Narrative Paper

When most people think of narratives, they think of stories. We are surrounded by narratives—the television shows and movies that we watch, the books that we read, even sporting events and advertising make heavy use of narrative structure to make their products appealing to us.
Most students do not see the place that narrative has in other kinds of writing, however. Any time you use an example, any time you give details, any time you structure a piece of writing to move from background information to a major revelation, you are using the ideas of narrative. Being able to develop these skills allows you to more expertly develop many of the elements that make any kind of writing effective: structure and organization, description, pacing, tone, and development.
Your job for this assignment will be to create a narrative of your own. You will have the option to choose between fiction (entirely imaginary) and nonfiction (entirely truthful and based on real events) narratives, and from there, you will have other options. I realize that this assignment can be a challenge, as many students do not consider themselves to be able storytellers. However, the specifics of the assignment should allow all students to successfully create a narrative.

The basic guidelines for this assignment are as follows:

3-10 pages, following all formatting guidelines from the style sheet.

You should read the section on narrative writing that begins on page 141 of your textbook. We will also cover these materials extensively in class.

You may choose to write either a nonfiction narrative or a fictional narrative.

If you choose nonfiction, you must choose a story that can be tied to a particular theme—a central emotion, idea, or lesson that will be the basis for the story. You will need to include a short paragraph at the beginning of the piece explaining what your theme is. You are allowed to use “I” for this type of narrative. Also be aware that it is possible to embellish and build upon a real-life story and add new ideas—this will change the narrative into one of fiction, however.

If you choose a fictional narrative, you will need to choose a particular genre—a category of story, like Western, mystery, fairy tale, whatever. You will need to include a brief paragraph at the beginning of the piece explaining what genre you have selected. It is possible to mix multiple genres for this piece, but if you do so, you will need to explain your choices (and list the genres) in your prefatory piece. While you are welcome to adapt or outright steal elements from other narratives, it is not acceptable to simply plagiarize an existing narrative. While individual elements may be recycled, this should be YOUR story—it must be clearly your own work. If you are unsure of what this entails, please see me.
You will need to make use of concepts we have already worked on in class in terms of defining, describing, and explaining things as your narrative progresses.

Narratives are much more open to stylistic play than other forms of writing. It is possible, for example, to include fragmented sentences that would be unacceptable in a more formal paper in a story, particularly if you are trying achieve a certain effect, or mimic a certain speech pattern. You are also allowed to use dialogue (though be aware that extensive use of dialogue will require the adjustment of the overall page length of the assignment). Regardless of the particular narrative you are working with, however, you will need to follow the basic rules of narrative structure (organization and structure, plot elements character, etc.) that we will cover in class. If you have particular concerns or goals for your narrative that you believe may need special attention, please see me.