conclusions. This process of reflection provides an opportunity for personal growth and learning, ultimately cultivating a well-rounded individual.

Narrative Essays Convey Themes or Messages

Narrative essays often relay themes and messages that reflect the writer’s beliefs or values. By sharing these themes, writers provide insights that readers may relate to and learn from, leading to personal growth and understanding.

Narrative Essay Builds Empathy

Sharing personal stories through narrative essays can help build empathy among readers. By connecting with the experiences and emotions presented, readers have the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of others and foster compassion in their own lives.

Narrative Essay Encourages Individuals to Explore

Narrative essays entice readers with engaging stories that are interesting and emotionally impactful. This motivation to read can foster an appreciation for literature, encouraging individuals to further explore and engage with written works.

Elements of Narrative Essay

In a narrative essay, the plot is the sequence of events that make up the story. It typically follows a chronological order and includes an exposition , rising action , climax , falling action , and resolution . Each event should contribute to the overall theme and message of the essay.

Characters are the people, animals, or other beings that participate in the story. They have individual personalities, motivations, and conflicts. The main character, or protagonist , is the central figure in a narrative essay, and readers often empathize with them as they undergo various experiences.

The setting is the time and place in which the story occurs. It can be a specific location or a more general environment. The setting contributes to the overall atmosphere and mood of the narrative essay, and it can influence how characters interact with one another.

Point of View

Point of view refers to the perspective from which the story is told. In a third-person narrative essay, the author uses “he,” “she,” “it,” or “they” to tell the story. This allows the writer to provide a more objective view, showing events and character actions without the bias of a first-person narrator.

Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces that drives the plot forward. It can be internal, within a character’s own mind or emotions, or external, between characters or against an outside force. Conflict creates tension and keeps the reader engaged in the story.

Theme refers to the underlying message or central idea that the writer wants to convey through their narrative essay. It can be a commentary on society, human nature, or other universal concepts. A strong theme helps to tie the essay together and contributes to its overall impact on the reader.

Dialogue is the conversation between characters in a narrative essay. It helps to establish character relationships, reveal information, and move the plot forward. Effective dialogue should sound natural and reflect the speaker’s personality and voice.

Narrative Structure

The narrative structure is the organization and arrangement of events in the essay. It includes elements like flashbacks , foreshadowing , and parallel plotlines to create a cohesive and engaging reading experience.

Description

The description is the use of sensory details and vivid language to help the reader visualize the story. It can include the appearance of characters, settings, and objects, as well as sounds, smells, and other sensory details. Effective description enhances the reader’s immersion in the story and supports the emotional impact.

Reflective Aspect

The reflective aspect of a narrative essay refers to the author’s insights and personal growth as a result of the events in the story. It is an opportunity for the author to analyze and reflect on the experiences and emotions they have conveyed, providing a deeper level of understanding for the reader.

Structure of Narrative Essays

Introduction.

Narrative essays generally begin with an introduction that presents the background and sets the stage for the story. This section introduces the main characters, their relationships, and the setting or context in which the story takes place.

The introduction also establishes the purpose or main idea of the essay, grabbing the reader’s attention and sparking their interest in the unfolding events.

Rising Action

The rising action includes a series of events or experiences that create tension and suspense, gradually building toward the pivotal point of the story. In this section, the writer conveys the various challenges and obstacles faced by the main characters while developing the plot and providing insights into their personalities and motivations.

The rising action helps the reader become emotionally invested in the characters and their journey.

The climax is the turning point or the most intense moment in the story, where the central conflict reaches its peak. It is at this stage that the main characters confront the challenges or adversities they have been facing, often resulting in dramatic, emotional, or transformative consequences.

The climax is a crucial moment in the narrative essay, as it determines the outcome of the story and the eventual fate of the characters.

Falling Action

Following the climax, the story enters its falling action phase . In this section, the events and repercussions of the climax begin to unfold, and tensions start to subside. The writer gradually moves towards a resolution of the main conflict while also tying up loose ends and potentially introducing ancillary outcomes that result from the central events.

Conclusion or Resolution

The conclusion or resolution offers a sense of closure or finality by addressing the outcome of the story. It may present the characters reflecting on their experiences, lessons learned, or the consequences of their actions. Ideally, the resolution leaves the reader with a feeling of satisfaction, having followed the characters on their journey and reached an appropriate conclusion.

A narrative essay may also include a reflection section, where the writer discusses the significance of the story or its broader implications. This section allows the writer to share their personal insights, thoughts, or feelings about the events in the narrative and may offer a deeper perspective on the themes or messages explored in the essay.

The reflection, when included, can help to elevate the narrative by adding depth and context to the overall story.

Popular Narrative Essay Topics

Personal experiences.

Narrative essays often focus on personal experiences as they allow the writer to share a unique story with their readers. These topics could include a memorable childhood event, a life lesson learned, or overcoming a significant obstacle.

Travel Experiences

Travel experiences are also popular in narrative essays, as they provide rich and vivid details for the reader to imagine. The writer can recount a fantastic trip, a cultural exchange experience, or even a challenging adventure, capturing the essence of the journey.

Achievements and Failures

Writing about achievements and failures enables the writer to reflect on their personal growth and share the lessons they’ve learned. Topics can range from winning a competition, conquering a fear, or overcoming failure to succeed in the end.

Relationships and Interactions

Narrative essays on relationships and interactions capture the emotions, lessons, and insights gained from interacting with others. The writer could tell a story of forming an unlikely friendship, navigating a challenging relationship, or learning from a mentor.

Historical or Current Events

Addressing historical or current events in narrative essays allows writers to share their perspectives and analyses. Stories could focus on significant moments in history, political events, or social movements, detailing how they’ve impacted the writer and their understanding of the world.

School and Work Experiences

School and work experiences can serve as compelling sources of inspiration for narrative essays. Writers can recount stories of innovative projects, first-time experiences, or memorable teachers and coworkers, sharing valuable insights and reflections.

Techniques Used in Narrative Essay Writing

When writing a narrative essay, authors should use various techniques to create an engaging and well-written piece. These techniques will help to capture the reader’s attention, establish a connection with the audience, and effectively convey the story.

Showing Rather than Telling

One critical technique used in narrative essay writing is showing rather than telling. It involves the use of vivid imagery and descriptions to draw the reader into the story. This allows the reader to create mental images of the events and experiences described in the essay.

For example, instead of merely stating that a character was sad, a writer could describe their frowning face or a tear rolling down their cheek.

Including conversations between characters helps to bring the story to life and provides insight into the thoughts and feelings of those involved. When writing dialogue, it’s essential to maintain a consistent tone and voice and pay attention to punctuation to ensure clarity for the reader.

The use of chronological order is also important when composing a narrative essay. Presenting events in the order they occurred is the most straightforward approach and helps the reader follow along effortlessly. While some writers may choose to mix up the sequence for a more dramatic effect, it is crucial to ensure that the narrative remains clear and easy to understand.

Character development plays a significant role in creating a compelling narrative essay. The thoughts, emotions, and experiences of the characters should evolve throughout the story. A well-developed character with realistic reactions and growth helps engage the reader and creates a deeper connection to the narrative.

Strong Narrative Voice

Employing a strong narrative voice is crucial to a successful narrative essay. The narrative voice can be the author’s own or a fictional character, but it should be consistent and engaging. The voice should provide a unique perspective on the events taking place and help guide the reader through the story.

Types of Narrative Essay

Personal narrative essay.

A personal narrative essay is written from the author’s perspective and shares a personal story or experience. This type of essay often involves reflection on the significance of the event, as well as how it has shaped the author’s life.

Biographical Narrative Essay

A biographical narrative essay focuses on telling the life story of an individual other than the author. It may cover key events or experiences from the person’s life and often requires research to gather accurate information about the subject.

Literacy Narrative Essay

A literacy narrative essay explores an individual’s experiences with reading , writing , or language . It can discuss how these experiences have shaped the individual’s understanding and use of language, as well as any challenges they have faced in their literacy journey.

Historical Narrative Essay

A historical narrative essay tells the story of a significant event, era, or person within a historical context. This type of essay requires the author to research and gather accurate historical information while weaving it into a well-structured narrative.

Reflective Narrative Essay

A reflective narrative essay involves the author discussing an experience or event in their life and examining its impact on their personal growth and development. The focus is on how the event has shaped the individual’s values, beliefs, or understanding of the world.

Descriptive Narrative Essay

A descriptive narrative essay aims to paint a vivid picture of a person, place, or situation through detailed observations and sensory language. It can evoke emotions and immerse the reader in the setting, creating an engaging narrative experience.

Examples of Narrative Essay in Literature

Short story, examples of narrative essay in pop culture, creative writing, how to write a narrative essay.

A narrative essay is a type of essay that tells a story or recounts an event, often through the author’s personal experiences. Writing a narrative essay can be an enlightening and engaging experience for both the writer and the reader.

Impacts of Narrative Essay on Literature

Narrative essays play a significant role in literature, as they provide authors with a platform to express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a compelling manner. They enable readers to connect with the story, allowing them to empathize with the author or the characters.

Understanding of Human Experience

Narrative essays offer an opportunity for writers to share their own life experiences, making them relatable and captivating to readers. This form of writing encourages a deeper understanding of human emotions, challenges, and growth.

Exploration of Themes and Issues

Through narrative essays, authors can delve into various themes and issues, such as love, loss, friendship, conflict, and societal norms. This allows readers to see multiple perspectives, fostering critical thinking and empathy.

Development of Narrative Skills

Aspiring writers can hone their narrative skills by writing narrative essays, learning to organize their thoughts, developing interesting plotlines, and creating captivating characters. This process helps writers improve their storytelling techniques, making their work more engaging.

Reflection and Learning

Writing narrative essays encourages self-reflection and introspection, allowing authors to analyze their own experiences and learn from them. It serves as a therapeutic outlet and a learning tool for personal growth and development.

Versatility

Narrative essays are versatile forms of writing that can be adapted to various genres and styles, such as fiction , nonfiction , and even poetry . This flexibility allows writers to experiment with different forms and voices, expanding their creative horizons.

Influence on Other Literary Forms

The narrative essay format has had a profound impact on other literary forms, such as novels , short stories , and memoirs . The storytelling techniques developed through writing narrative essays contribute to the richness and depth of these other literary works.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some common mistakes to avoid in a narrative essay.

Common mistakes to avoid when writing a narrative essay include a lack of focus, insufficient development of the story, and an unclear message. To avoid these pitfalls, ensure that the story has a clear central theme, develop the narrative with ample details, and convey a discernible message or lesson.

What is the difference between a narrative essay and a short story?

While both a narrative essay and a short story tell a tale, the main difference lies in their purpose. A narrative essay aims to share a personal experience and often a lesson learned from it, while a short story primarily aims to entertain. Narrative essays are usually written in the first person, while short stories can be written from any point of view.

Can a narrative essay be fictional?

Yes, while many narrative essays are based on personal experiences, they can also be entirely fictional. The key is to tell a compelling story that conveys a clear theme or message, whether it’s based on real events or is a product of the author’s imagination.

Narrative essays offer a compelling medium to share your unique stories, experiences, and perspectives. By weaving together the threads of plot, character, setting, and conflict, you can create an engaging narrative that captivates your readers, immerses them in your world, and leaves them with a lasting impression.

Remember, each narrative essay is not just about recounting a tale; it’s an opportunity to express personal growth, share lessons learned, and convey themes that resonate. So, the next time you have a story to tell, consider a narrative essay, where life’s experiences transform into a literary tapestry of meaning and connection. Happy writing!

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Narrative Essay with Tips - a Detailed Guide

Defining What Is a Narrative Essay

We can explain a narrative essay definition as a piece of writing that tells a story. It's like a window into someone's life or a page torn from a diary. Similarly to a descriptive essay, a narrative essay tells a story, rather than make a claim and use evidence. It can be about anything – a personal experience, a childhood memory, a moment of triumph or defeat – as long as it's told in a way that captures the reader's imagination.

You might ask - 'which sentence most likely comes from a narrative essay?'. Let's take this for example: 'I could hear the waves crashing against the shore, their rhythm a soothing lullaby that carried me off to sleep.' You could even use such an opening for your essay when wondering how to start a narrative essay.

To further define a narrative essay, consider it storytelling with a purpose. The purpose of a narrative essay is not just to entertain but also to convey a message or lesson in first person. It's a way to share your experiences and insights with others and connect with your audience. Whether you're writing about your first love, a harrowing adventure, or a life-changing moment, your goal is to take the reader on a journey that will leave them feeling moved, inspired, or enlightened.

So if you're looking for a way to express yourself creatively and connect with others through your writing, try your hand at a narrative essay. Who knows – you might just discover a hidden talent for storytelling that you never knew you had!

Meanwhile, let's delve into the article to better understand this type of paper through our narrative essay examples, topic ideas, and tips on constructing a perfect essay.

Types of Narrative Essays

If you were wondering, 'what is a personal narrative essay?', know that narrative essays come in different forms, each with a unique structure and purpose. Regardless of the type of narrative essay, each aims to transport the reader to a different time and place and to create an emotional connection between the reader and the author's experiences. So, let's discuss each type in more detail:

• A personal narrative essay is based on one's unique experience or event. Personal narrative essay examples include a story about overcoming a fear or obstacle or reflecting on a particularly meaningful moment in one's life.
• A fictional narrative is a made-up story that still follows the basic elements of storytelling. Fictional narratives can take many forms, from science fiction to romance to historical fiction.
• A memoir is similar to personal narratives but focuses on a specific period or theme in a person's life. Memoirs might be centered around a particular relationship, a struggle with addiction, or a cultural identity. If you wish to describe your life in greater depth, you might look at how to write an autobiography .
• A literacy narrative essay explores the writer's experiences with literacy and how it has influenced their life. The essay typically tells a personal story about a significant moment or series of moments that impacted the writer's relationship with reading, writing, or communication.

Pros and Cons of Narrative Writing

Writing a narrative essay can be a powerful tool for self-expression and creative storytelling, but like any form of writing, it comes with its own set of pros and cons. Let's explore the pros and cons of narrative writing in more detail, helping you to decide whether it's the right writing style for your needs.

• It can be a powerful way to convey personal experiences and emotions.
• Allows for creative expression and unique voice
• Engages the reader through storytelling and vivid details
• It can be used to teach a lesson or convey a message.
• Offers an opportunity for self-reflection and growth
• It can be challenging to balance personal storytelling with the needs of the reader
• It may not be as effective for conveying factual information or arguments
• It may require vulnerability and sharing personal details that some writers may find uncomfortable
• It can be subjective, as the reader's interpretation of the narrative may vary

If sharing your personal stories is not your cup of tea, you can buy essays online from our expert writers, who will customize the paper to your particular writing style and tone.

20 Excellent Narrative Essay Topics and How to Choose One

Choosing a good topic among many narrative essay ideas can be challenging, but some tips can help you make the right choice. Here are some original and helpful tips on how to choose a good narrative essay topic:

• Consider your own experiences: One of the best sources of inspiration for a narrative essay is your own life experiences. Consider moments that have had a significant impact on you, whether they are positive or negative. For example, you could write about a memorable trip or a challenging experience you overcame.
• Choose a topic relevant to your audience: Consider your audience and their interests when choosing a narrative essay topic. If you're writing for a class, consider what topics might be relevant to the course material. If you're writing for a broader audience, consider what topics might be interesting or informative to them.
• Find inspiration in literature: Literature can be a great source of inspiration for a narrative essay. Consider the books or stories that have had an impact on you, and think about how you can incorporate elements of them into your own narrative. For example, you could start by using a title for narrative essay inspired by the themes of a favorite novel or short story.
• Focus on a specific moment or event: Most narrative essays tell a story, so it's important to focus on a specific moment or event. For example, you could write a short narrative essay about a conversation you had with a friend or a moment of realization while traveling.
• Experiment with different perspectives: Consider writing from different perspectives to add depth and complexity to your narrative. For example, you could write about the same event from multiple perspectives or explore the thoughts and feelings of a secondary character.
• Use writing prompts: Writing prompts can be a great source of inspiration if you struggle to develop a topic. Consider using a prompt related to a specific theme, such as love, loss, or growth.
• Choose a topic with rich sensory details: A good narrative essay should engage the senses and create a vivid picture in the reader's mind. Choose a topic with rich sensory details that you can use to create a vivid description. For example, you could write about a bustling city's sights, sounds, and smells.
• Choose a topic meaningful to you: Ultimately, the best narrative essays are meaningful to the writer. Choose a topic that resonates with you and that you feel passionate about. For example, you could write about a personal goal you achieved or a struggle you overcame.

Here are some good narrative essay topics for inspiration from our experts:

• A life-changing event that altered your perspective on the world
• The story of a personal accomplishment or achievement
• An experience that tested your resilience and strength
• A time when you faced a difficult decision and how you handled it
• A childhood memory that still holds meaning for you
• The impact of a significant person in your life
• A travel experience that taught you something new
• A story about a mistake or failure that ultimately led to growth and learning
• The first day of a new job or school
• The story of a family tradition or ritual that is meaningful to you
• A time when you had to confront a fear or phobia
• A memorable concert or music festival experience
• An experience that taught you the importance of communication or listening
• A story about a time when you had to stand up for what you believed in
• A time when you had to persevere through a challenging task or project
• A story about a significant cultural or societal event that impacted your life
• The impact of a book, movie, or other work of art on your life
• A time when you had to let go of something or someone important to you
• A memorable encounter with a stranger that left an impression on you
• The story of a personal hobby or interest that has enriched your life

Narrative Format and Structure

The narrative essay format and structure are essential elements of any good story. A well-structured narrative can engage readers, evoke emotions, and create lasting memories. Whether you're writing a personal essay or a work of fiction, the following guidelines on how to write a narrative essay can help you create a compelling paper:

• Introduction : The introduction sets the scene for your story and introduces your main characters and setting. It should also provide a hook to capture your reader's attention and make them want to keep reading. When unsure how to begin a narrative essay, describe the setting vividly or an intriguing question that draws the reader in.
• Plot : The plot is the sequence of events that make up your story. It should have a clear beginning, middle, and end, with each part building on the previous one. The plot should also have a clear conflict or problem the protagonist must overcome.
• Characters : Characters are the people who drive the story. They should be well-developed and have distinct personalities and motivations. The protagonist should have a clear goal or desire, and the antagonist should provide a challenge or obstacle to overcome.
• Setting : The setting is the time and place the story takes place. It should be well-described and help to create a mood or atmosphere that supports the story's themes.
• Dialogue : Dialogue is the conversation between characters. It should be realistic and help to reveal the characters' personalities and motivations. It can also help to move the plot forward.
• Climax : The climax is the highest tension or conflict point in the story. It should be the turning point that leads to resolving the conflict.
• Resolution : The resolution is the end of the story. It should provide a satisfying conclusion to the conflict and tie up any loose ends.

Following these guidelines, you can create a narrative essay structure that engages readers and leaves a lasting impression. Remember, a well-structured story can take readers on a journey and make them feel part of the action.

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Narrative Essay Outline

Here is a detailed narrative essay outline from our custom term paper writing :

Introduction

A. Hook: Start with an attention-grabbing statement, question, or anecdote that introduces the topic and draws the reader in. Example: 'The sun beat down on my skin as I stepped onto the stage, my heart pounding with nervous excitement.'

B. Background information: Provide context for the story, such as the setting or the characters involved. Example: 'I had been preparing for this moment for weeks, rehearsing my lines and perfecting my performance for the school play.'

C. Thesis statement: State the essay's main point and preview the events to come. Example: 'This experience taught me that taking risks and stepping outside my comfort zone can lead to unexpected rewards and personal growth.'

Body Paragraphs

A. First event: Describe the first event in the story, including details about the setting, characters, and actions. Example: 'As I delivered my first lines on stage, I felt a rush of adrenaline and a sense of pride in my hard work paying off.'

B. Second event: Describe the second event in the story, including how it builds on the first event and moves the story forward. Example: 'As the play progressed, I became more comfortable in my role and connecting with the other actors on stage.'

C. Turning point: Describe the turning point in the story, when something unexpected or significant changes the course of events. Example: 'In the final act, my character faced a difficult decision that required me to improvise and trust my instincts.'

D. Climax: Describe the story's climax, the highest tension or conflict point. Example: 'As the play reached its climax, I delivered my final lines with confidence and emotion, feeling a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.'

A. Restate thesis: Summarize the essay's main point and how the events in the story support it. Example: 'Through this experience, I learned that taking risks and pushing past my comfort zone can lead to personal growth and unexpected rewards.'

B. Reflection: Reflect on the significance of the experience and what you learned from it. Example: 'Looking back, I realize that this experience not only taught me about acting and performance but also about the power of perseverance and self-belief.'

C. Call to action: if you're still wondering how to write an essay conclusion , consider ending it with a call to action or final thought that leaves the reader with something to consider or act on. Example: 'I encourage everyone to take risks and embrace new challenges because you never know what kind of amazing experiences and growth they may lead to.

Narrative Essay Examples

Are you looking for inspiration for your next narrative essay? Look no further than our narrative essay example. Through vivid storytelling and personal reflections, this essay takes the reader on a journey of discovery and leaves them with a powerful lesson about the importance of compassion and empathy. Use this sample from our expert essay writer as a guide for crafting your own narrative essay, and let your unique voice and experiences shine through.

Narrative Essay Example for College

College professors search for the following qualities in their students:

• the ability to adapt to different situations,
• the ability to solve problems creatively,
• and the ability to learn from mistakes.

Your work must demonstrate these qualities, regardless of whether your narrative paper is a college application essay or a class assignment. Additionally, you want to demonstrate your character and creativity. Describe a situation where you have encountered a problem, tell the story of how you came up with a unique approach to solving it, and connect it to your field of interest. The narrative can be exciting and informative if you present it in such fashion.

Narrative Essay Example for High School

High school is all about showing that you can make mature choices. You accept the consequences of your actions and retrieve valuable life lessons. Think of an event in which you believe your actions were exemplary and made an adult choice. A personal narrative essay example will showcase the best of your abilities. Finally, use other sources to help you get the best results possible. Try searching for a sample narrative essay to see how others have approached it.

Final Words

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What Is A Narrative Essay?

How to start a narrative essay, how to write a good narrative essay, related articles.

How to Write a Perfect Narrative Essay (Step-by-Step)

By Status.net Editorial Team on October 17, 2023 — 10 minutes to read

• Understanding a Narrative Essay Part 1
• Typical Narrative Essay Structure Part 2
• Narrative Essay Template Part 3
• Step 1. How to Choose Your Narrative Essay Topic Part 4
• Step 2. Planning the Structure Part 5
• Step 3. Crafting an Intriguing Introduction Part 6
• Step 4. Weaving the Narrative Body Part 7
• Step 5. Creating a Conclusion Part 8
• Step 6. Polishing the Essay Part 9
• Step 7. Feedback and Revision Part 10

Part 1 Understanding a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is a form of writing where you share a personal experience or tell a story to make a point or convey a lesson. Unlike other types of essays, a narrative essay aims to engage your audience by sharing your perspective and taking them on an emotional journey.

• To begin, choose a meaningful topic . Pick a story or experience that had a significant impact on your life, taught you something valuable, or made you see the world differently. You want your readers to learn from your experiences, so choose something that will resonate with others.
• Next, create an outline . Although narrative essays allow for creative storytelling, it’s still helpful to have a roadmap to guide your writing. List the main events, the characters involved, and the settings where the events took place. This will help you ensure that your essay is well-structured and easy to follow.
• When writing your narrative essay, focus on showing, not telling . This means that you should use descriptive language and vivid details to paint a picture in your reader’s mind. For example, instead of stating that it was a rainy day, describe the sound of rain hitting your window, the feeling of cold wetness around you, and the sight of puddles forming around your feet. These sensory details will make your essay more engaging and immersive.
• Another key aspect is developing your characters . Give your readers an insight into the thoughts and emotions of the people in your story. This helps them connect with the story, empathize with the characters, and understand their actions. For instance, if your essay is about a challenging hike you took with a friend, spend some time describing your friend’s personality and how the experience impacted their attitude or feelings.
• Keep the pace interesting . Vary your sentence lengths and structures, and don’t be afraid to use some stylistic devices like dialogue, flashbacks, and metaphors. This adds more depth and dimension to your story, keeping your readers engaged from beginning to end.

Part 2 Typical Narrative Essay Structure

A narrative essay typically follows a three-part structure: introduction, body, and conclusion.

• Introduction: Start with a hook to grab attention and introduce your story. Provide some background to set the stage for the main events.
• Body: Develop your story in detail. Describe scenes, characters, and emotions. Use dialogue when necessary to provide conversational elements.
• Conclusion: Sum up your story, revealing the lesson learned or the moral of the story. Leave your audience with a lasting impression.

Part 3 Narrative Essay Template

• 1. Introduction : Set the scene and introduce the main characters and setting of your story. Use descriptive language to paint a vivid picture for your reader and capture their attention.
• Body 2. Rising Action : Develop the plot by introducing a conflict or challenge that the main character must face. This could be a personal struggle, a difficult decision, or an external obstacle. 3. Climax : This is the turning point of the story, where the conflict reaches its peak and the main character must make a critical decision or take action. 4. Falling Action : Show the consequences of the main character’s decision or action, and how it affects the rest of the story. 5. Resolution : Bring the story to a satisfying conclusion by resolving the conflict and showing how the main character has grown or changed as a result of their experiences.
• 6. Reflection/Conclusion : Reflect on the events of the story and what they mean to you as the writer. This could be a lesson learned, a personal realization, or a message you want to convey to your reader.

Part 4 Step 1. How to Choose Your Narrative Essay Topic

Brainstorming ideas.

Start by jotting down any ideas that pop into your mind. Think about experiences you’ve had, stories you’ve heard, or even books and movies that have resonated with you. Write these ideas down and don’t worry too much about organization yet. It’s all about getting your thoughts on paper.

Once you have a list, review your ideas and identify common themes or connections between them. This process should help you discover potential topics for your narrative essay.

Narrowing Down the Choices

After brainstorming, you’ll likely end up with a few strong contenders for your essay topic. To decide which topic is best, consider the following:

• Relevance : Is the topic meaningful for your audience? Will they be able to connect with it on a personal level? Consider the purpose of your assignment and your audience when choosing your topic.
• Detail : Do you have enough specific details to craft a vivid story? The more detail you can recall about the event, the easier it’ll be to write a compelling narrative.
• Emotional impact : A strong narrative essay should evoke emotions in your readers. Choose a topic that has the potential to elicit some emotional response from your target audience.

After evaluating your potential topics based on these criteria, you can select the one that best fits the purpose of your narrative essay.

Part 5 Step 2. Planning the Structure

Creating an outline.

Before you start writing your narrative essay, it’s a great idea to plan out your story. Grab a piece of paper and sketch out a rough outline of the key points you want to cover. Begin with the introduction, where you’ll set the scene and introduce your characters. Then, list the major events of your story in chronological order, followed by the climax and resolution. Organizing your ideas in an outline will ensure your essay flows smoothly and makes sense to your readers.

Detailing Characters, Settings, and Events

Taking time to flesh out the characters, settings, and events in your story will make it more engaging and relatable. Think about your main character’s background, traits, and motivations. Describe their appearance, emotions, and behavior in detail. This personal touch will help your readers connect with them on a deeper level.

Also, give some thought to the setting – where does the story take place? Be sure to include sensory details that paint a vivid picture of the environment. Finally, focus on the series of events that make up your narrative. Are there any twists and turns, or surprising moments? Address these in your essay, using vivid language and engaging storytelling techniques to captivate your readers.

Writing the Narrative Essay

Part 6 step 3. crafting an intriguing introduction.

To start your narrative essay, you’ll want to hook your reader with an interesting and engaging opening. Begin with a captivating sentence or question that piques curiosity and captures attention. For example, “Did you ever think a simple bus ride could change your life forever?” This kind of opening sets the stage for a compelling, relatable story. Next, introduce your main characters and provide a bit of context to help your readers understand the setting and background of the story.

Part 7 Step 4. Weaving the Narrative Body

The body of your essay is where your story unfolds. Here’s where you’ll present a series of events, using descriptive language and vivid details.

Remember to maintain a strong focus on the central theme or main point of your narrative.

Organize your essay chronologically, guiding your reader through the timeline of events.

As you recount your experience, use a variety of sensory details, such as sounds, smells, and tastes, to immerse your reader in the moment. For instance, “The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the room as my friends and I excitedly chattered about our upcoming adventure.”

Take advantage of dialogue to bring your characters to life and to reveal aspects of their personalities. Incorporate both internal and external conflicts, as conflict plays a crucial role in engaging your reader and enhancing the narrative’s momentum. Show the evolution of your characters and how they grow throughout the story.

Part 8 Step 5. Creating a Conclusion

Finally, to write a satisfying conclusion, reflect on the narrative’s impact and how the experience has affected you or your characters. Tie the narrative’s events together and highlight the lessons learned, providing closure for the reader.

Avoid abruptly ending your story, because that can leave the reader feeling unsatisfied. Instead, strive to create a sense of resolution and demonstrate how the events have changed the characters’ perspectives or how the story’s theme has developed.

For example, “Looking back, I realize that the bus ride not only changed my perspective on friendship, but also taught me valuable life lessons that I carry with me to this day.”

Part 9 Step 6. Polishing the Essay

Fine-tuning your language.

When writing a narrative essay, it’s key to choose words that convey the emotions and experiences you’re describing. Opt for specific, vivid language that creates a clear mental image for your reader. For instance, instead of saying “The weather was hot,” try “The sun scorched the pavement, causing the air to shimmer like a mirage.” This gives your essay a more engaging and immersive feeling.

Editing for Clarity and Concision

As you revise your essay, keep an eye out for redundancies and unnecessary words that might dilute the impact of your story. Getting to the point and using straightforward language can help your essay flow better. For example, instead of using “She was walking in a very slow manner,” you can say, “She strolled leisurely.” Eliminate filler words and phrases, keeping only the most pertinent information that moves your story forward.

Proofreading for Typos

Finally, proofread your essay carefully to catch any typos, grammatical errors, or punctuation mistakes. It’s always a good idea to have someone else read it as well, as they might catch errors you didn’t notice. Mistakes can be distracting and may undermine the credibility of your writing, so be thorough with your editing process.

Part 10 Step 7. Feedback and Revision

Gathering feedback.

After you’ve written the first draft of your narrative essay, it’s time to gather feedback from friends, family, or colleagues. Share your essay with a few trusted people who can provide insights and suggestions for improvement. Listen to their thoughts and be open to constructive criticism. You might be surprised by the different perspectives they offer, which can strengthen your essay.

Iterating on the Draft

Once you have collected feedback, it’s time to revise and refine your essay. Address any issues or concerns raised by your readers and incorporate their suggestions. Consider reorganizing your story’s structure, clarifying your descriptions, or adding more details based on the feedback you received.

As you make changes, continue to fine-tune your essay to ensure a smooth flow and a strong narrative. Don’t be afraid to cut out unnecessary elements or rework parts of your story until it’s polished and compelling.

Revision is a crucial part of the writing process, and taking the time to reflect on feedback and make improvements will help you create a more engaging and impactful narrative essay.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can i create an engaging introduction.

Craft an attention-grabbing hook with a thought-provoking question, an interesting fact, or a vivid description. Set the stage for your story by introducing the time, place, and context for the events. Creating tension or raising curiosity will make your readers eager to learn more.

What strategies help develop strong characters?

To develop strong characters, consider the following:

• Give your characters distinct traits, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Provide a backstory to explain their actions and motivations.
• Use dialogue to present their personality, emotions, and relationships.
• Show how they change or evolve throughout your story.

How can I make my story flow smoothly with transitions?

Smooth transitions between scenes or events can create a more coherent and easy-to-follow story. Consider the following tips to improve your transitions:

• Use words and phrases like “meanwhile,” “later that day,” or “afterward” to signify changes in time.
• Link scenes with a common theme or element.
• Revisit the main characters or setting to maintain continuity.
• Introduce a twist or an unexpected event that leads to the next scene.

What are some tips for choosing a great narrative essay topic?

To choose an engaging narrative essay topic, follow these tips:

• Pick a personal experience or story that holds significance for you.
• Consider a challenge or a turning point you’ve faced in your life.
• Opt for a topic that will allow you to share emotions and lessons learned.
• Think about what your audience would find relatable, intriguing, or inspiring.

How do I wrap up my narrative essay with a strong conclusion?

A compelling conclusion restates the main events and highlights any lessons learned or growth in your character. Try to end on a thought-provoking note or leave readers with some food for thought. Finally, make sure your conclusion wraps up your story neatly and reinforces its overall message.

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What exactly is a narrative essay? (with examples included)

Narrative essay.

A narrative essay is a type of essay that tells a story, usually from the writer’s perspective. It often involves personal experiences, anecdotes, or real-life events. The primary goal of a narrative essay is to engage the reader and convey a meaningful message or insight through the storytelling.

Here are some key elements and tips on how to write a narrative essay:

• Choose a Topic: Select a topic that is meaningful to you and has a clear message or lesson. This could be a personal experience, a memorable event, or a significant moment in your life.
• Create a Strong Introduction: Begin your essay with a hook to grab the reader’s attention. Introduce the main idea or theme of your narrative and provide some context.
• Develop Characters and Setting: Describe the characters involved and the setting in which the story takes place. Provide enough detail to help the reader visualize the events.
• Build a Compelling Plot: Organize your narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Develop a plot that includes the main events, conflicts, and resolutions. Make sure there is a clear progression of events.
• Use Descriptive Language: Enhance your narrative with vivid and descriptive language. Appeal to the senses to create a more immersive experience for the reader.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Instead of simply stating facts, use descriptive details and dialogue to show the reader what happened. This makes the narrative more engaging and allows the reader to connect with the story emotionally.
• Include Dialogue: Incorporate dialogue to make the characters come alive. This adds authenticity to your narrative and can help convey emotions and relationships.
• Reflect on the Significance: At the end of the essay, reflect on the significance of the story. What did you learn from the experience? What message or lesson do you want the reader to take away?

Here’s a brief example:

• Title: “A Lesson in Perseverance”

Introduction:

“When I first stepped onto the stage, my heart raced with a mix of excitement and nervousness. Little did I know, that performance would teach me a valuable lesson about perseverance.”

“I could feel the spotlight on me as I began to play the first notes on my violin. Everything seemed to be going well until I hit a wrong note. Panic set in, but I knew I had to keep going…”

Conclusion:

“As I took my final bow, I realized that the true measure of success is not in avoiding mistakes but in how we handle them. That night, I learned the importance of perseverance and the beauty that can arise from overcoming challenges.”

Finally, each narrative essay is unique, and the structure and content will vary based on the writer’s style and the specific story being told.

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