THE NARRATIVE ESSAY

A few things.

The word narrative means, essentially, to tell a story.

In your essay, you want to tell a story.

We have been talking about telling a story in a non-linear fashion. Let's refresh.

Telling a linear story means telling a story that follows a straight line. It is not elliptical. It does not utilize flashbacks or different points of view. It is very straightforward. Telling a story in this fashion is very effective. Some of the best stories in the world are linear stories. The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger is a linear story and everyone knows the beginning, the middle and the end. This is not a post to bad-mouth the linear tale.

I want you to concern yourselves, though, with thinking about how stories are told in non-linear terms. For instance, you start in the present, go back to the past, go back to the past-past, return to the present, ruminate on the future and end in the same place where the story began.

I also want you to think about how to tell a story in which you tell us many little stories within the context of the big story. Here are two stories that I have told. I made them up on the spot. One is linear. One is not.

Okay. Now, that was silly and fun but I think you get the point. Here is another piece of advice when sitting down to write a narrative. Actually, it's pieces of advice from the great writer Kurt Vonnegut, famous for novels such as Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle. Check this out.





Even if you are writing a memoir, that is, a tale that comes straight from your own life, think about the elements of writing a story that Vonnegut has laid out for us.

In my opinion, writing any kind of tale involves making things up, embellishing. When I read Didion's "The White Album" I know she is cutting and pasting and thus, leaving stuff out and putting stuff in. Writing any good narrative, you see, is about making decisions about what stays and what goes. Often times, and in my experience, leaving "things" out is much more difficult than putting "stuff" in the piece. Writing a story is very hard work but it's also a lot of fun.

Here is a little narrative essay that I found on the net. It is from National Public Radio's "This I Believe," series. It is called:

THE 50 PERCENT THEORY OF LIFE
by Steve Porter

I believe in the 50-percent theory. Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse. I believe life is a pendulum swing. It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future.

Let’s benchmark the parameters: Yes, I will die. I’ve dealt with the deaths of both parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets. Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing. Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale.

Then there are those high points: romance and marriage to the right person; having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son’s baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while he’s swimming with the dogs, discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails, his imagination so vivid he builds a spaceship from a scattered pile of Legos.

But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically. This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory.

One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone that neighbors laughed. I felt chagrined at the wasted effort. Summer turned brutal — the worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime. The air-conditioner died, the well went dry, the marriage ended, the job lost, the money gone. I was living lyrics from a country tune — music I loathed. Only a surging Kansas City Royals team, bound for their first World Series, buoyed my spirits.

Looking back on that horrible summer, I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad. Worse than normal wouldn’t last long. I am owed and savor the halcyon times. They reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance that I can thrive. The 50 percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals’ recent slump, a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.

Oh, yeah, the corn crop? For that one blistering summer, the ground moisture was just right, planting early allowed pollination before heat withered the tops, and the lack of rain spared the standing corn from floods. That winter my crib overflowed with corn — fat, healthy three-to-a-stalk ears filled with kernels from heel to tip — while my neighbors’ fields yielded only brown, empty husks.

Although plantings past may have fallen below the 50-percent expectation, and they probably will again in the future, I am still sustained by the crop that flourishes during the drought.

Although raised in Kansas City, Steve Porter now lives on western Missouri farmland that has been in his family since the 1840s. In addition to coaching and watching baseball, Porter works in community relations for the Missouri Department of Transportation. He has planted only one corn crop on his farm.