Remembering and Narration

Remembering and Narration

Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers

Chapter Four

Steve Wood

TCCC

Remembering and NarrationRemembering and narration are two of the most fundamental skills in writing and are two of the most fundamental human activities.

As your book points out, the value in writing about memories is ‘the power to teach you and, through empathy with your readers, to inform or convince them as well.’

Convergence

Memory and narration represent the convergence of two important ideas.

•The power of writing

•The thermodynamic miracle

Power of Writing

As John D. MacDonald pointed out, the great power of writing is in its ability to make perishable thought permanent.

From the JDM Homepage

JOHN DANN MACDONALD 1916-1986

“Born in Sharon, Pa., MacDonald as a young boy wished he had been born a writer, believing that they were a separate "race," marked from birth. But by the time he died he had published 78 books, with more than 75 million copies in print. He graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in business; worked at several menial jobs before earning his MBA from Harvard; married and produced a son; and served in the OSS in India during WW2. He wrote nearly 500 short stories, and published his first novel ,The Brass Cupcake, in 1950.”

Thermodynamic Miracle

• A thermodynamic miracle is an event against which the odds are so great the sheer fact that it happens makes it a miracle.

• For example, if the Atlanta Falcons won the Super Bowl, that would be pretty miraculous.

Alan Moore’s Miracle

In his comic book series The Watchmen, Alan Moore writes of Dr. Manhattan, a super-hero obsessed with finding and observing a thermodynamic miracle.

The Thermodynamic Miracle and the Story of Your Life

• The uniqueness of your life means that your story is also unique.

• You are the only person who can completely and honestly tell your story.

• If you don’t tell it, no one else will.

Five Techniques for Writing about Memories

1. Use detailed observations of people, places, and events.

2. Create specific scenes set in time and place that show the reader instead of just telling them.

3. Note changes, contrasts, and especially, conflicts.

Five Techniques for Writing about Memories 2

4. Make connections between past and present.

5. Discover and focus on a main idea.

The Tools of Fiction

• Even though writing about memories is not the same as crafting a novel or short story, many of the same techniques used by professional novelists are used to craft a well-told narrative.

Plot

• Plot is the arrangement of events in a narrative around a dramatic situation.

• A dramatic situation is a person involved in a conflict.

• Stories involve conflict; without it, there is no suspense, no plot.

Four Types of Plots

• Person (protagonist) vs. Person (antagonist)• Person vs. Nature• Person vs. Society• Person vs. Self

• Of these, William Faulkner said that the last was the only one really worth writing about.

Faulkner’s 1950 Nobel Prize Address

“[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

MICE PrincipleFrom Orson Scott Card

• According to Orson Scott Card, there are four basic elements in any story: Milleu, Idea, Character, and Event.

• All stories possess all four, but these elements do not possess the same importance in each story.

• One decision a writer must make is to decide on that relative importance.

MICE PrincipleFrom Orson Scott Card

• Milleu – setting, the time and place of the story

• Idea – the theme or truth of the story, given either as an “Is” (a description of the way things are) or an “Ought” (a prescription of how we ought to behave)

• Character – the people within a story• Event – the plot of the story

Point of View (POV)

POV is the angle from which a story is told.

Four Basic POVs

• First person POV is when a story is told by a character in the story (using “I”).

• Third person omniscient POV is when the story is told from an outside, all-knowing narrator.

• Third person limited omniscient POV is when the story is told by an outside narrator who sees into the mind of one character, but only that one.

• Third person objective POV is when the story is told by an outside narrator who tells the story with simple external description only.