The 7 Secrets of Magnificent Narrative Writing

Navigating your way through the various options when it comes to essay writing can feel like youre going through a minefield. Narrative, Descriptive, Expository, Persuasive †¦ they can all seem like different ways of saying the same thing. In fact, some essay styles are very similar but each one has its own quirks and style rules which can help writers communicate with their audience and, once you understand them, they can even help you to craft the best piece possible. 1. Understand What a Narrative Essay Entails Simply put, a narrative essay uses the act of story-telling in order to convey a message, teach a lesson, provide insight or educate the audience. Many times these stories are taken from a writers own personal experience, which can make starting the essay easier than writing other types of papers. Take full advantage of this when writing your rough draft. But a narrative paper also needs to involve the reader, so descriptions become especially important. 2. Let Your Rough Draft be Raw The power of any personal story lies in how raw it is. When writing the rough draft, dont hold anything back. If your story is a particularly powerful one, let yourself write the rough draft without restricting your language or descriptions. While you wont want to leave your final draft scattered with F-bombs, including them in your rough draft will give you the creative wiggle room you need to tell your story in your own way and retain its powerful message. Cleaning up the language and tightening the writing can be done in the revision stages. 3. Make it Personal, But Keep it Professional Although a narrative essay is built upon personal experience, the final result still needs to be polished and professional. A narrative essay isnt an open letter, it still needs to build towards a specific conclusion, insight or position on a topic. When needed, include research data, anecdotal evidence and other forms of outside research in order to give greater weight to your main point. This also gives you the chance to leave your own story for a moment, capitalize on outside research, and then bring the readers back to your personal story in the conclusion. 4. Craft Descriptions With the Audience in Mind Your readers wont be coming into this paper with the same background knowledge you have on the subject. Be sure your descriptions are vivid and well written. Avoid using adverbs like very, almost, nearly or quite too often. Instead swap out phrases which use these adverbs with better descriptions. A house isnt quite old, its seasoned, decrepit or ancient. Using more vivid language brings your words to life and makes the audience feel more involved. 5. Jump Into the Deep End Beginning your essay with a bit of back story ay seem like a good idea, but getting right to the action will engage your readers from the first sentence. Begin your essay with a powerful statement or by jumping into your story just as the action is happening. You can backtrack and give the background information once you begin the body of your paper. 6. Know Where Youre Going Using a personal story to write an essay makes you vulnerable to getting off track easily. Before you begin relating your own story, be sure youve hammered out the rough draft for both your introduction and conclusion ahead of time. This way youll always know what you want your final point to be. If you get lost on a tangent halfway through, you can refer back to your rough drafts to get back on track. 7. Know How to Cite A narrative essay may be built upon a personal story, but citing other works can still play a major role. In many other essay types, its normal to cite as you go, including small references to papers, books or other resources as a part of the text. For a narrative essay, however, keep all citations until the end and include them in a Works Cited page at the end as opposed to including them within the main text. This will help your audience to follow your story easily without any disruption.

Ernest Hemingway about Writing Fictions

Ernest Hemingway about Writing Fictions Write Fictions like Ernest Hemingway The heritage of Ernest Hemingway is a remarkable phenomenon not only in the prose of the 20th century but also in the history of world literature in general. He created a big number of masterful stories which influenced the formation of many later known authors. Despite the fact that there is no Hemingway’s single book on the art of writing fiction created by him, literary critics and researchers found a lot of interesting things in his letters, articles and reviews of other books. Let’s take a look at Hemingway’s aces in the hole that made his style so unique. The best way to overcome a writing block is to start with one true sentence Hemingway mentions this method in his famous memoir A Moveable Feast, in which he argues that the truest sentence is an excellent means to start and promote a new story. According to him, there are no reasons to worry, as if you have created one true sentence about something you know or have experienced, you have a basis and can move on. Stop in the moment when you know what thing and events will take place next The great writer always pays extremely big attention to keeping the source of his imagination full, rather than writing a certain number of words per day. The prerequisite for making steady progress is to stop when the writing process runs smoothly and when you know for sure what will happen next. In this case, you won’t be exhausted as a writer and never get stuck. Think of the story only during working hours This point correlates with the previous one. Hemingway recommends not thinking of the story in the intervals between work sessions, in that way you are still subconsciously working on the story. Thinking about it consciously you make your brain tired and exhausted before the real work starts. Following Hemingway’s example, you can be distracted – exercise and thereby harden the body, or read a lot and find some food for thought. By the way, you shouldn’t completely empty your writing source; always leave something on the bottom. Reread the previously created materials to move on This rule is aimed to maintain the principle of continuity. Every day Hemingway read (and corrected if it was necessary) from the very beginning everything he had written, and only after that went further from the moment at which he stopped previously. Make an emotion instead of describing it Observation of life isn’t the only decisive factor for good writing, it’s better to consider it as one the most crucial points for creating worthy stories. You should watch some external changes in the world, notice what internal shifts occur in you and identify precisely what thing caused the emotion. If you can clearly define and depict it in the story, your readers will also experience the same emotion. In addition to that, you should keep balance and sequence of motion and fact in order to make the emotion valid right now, in a year or in twenty years. A pencil is the main means of writing For composing letters or magazine articles Hemingway often used a typewriter, but when he dealt with serious work he preferred a pencil. Hemingway explained that while working with a pencil writer gets three different sights at his work – when reading it over when it’s typed and in the proof. The author can see whether the message sent to the reader is correctly perceived or make some corrections. Be brief Similar to Shakespeare’s Brevity is the Soul of Wit, Hemingway also preferred to be brief. He argued that prose writing has its own laws and they are strict and immutable as well as the laws of physics or mathematics.