Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools



Creating the Narrative: Write What You Know

This essay explains and provides a methodology a teacher may present to his or her information, chiefly memories with which to produce written narratives and discover that others will enjoy and profit from the stories they tell. The techniques are those that have been employed by North Carolina story tellers for generations. The methods are simple and they are proven.

A Power Point presentation is also available, but this writer urges teachers to use the current presentation only as a starting point. Furthermore, this writer urges teachers to write their own stories in order to model the results he or she seeks from the students.

Keep it simple: Write What You Know

Writing a narrative is simple, provided the writer knows where to look for the story ideas and the detail that make a story attractive, edifying and entertaining. Every one has stories to tell, many stories, many more than he or she can possibly imagine. Yet if I were to ask an individual to tell a story, he or she would likely be tongue-tied. But not so very far from where that same tongue is firmly glued to the roof of the mouth is an attic full of memories. Properly explored, the brain each of us has resting comfortably on our shoulders will prove to be a treasure trove of memories that will enable us to create a narrative. How? It’s a matter of the proper technique.

Our memories store every moment of every day. Our five senses pour in a flood of data that records our daily existence one day at a time. People who are able to remember all of this without effort call the impact of this mountain of information a curse. At the opposite end of the memory spectrum, the idiot savant flaunts his or her peculiar skill at presenting a weather record. Not much use that. What’s needed is a thread leading through a stream of memories of a particular incident with specific groups of people leading to a certain event. This is the hard part.

Our brains represent unlimited space. The terabyte drives cyber geeks rave about are dwarfed by the contents found in a single human cranium.

This is why the diseases of dementia, especially Alzheimer’s syndrome, are hideous. All the information, the memories and knowledge, that make each of us who we are, is systematically stripped away. The vast storehouse is eventually bare. But that is another matter for another workshop, another today.

The problem with the average human memory is that the amplitude of space that stores virtually every idea, and sensory perception, every bit of fact is that the information unsystematically dumped into the repository, not catalogued, not valued, and oft times repeated in different portions of the brain. This leads to our first important question:

How do we find out what’s in the attic? How do we find “story?”

Because of the manner in which humans create memory, the student, or for that matter any writer, often does not know the object of his or her search until the story is discovered. Human memory lacks a catalogue, a list, a structured compendium of the brain’s contents. Memories aren’t hidden. But the unvarnished truth is that except for a paltry handful of memories, we have no immediate recollection of what is in our attic. There is no guarantee that where a search of memory begins will lead sequentially on a path to a specific ending. Most often where the story teller begins with the memory gathering exercise has little to do with where the story is eventually found. The most important understanding to be garnered is that memories then to link one to another through a form of serendipitous connectivity.

Make lists

Therefore the writer, in quest of creative material from life experience, must first begin with a sort of scrap booking. The easiest technique is to make lists. List schools attended; list homes in which he or she has lived; list cities visited; list vacation locations; list jobs worked. Where a list begins is of no consequence. The cataloguing process requires that the searcher start with a single thread and (through a methodical process) follow that thread from memory to memory. Eventually a story will be found through this “scrap booking” in the “attic.”

It’s best not to look for any particular memory. Emphasize to students that they are not looking for a specific memory. At this point in the process they are looking for threads to follow. Next, take any memory, any single scrap, store it in a journal and then move to the next memory. Ultimately, the scrapbook will create compilations of pictures of places and people that ultimately will yield stories. This mental catalogue or scrapbook is only the beginning of the process.

The catalogue process

For this particular exercise begin with your earliest memory. Where is this place (noticed I’ve switched into the literary present tense)? Focus on the people associated with the place; visualize the streets and buildings, daily activities and eventually you will arrive at a point at which you can begin to recall events that occurred. We also must deal with all five senses even though memory may not include input from all five.

Try some or all of the following questions. As you plumb a memory, you may think of others:

1. Where are you?

2. What time of day is it?

3. What is the weather?

4. What is the season?

5. How old are you?

6. What do you hear?

7. What do you see?

8. What do you smell?

9. Who is there?

10. What is happening?

The process outline above should be repeated with the individual elements of any list whether it involve people, places, animal, or events. Not every sense will be involved with every memory. For instance, the aroma of beef browning with onion and garlic in olive oil is the hallmark of my grandmother’s kitchen. I have no aromatic memory when recalling my classroom days teaching in West Cameroon 50 years ago. Color is there in abundance: green, green in a variety of hues is the hallmark there.

There is one other quirk I continue to encounter. Every time I tell a story, more memories return. Some aren’t worth recording, but some stand out and call for inclusion. My advice is to always have paper and writing implement available. When time next allows, and as quickly as possible, record the new recollection before it drifts away, evanescent, smoke like. My own experience is that stories once begun continue to evolve and grow in richness.

This now raises the question of how to determine when any recollection is worth converting into a story. None of us has unlimited time that would enable us to verbally record every memory. The question then is what to choose. Fortunately a simple formula exists that has been followed by every story teller. The narrative must have structure and to be truly entertaining and instructive, good narratives usually have a twist at the end that underscores the message of the author. Hardy’s heroine Tess Derbyfield dies on the scaffold, her single most power expression of will being the passionate murder of the man who has ruined her life. The Prodigal Son returns home to find the prodigality of his father’s love when the reader might have expected retribution.

What makes a story worth telling?

The next question is what makes a “tellable” story? Certain features of narrative make the story interesting. They need to move from a beginning to an end. We call that structure the “narrative arc.” Usually there are four basic steps:

a. Exposition

b. Complication

c. Climax

d. Resolution

Provide information for each of these four elements and the outline of a story has been created. But that’s not enough. We need to flesh out the narrative with the detail that makes a narrative both entertaining and believable. This is when the ability to plumb the depths of our memory becomes invaluable. But where to start?

People and events flow upside down

Answer the questions above and you have created the beginning of a story, but only a beginning. To create a story that is truly entertaining and informative you must answer the following questions. After all your intent is to create a story that interests the reader. The story must move.

a. What are the people, activities and details that make the situation normal, everyday, humdrum?

b. What are the things that turned the day upside down?

c. Only when you have a memory in which the story flow moves from right side up to upside down, do you have a narrative that will hold your reader, audience, or listener.

d. Does anyone, especially you as narrator, learn anything? Is there a moral?

e. You know you do when you are able to move from narrative to the confessional line “From then on…,” “Never again…,” “From that day to this….”

Polishing the apple

With the information, the memory scrapbook you have created you are ready to begin polishing your narrative. The following questions with aid your production effort:

1. What are the telling details that create the exposition with its setting in time and space?

2. Who are the people populating this particular mini-universe?

3. Why are they special in this setting?

4. In the narrative flow, which details should come first, second, last?

5. How do you present the twist that has turned your world upside down?

Practice makes perfect

Like fine wines, stories improve with time and retelling. Vocal recitation allows the author to refine the final product. The author as vocal story teller is able through audience reaction to determine what effects, words, and inflections work and don’t work. All of this takes time. However, with effort, practice and experience, the author learns how to create a flow of narratives from his or her life story.

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