6.3: Planning a Narration Essay

Major narrative events are most often conveyed in chronological order, the order in which events unfold from first to last. Stories typically have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and these events are typically organized by time. However, sometimes it can be effective to begin with an exciting moment from the climax of the story (a “flash-forward” such as, “How had my perfectly-ordinary Saturday night ended up with my helping a desk sergeant fill out a Missing Persons report for my 13-month-old brother?”) or a pivotal moment from the past (a “flash-back” like, “The day my father insisted I go to college despite my believing I didn’t belong there—that day, somehow, had prepared me for this moment.”) before returning to a chronological narration. Certain transitional words and phrases aid in keeping the reader oriented in the sequencing of a story.

Consider Time

While you consider the order of events of your story, don’t forget to indicate the passage of time to your reader. As one event connects to the next—over minutes, hours, or years—be sure to indicate the passage of time with effective transitional words and phrases. These keep your narrative moving from one scene to the next and help your reader keep track of what (and when) events are happening and how everything connects together; this is especially important if you are using flash-backs or -forwards, or if you are breaking up the chronology of your story.

after/afterward	as soon as	at last
during	meanwhile	soon
next	at that time	first, second, third
until	then	later
while	now	finally

Planning a Narration with Audience in Mind

When writing a narrative, audience becomes a key concern. Remember, you are telling the story. Your audience only gets the details you tell them. When and where is your story set? (Don’t just begin by saying, “One day, . . .” Even a short phrase such as “One chilly January evening years ago in Mobile, Alabama” helps to orient your readers by providing a time and place—a context— for your narrative.) Who are the characters? (Don’t just name them—quickly establish their relationship to you, such as, “My brother Bruno—the one we don’t talk about.”) What do they look like? Similar to the descriptive essay, you have to “paint” the scene for your reader. Consider what’s important to your overall purpose as well: do you need a page-long description of your house when the story takes place in the back yard?

Show, Don’t Tell Similar to the above, remember that your description matters. You are telling the story, what you describe for your readers is all they get, so don’t neglect important descriptions and keep distinct the differences between objective and subjective description. “It was a cold day” doesn’t really communicate anything to your reader. You are “telling” them it was “cold,” but one person’s “cold” is another person’s “normal.” Instead, aim for “showing” your reader through description: “My face was instantly numb as I stepped outside.” With this sentence, we not only get an idea of how cold it was, but we have combined saying it was cold with action that moves the story along. By the same token, you usually want to be accurate in conveying your responses to a given set of circumstances. Overstatement—hyperbolizing—can lead your reader to wonder about the genuineness of those responses. If, for example, your Door Dash delivery’s being ten minutes late is an integral part of your narrative, you’ll want to include that, of course; but your reader might question your interpretation of the situation if you were to say in complete seriousness, “The late delivery utterly crushed my hopes for our perfect evening.” That said, though, hyperbole, and understatement as well, can be powerful tools if you want to want to achieve a humorous effect. Here, for example, is Leola Evans, a resident of Chase County, Kansas, describing what happened when a tornado hit her and her husband Paul’s house in 1949: “The wind got louder, then the windows blew out, and I realized we were in trouble when the heat stove went around the corner and out a wall that had just come down” (William Least Heat-Moon, PrairyErth (a deep map) [Mariner, 1999], p. 148). “We were in trouble” seems a very mild –and, to most people’s minds, very funny—way of putting things, given what Evans describes happening around her and her husband.