The document discusses various narrative writing techniques including narration, point of view, anecdotes, incidents, sketches, and profiles. It explains that narration tells a story from one point of view and can use first or third person point of view. It also discusses omniscient and limited point of view. Additionally, it provides examples and definitions of anecdotes, incidents, sketches, and profiles as forms of narrative writing.
2. Narration is a form of
discourse that tells a story
with events in a series or
gives an account of an event
from one point of view.
3. In telling a story, the
writer may have vested
interest in the material or
may assume a more
subjective attitude.
4. A story that uses “I” as the narrator
adopts a technique called “first person
narration”.
This technique makes the author a part
of the story.
Another technique is the “third person
narration” which allows the examination
of experience more varied than that of an
individual.
6. POINT OF VIEW
In narrative writing, as there is need for
adopting a point of view (Weaver, 1957). One
does not jump about aimlessly in telling a story
any more than in writing a description; the
reader must know from what angle he is
expected to follow things.
The action must be in such a way that we
understand the relation of the narrator to it.
7. Omniscient Point of View
The most generally used point of view in
narrative writing is the omniscient.
Omniscience means the condition of
knowing everything about the series of
events and furthermore “everything”
means everything relevant.
8. This enables writers to include anything
that could have been seen by any observer
at any time.
When historians prepare to write an event,
he does an extensive amount of research,
reading the accounts left by many
participants and eyewitnesses, digesting
other contemporary sources and studying
official records.
9. When they have done this, they
assume that they have a
reasonably complete knowledge
of all the particulars and when
they writes, they presents the
entire event as passing under their
view.
10. Limited Point of View
Another technique of presentation is the
limited point of view.
By this method, writers hold themselves to
what one person might have seen or
experienced.
Sometimes that person is the chief character
of the story, so that we see the action
through the eyes of the one principally
11. Sometimes, the writer is a person having
but a slight connection with the story- a
minor character- though he/she must be
someone in a position to see the significant
happenings.
The narrator makes it a point not to go
outside this person’s experience but to
construct the entire story out of what
appeared to him/her from his/her point of
view.
13. An Anecdote is a short narrative usually told for the purpose of
bringing out some interesting or odd characteristics of a person
or place (Weaver, 1957).
It does not contribute to the main movement of a story, though
the point which it makes may add something to the background
or the atmosphere of the whole.
Its interest does not depend upon a dramatic infolding but upon
the future idea it is meant to disclose and this usually appears
near the end. Its chief characteristic is that it presents
individuals in an action, which illustrates some definite ideas,
some aspects of personality or character.
15. “ I remember years ago attending a public dinner to which the
governor of state was bidden. The chairman explained that His
Excellency could not be present for certain” good and real reason”
what the “ real” reasons were the presiding officers said he would
leave us to conjecture. This distinction between “good” and “real”
reasons is one of the most clarifying and essential in the whole
realsm of thought. We can readily give what seem to us “good”
reasons for being Catholic or a Mason, a Republican or Democrat,
an adherent or opponent of the League of Nations. But the real
“reasons ”are usually on a quite different plane.Of course the
importance of this distinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely,
recognized. The Baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the
Buddhist is not such because he happened to be born in a Buddhist
16. But it would be treason to his faith to acknowledge that his own
partiality for certain doctrines is due to the fact that his mother
was a member of the First Baptist Church of Oak Ridge. A savage
can give all sorts of reasons for his belief that it is dangerous to
step on a man’s shadow and a newspaper editor advance plenty
of arguments against the Bolshevik. But neither of them may
realize why he happens to be defending his particular opinion.”
-On Various Kinds of Thinking
by James Harvey Robinson
A Complete Course of Freshmen English by Harry Shaw, p.
452
18. The incident has the same self-contained character,
but its interest depends upon the unusual vivid or
illuminating character of the action itself (Ibid.,
1957).
What it narrates is exciting or appealing for its own
sake rather than for a dramatic structure or a point
of interpretation.
A small but interesting bit of action from a rescue,
a police raid or something like these might
constitute matter for an accident.
19. “ There is a story which is credible enough, it may
not be true of a practical joker who seeing a
discharged veteran carrying home his dinner,
suddenly called out ‘Attention’ where upon the man
instantly brought his hands down and lost his
mutton in the gutter. The drill has been thorough
and its effects had become embodied in man’s
nervous structure.”
-Habit by James
A complete Course in Freshmen English
21. The Sketch is usually a study of character, setting or
mood.
It is included in narrative writing though it gives little
space to action.
It is developed through highly selective detail and it may
use a narrative framework of action or make some use of
action in passing from one part of the subject to another.
Its aim is to present, more rapidly and selectively than the
full description, the significant features of something.
It can be used to furnish background or atmosphere for a
larger piece like the anecdote and incident ( Ibid., 1957).
23. “Any white who dares to be free of the myths of the race faces
awkwardness and risk and a need to defend himself, even
ironically, against Negroes themselves. For many Negroes prefer,
unconsciously or not, a continuation of the double standard; their
preference sometimes wears the guise of an insistence on
interpreting lack of prejudice as itself evidence of prejudice.
Negroes are too accustomed to prejudice that many find it easier to
deal with it a single standard of judgement for all men. It requires
strength and courage for whites to persist in the face of such
rejections. “ It is temptation to retreat into sentimentality instead
and to be caught in the net of condescension, to say, “ I would not
want to hurt you because you are a Negro and to suffocate the
Negros with respect.
24. Any white who refuses to be trapped into such an
escape and reaches the point of total liberation,
will see and understand and act freely. He can
never retreat no matter what the threats, either to
the sentimental lie or to traditional racist lie; for
the Negro is watching and waiting despite his
cynicism and his suspension with the beginning of
trust.”
- A complete Course in Freshman
English by Kenneth B,. Clark, Park
26. The Profile is a form of writing that shows the chief features of
the person being described in the outline (character
interpretation).
It does not pretend to be exhaustive, though it may treat key facts
about the life and character in considerable detail.
In this way, profiles often try to leave a dominant impression of
their subject.
When we finish a good profile, we have the feeling that we have
met and individual personally. It takes the quick perceptive look
to bring out some striking details of the man’s career, discuss his
habits and characteristics ways of tough, perhaps show him in
action and finally estimate him or summarize the general opinion
of him.
27. It mingles praised and criticism in such a way
that it gives a detached and balanced view. It is
realistic, but it usually depends on the interest
upon playing up the extraordinary, exciting or
unconventional facts in the life of the subject
(Ibid.,1957
It is realistic, but it usually depends on the
interest upon playing up the extraordinary,
exciting or unconventional facts in the life of
the subject (Ibid.,1957)
29. “Thinking as a Hobby”
William Golding
William Gerald Golding (1911) Was born in Cornwall,
England and was educated at Oxford University. During
World War II, he served in the British Navy (1940-1945). In
recent years, he has devoted himself to writing and
teaching, his hobbies being self-described as “thinking
classical Greek, sailing and archeology”. Among his highly
original writings are Lord of the Flies(1954) a symbolic
narrative of schoolboys who revert to savagery when
marooned on an island; Pincher Martin (1956); The Spire
(19545); The Pyramid (1967); The Scorpion God (1972).