ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING TECHNIQUES
Narrative
Making sure every thing in a piece of writing is connected and possesses internal logic and flow is vital if you want to engage readers, argues James McCreet
W
e sometimes say of the greatest authors that we’d read anything they wrote – even a shopping list. What makes them so good?
It’s true that Terry Pratchett or Stephen King or Hilary Mantel approach their subjects with a unique sensibility and voice, but it’s more than that. The DNA of all good writing is narrative.
Hold on, though . . . Isn’t narrative a very basic element? We know about it. How does it qualify as an ‘advanced’ technique? Let’s start with what it is. My dictionary says narrative is a story, or an account of a series of events in the order in which they occur. This is clearly inadequate and even wrong. We all know that stories don’t have to be told in order. Moreover, a narrative needn’t have a story, which is just one element of narrative.
Narrative is intuitive connectivity: everything connecting to everything else seamlessly, flawlessly and invisibly. Narrative is the essence of what makes any text readable. Instructions have a narrative. Reports have a narrative. Product descriptions and letters have narratives. It sounds so simple but it’s difficult to grasp because the better it is, the more subtle and obvious it seems. We read right over it. Which is the point.