Stories–narratives–we tell them endlessly. They are built into the fabric of our lives. Our very lives are the stories we tell about them. The meaning we make of existence comes clear in the stories we tell each other, and each is one of the untold gazillions accumulating over time. Each has a point or a purpose. Each involves events, actions, a conflict set in motion, consequences, perhaps the underlying motives and feelings of those involved, the lessons and insights gained through the experiences recounted.
The following paragraphs are shaped as narratives:
A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition–a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next–that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.
John Hersey, Hiroshima
We imagine the action that took place in the event referenced above, but the writer does not show us the exploding bomb, the fire and smoke and devastation all around. The wails of the living, and the dying.
Narration does more than suggest, it shows action:
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick–one never does when a shot goes home–but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to go there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly sticken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time–it might have been five seconds, I dare say–he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skywards like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.
George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"
Notice how Orwell works the elements of sight, sound, movement in space, and deep feeling into the account, revealing only at the last line he has been lying down, firing up at the huge animal whose final collapse reverberates in our imagination.
Most of our stories are of events not so unusual; they are of events more homely, domestic, ordinary. These events are no less potentially interesting and dramatic. An important strategy is to narrow your account down to the one or several key events and not to swamp the telling by including too much or anything that does not work to make your dramatic purpose clear, flowing, and forcefully delivered. Dialogue used sparingly may heighten the sense of immediacy and reality. It should reflect real conversation, minus whatever does not move the action forward or reveal character. Simple words and short sentences work best.
Graded exercise (#3) due week 4: Write a personal narrative about an experience that you and your audience will find entertaining or interesting. You should write a short introductory paragraph, a well-developed body paragraph or two, and a short concluding paragraph, for a total of about 350 words-500 words.
The following is a list of topic suggestions:
*A now-I-know-better experience.
*An experience that shows something of what people are made of, or of what you are made.
*An experience that shows the power of love, anger, desire, fear, etcetera.
*An experience that brought about a significant change in you.
*An experience that reveals the kind of family you have.
*An encounter with a "stranger" you can't now forget.
Sentence Types: last week we looked at the simple and compound sentence types. To review look at the following and identify each as simple or compound:
1. Right here, right now, I would like to smoke a cigarette and take a long walk along the coast.
2. Every day the hot sun glistens on my back.
3. I am living in the moment.
4. On break I ran across the street, and in the process, Jennice called me.
5. Hannah went to the best hospital, and her friends visited her to keep her spirits up.
6. Nothing is worse than being stuck in bed, but attentive friends can make a huge difference in
such situations.
7. The lock was broken and glass lay glinting in the moonlight.
8. Come here, for I want to say something in private.
9. He appeared to listen, but I understood his mind was elsewhere.
10. The stores had all closed, so we window shopped.
A complex sentence has one independent (stand alone) clause (one subject-verb combo) and at least one dependent (can't stand alone except as a fragment) clause. Short examples follow here:
Because he could not be reached by phone, I drove to his house, anxious to see him.
Jimmi walked to work after he crashed his bike.
Unless you give me another chance, we can go no further.
John is a man who loves women more than anything in life.
Bring me the book that you have been hiding.
I cooked and cleaned as the storm raged on.
A compound-complex sentence has at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause:
Jimmi hated to be seen as a hypocrite, so he kept his mouth closed while the others freely confessed to backsliding.
If you are to write effectively, your sentences must be clear; words are wasted otherwise.
After the sun dropped below the horizon, and as the moon began her ascent, we set up camp, eager for a chance to relax and eat and talk; each was possessed by the sense of great adventures to come.
Sentence Exercises for Homework: Do the following comma and fragment exercises at the URLs here posted:
And the following exercise on the distinct uses of the semi-colon and comma:
