FORMS OF NARRATION

 

The assimilation of information and retelling it for the benefit of the readers or the listeners is called narration. It is the process of creating the narrative. Narration takes place through the medium of a narrative text initiated by a narrator

 

Narration is a way of representing our experience in a sequence.

A narrative is an account of events presented serially following a meaningful pattern.

 The selection and ordering of events into a meaningful pattern are the two most important factors for the success of a narrative.

 

A narrative with a beginning, middle and end. Narratives can be oral or written depending on the medium we use.

 

Biographies and autobiographies, news stories and features, T.V serials or a sports commentary, novels, thrillers and romances, advertisements and speeches and all manners of conversations have their distinct forms of narratives.

 

WHAT IS NARRATIVE

The word narrative is derived from the Latin word narrare, which means ‘to recount’ or ‘to tell’. Narrative isa tool for knowing as well as telling. It helps us to absorb knowledge as well as to express it in a systematic manner.

The word ‘story’ is often used as a synonym of ‘narrative’, but, strictly speaking, ‘story’ is used to refer to the sequence of events presented in a narrative.

Narrative is basically a recounting of something that happened at some earlier time, at a distance from the time of narration. Narrative focuses our attention to a story, a sequence of events or an episode through the direct mediation of a teller or a narrator.

 

Teller or Narrator

1.    Tale or Narrative

2.   Addressee

Narratives must have a sense of progression; they usually lead us from one stage to another, with some sort of development. They involve the recall of happenings witnessed by the teller of the narrative.

 

Narrative, is a series of events or  ‘action’. No narrative is possible without an event or an action. The absence of an event or an action makes a piece of writing a mere description, nothing else.

 

Narrative Point of View

1.    The First Person Narrative

 The first person narrative is used as a way of narrating an event directly as an omniscient narrator. He has an omniscient knowledge of time, people and places. In this type of narrative the narrator is also a character within his own story and narrates the story from his own point of view.

 

 It enables the narrator to convey the inner thoughts or the internal reactions of the characters.

 

The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway uses the First Person Narrative mode.

 

2. The second person Narrative.

this mode of narrative the narrator refers to one of the characters as you and prompts the reader to believe that he is also a character in the narrative. This mode of narrative is used to create a sense of intimacy between the narrator and the reader.

 

3.  The third-person narrative

 

In this type of narrative each and every character is referred to as he, she, it or they and not as I or we or you . The narrator is never involved in the action of the narrative and narrates the episodes as an outsider or an onlooker. Third person singular, he/she is the most common type of the third-person narrative

 

Q ns

Define ‘ Narrative’

What are the two most important factors in a narrative What is Narrative Point of View?

 

 

VARIETIES OF NARRATION

The following forms of narration are generally used to transfer experience from one person to another through well  defined narrative structures:

1. poems

2. folktales

3. novels

4. short stories

5. films

6. essays

 7. newspaper reports

8. Advertisements

 

ELEMENTS OF NARRATION

Oral narrative of personal experience generally consists of the following six components:

 1. Abstract: What, in a nut shell, is the story about?

2. Orientation: Who, When, Where? What?

3. Complicating action: then what happened?

4. Evaluation: How is this interesting?

5. Resolution: What happened , finally?

6. Coda: Bringing back to the following situation..

Abstract: A narrative normally begins with an abstract. The title of a short story or the headline of a newspaper sketches the narrative in a nutshell and it may, therefore, be called the ‘abstract’ of the narrative.

Orientation: The orientation is often called the ‘setting’ of the narrative as it creates the spatiotemporal (

1. belonging to both space and time or to space–time.)

setting of the story. It also creates the necessary environment which enhances the overall meaning of the narrative. 

The orientation introduces and identifies the participants in the action, the time, place and the initial behaviour. 

The orientation section provides answers to the questions— Who? When? Where? Sentences describing the persons involved in an action, the time and place of occurrence of the event are used in orientation.

Complicating action:  The complicating action normally constitutes the longest section of a narrative. In this section, the ordered events of the narrative are reported and the actions of the protagonists are described in great details to heighten the impact of the narrative.

Evaluation :The evaluation highlights the relevance of the narrative to the narrator or the reader. The resolution tells us what happened finally and provides a sense of completion.

 Coda: The coda brings the narrator and the listener or the reader to the point at which they entered the narrative. 

A moral or a lesson learnt by the narrator or the reader may be included in a coda.

All the six elements are not equally crucial in a narrative.

Depending on the nature of the narrative the narrator has the choice of highlighting some of these elements. The ordering of the elements may be altered by a skilful narrator.

Salient features of a narrative:

1. Narrative is an account of events

2. Narrative is a sequence of events

 3. Narrative follows a predetermined pattern

4. Narrative structure begins with a setting of a scene and introduction of characters in an initial situation

5. Narrative unfolds tension, conflict or mystery to be resolved later

 6. Narrative builds up climax.

 7. Narrative proceeds towards resolution.

 

REPORTABILITY AND CREDIBILITY OF A NARRATIVE

• Narrative text
• Reportability
• Credibility

An event narrated in a text must satisfy the criteria of reportability and credibility. All events or all experiences are not worth reporting, and, therefore, the narrator has to decide if an event or an experience is worth reporting. Again, some events or actions are more reportable than others. The reportability or reliability of an action depends on the context and the relations of the narrators with the listeners or the readers. 

 Along with reportability, a narrative must have credibility, otherwise it will not be accepted by the readers or the listeners. The narrators or the writers must be very resourceful to bring in a sense of credibility in their narrative texts.

 

LINEAR AND NON-LINEAR NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

 When narrative proceeds smoothly in a straight line in a step-by step fashion is called a Linear narrative.

 Non-linear narrative is the opposite of a Linear structure as in this type of structure the narrative does not proceed in a straight line. The example of a nonlinear narrative structure is a story where the narrator narrates the story’s ending before the middle is finished.

 When a narrator narrates the events in a non-linear structure, that is, when he does not follow the sequence chronologically, he adds complexity to the plot of his narrative. 

The complex narrative structure often contain the following: 

1. flashback 

2. flash forwards 

3. repetition 

4. dream sequence 

5. different time frames 

6. backward story telling

Flashback: A flashback is a narrative technique in which a narrative presents a set of events that had occurred before the scenes immediately preceding it. 

Flash- forward: This technique is used to present a scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the narrative.

 Flashforward describes expected, projected or imagined events. or the reader to look at the story from different angles.

 

NARRATIVE PARAGRAPH 

Narrative paragraphs describe an experience. Sentences in a narrative paragraph may be arranged in several ways depending on the narrator’s purpose. Narrator can do it chronologically, according to time order.  While narrating the physical appearance of something,  it is however, not time that is important, it is space that matters. 

 But depending on the kind of the paragraph, the topic sentence may be in the middle or at the end of the paragraph. Points to Remember:

 1. Write a topic sentence with a strong controlling idea 

2. Arrange idea using chronological development 

3. Maintain coherence among the sentences

4. See that all the sentences are related to the topic sentence thematically. 

5. See that all the sentences support the controlling idea.

 

 DESCRIPTIVE OR EXPOSITORY PARAGRAPH 

While writing a descriptive or an expository paragraph the physical appearance of the thing described should be pointed out from the point of view of location. In this type of paragraph it is space that matters and this type of organization is called spatial organization. The topic sentence must be supported with details organized spatially. Descriptive writing uses sensory details to paint a picture of a place, a person, or an object and the controlling idea of a descriptive or expository paragraph is generally an attitude or an impression about the subject. Points to remember 

1. Organize ideas using spatial organization 

2. Use information or examples to support your topic sentence 

3. Arrange the sentences in a such a way that they support the main ideas 

4. Make it unified and coherent