Narration
Hannah Pezzi
Nicole Tierney
Kelsey King
Eilisha Manandhar
Definition
• Purpose: To tell a story often using
a sequence of events in
chronological order to do so
– Author tries to establish a particular
mood or impression
Characteristics: Of essay
• Sequence of events
• Tells a story
• Recount events or create
mood/impression
• Provide structure for an entire essay
• Structure based on sequence of events
or steps in an specific, logical order
Narrative Essay: Story Form
• Plot Structure:
–
–
–
–
introduction (base)
rising action (staggered)
climax (top of the mountain)
falling action (down the
other side)
– resolution (base)
– Often contain an underlining theme or moral to
what is being told
Narrative Essay: Story
Form
• Also should contain along with the
plot progression
– Setting
– Theme or lesson to the story
– Characters
Tips
• Use detail! This helps create picture.
• Use exact time, date, geographic location if
possible
• Eliminate repetitive sentences by using different
sentence structures or consolidating those ideas in
fewer sentences
• Typically written in 1st or third person
– 1st I
– 3rdHe, she, it
Tips Continued (POV)…
• Choose a Point of View (POV)
– Methods used to convey the plot (view of the
narrator)
• First Person: see the story from the character’s view
including their unspoken thoughts  protagonist
• Second Person: refers to the main character as “you”
– Reader is involved
• Third Person: Narrator is directly uninvolved
– “silent observer”
• Multiple Person
– Jumps between characters involved
Tips Continued…
• Show DON’T tell
– Use detail to create what is occurring
rather than just stating it
• Pick a tone: how you want the
piece to feel and the emotion it
implies
– Sets up a feeling
– Consider the message you want to
get across
Tips on Characters and Setting
• Quotes: how a character talks can imply a
lot about them
– Where they are from
– Give the readers insight into their thoughts
• Use details to clarify the people and places
in the story
– Relatable and interesting for the reader
– Make the characters seem real with your details
• The detail and character descriptions, in most cases,
should not be all positive or all negative  realistic
Grammatical Tips: verbs and
transitions
Use correct verb tenses and clear transitions
– Verb tense: tenses indicate temporal (time)
relationship
– Keep consistent
• Transitions: connect words that help link
ideas
– Without: narrative lack coherence
– Indicate order of events and signal shifts in time
Ideas for Gaining Interest
• Narrative Story
– Start with a flashback or flash forward
– Surprising event
• Process Essay
– Give background information on the topic
– How it started, Why its important, Who the
process at hand might influence especially if
the topic is directed at a certain audience
– Short anecdote
Examples
•
•
•
•
•
•
Biographies
Histories
Personal letters
Diaries
Conversation
Process Essay: Progression of
events
• Cause and effect
• Also in: poetry (ballads), fairy tales,
folk lore
Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder
Didn’t Call the Police
• Summary
• AP Eng-Narritive Summary.doc
Analysis
• Purpose: This teaches a lesson of doing the right thing and acting
instantly to one’s surroundings or else the consequences are fatal.
• Example of process essay:
– Outlines the murder in a series of steps
– “She turned off the lights, locked the door, started to walk 100
feet…”
• Plenty of detail
– Uses exact time: “3:20 a.m.”
– “…parked her red Fiat in a lot adjacent to Kew Gardens Long
Island…” (121)
– “At night…neighborhood shrouded in the slumbering
darkness…” (121)
• Uses flashback strategy, starts off with the event in past tense and
explains the murder in chronological order
– Grabs attention
Sample Essay Topics
1. Describe a life experience that has
shaped you into a person you are
today.
2. Describe how Perry’s childhood
influenced his decision surrounding
the Clutters, in In Cold Blood.
Sample Essay Topics
3. Write a story in third person point of
view about a historical event
following the format of a narrative
essay.
4. Analyze how multiple perspectives
in a narrative piece may influence
the scope the reader receives on
what is occurring as well as how the
event is perceived.
Citations
• Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Patterns for
College Writing. 10th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007.
Print.
• Narrative Essay. Easy Info. Web. 29 Oct. 2009.
<http://essayinfo.com/essays/narrative_essay.php>.
• Narrative Essay. Write Express. Web. 29 Oct. 2009.
<http://www.writeexpress.com/narrative-essay.html>.
• Narrative Writing. The Writing Site. Web. 29 Oct. 2009.
<http://www.thewritingsite.org/resources/genre/n
arrative.asp>.