Monday, April 22, 2013

Writing for Story

I found the two examples given during chapter II and III to become incredibly useful throughout this book. As directed, I focused particularly on chapter VI, but also want to draw note to some of the definitions of narrative described in chapter VII. Initially, I was a little thrown off by the authors snooty-ness in regards to my (the readers/authors) hatred for outlines, since I actually typically write outlines for almost every paper I write. However, this aside, the prescribed outline (complication-development 123-resolution) format was not one that I have ever used. I also typically outline a research paper, where the outline is not based on a story, rather an compilation of academic quotes and filling arguments in order to support a thesis. With that being said, I found it particularly helpful that Franklin gave us improving examples of this outline structure, including for the pieces we'd already read. Since this type of story (and outline) is new to me, I'm interested to see what sort of process goes into narrowing down a story to 5 short sentences. For me, this seems that it would be the most difficult. 

In chapter VII, several descriptions and definitions of narrative are also given. This interested me because we've posed the question as a class: "What is narrative writing and how does this narrative journalism class differ from some other classes in the English department (eg. other journalism classes, creative non-fiction)? Franklin writes: "Remember that narrative tells your story and that your story, like the people and events upon which it is based, is a living thing..." Perhaps this isn't quite the answer to the question posed above, but the into and sections about each type of narrative pointed out some great purposes for narrative writing: "good narrative will make the reader forget he's sitting in an easy chair" , "threats are maintained by cues embedded in the narrative" , "showing your story occur rather than telling how it occurs." 

1 comment:

  1. "I'm interested to see what sort of process goes into narrowing down a story to 5 short sentences"

    I know right? This makes me want to go back and narrow down almost all of my writing (SIP included) to five short sentences just so I could find the leak in the hull of my ship.

    "narrative tells your story and that your story, like the people and events upon which it is based, is a living thing." this also helps me a lot, I felt at first that I didn't know how to write narrative journalism, but having a definition makes me feel a lot safer when approaching my next piece. I'm glad that I play a part in it, but not very much of one, like the Goldilocks of Journalism and Creative Non-Fiction.

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