The Narrative Essay

Students are sometimes required to write a short story or to give a brief account of some historical event. This is harder thdn writing a description, for it involves both ability to describe and ability to narrate.

Unless the reader is given some clear conception of the characters and object involved in the story, he can take no interest in it.
It is but a matter of dim shadows moving vaguely in darkness. But if the descriptions are too long and detailed they hold up the progress of the story and distract the reader's attention. Sir Walter Scott, in spite of his genius as a story-teller, sometimes fails in this way; and, what is a fault in a novel is a capital crime in a short story.

A preliminary writing narratives, then, is writing descriptions in as few words as possible---a single Adjective, perhaps.

The next step is to decide where to start---a very important matter. Read twenty or thirty good modern short stories and make a list of the opening incidents. You will find that very often the narrative opens in the middle of events, and that an apparently casual sentence or two later shows us what happened first. This is a particulary good way to write an exciting story. But it is a way that requires considerable skill. The best model for the beginner is undoubtedly the story that begins at the beginning, goes on to the middle and ends at the end.

Answers to questions in history or similar subject require a rather different treatment. If you are asked for an account of a battle, you are expected to give a "short" account of the events leading up to it as well ar of the consequences of the conqueror's victory.

But whatever the kind of narrative, the same qualities are necessary in the body of the story---proportion, correctness, and interest. Get your facts right, give enough detail to make the matter interesting but no detail which ir purposeless, and emphasise the different part of the story in exact proportion to their importance. Above all, use your imagination. Try to "see" the event you are describing and to make it as real to the reader as to your self.

Although in the technique of longer short stories great advances have been made lately, the very short story has never been better told than it was nearly twenty centuries ago. The brevity, the vividness, the quick movements of events, the use of revealing detail that are found in many of the short stories of the past continue to fascinate readers of today.

By: Admin  http://high-english-writing.blogspot.com/