Narrating is a basic strategy for representing action and events. It can be used to report on events, present information, illustrate abstract ideas, support arguments, explain procedures, and entertain with stories. This chapter begins by describing and illustrating five basic narrating strategies, it includes two types of process narrative—explanatory and instructional—and it concludes with some sentence strategies you might use to get started drafting a narrative.

Narrating Strategies

Strategies such as calendar and clock time, temporal transitions, verb tense, action sequences, and dialogue give narrative its dynamic quality, the sense of events unfolding in time. They also help readers track the order in which the events occurred and understand how they relate to one another.

Use calendar and clock time to create a sequence of events.

One of the simplest ways of constructing a clear time sequence is to place events on a timeline, with years or precise dates and times clearly marked. Look, for example, at the excerpted portion of a timeline in Figure 14.1, which presents a series of events in the history of U.S. savings bonds. A timeline is not itself a narrative, but it shares with narrative two basic elements:

Look now at a brief but fully developed narrative reconstructing the discovery of the bacterial cause of stomach ulcers. This narrative was written by Martin J. Blaser for Scientific American, a journal read primarily by nonspecialists interested in science. As you read, notice the same narrating strategies you saw in the timeline in Figure 14.1: sequencing events in chronological order and specifying when each event occurred:

In 1979 J. Robin Warren, a pathologist at the Royal Perth Hospital in Australia, made a puzzling observation. As he examined tissue specimens from patients who had undergone stomach biopsies, he noticed that several samples had large numbers of curved and spiral-shaped bacteria. Ordinarily, stomach acid would destroy such organisms before they could settle in the stomach. But those Warren saw lay underneath the organ’s thick mucus layer—a lining that coats the stomach’s tissues and protects them from acid. Warren also noted that the bacteria were present only in tissue samples that were inflamed. Wondering whether the microbes might somehow be related to the irritation, he looked to the literature for clues and learned that German pathologists had witnessed similar organisms a century earlier. Because they could not grow the bacteria in culture, though, their findings had been ignored and then forgotten.

Warren, aided by an enthusiastic young trainee named Barry J. Marshall, also had difficulty growing the unknown bacteria in culture. He began his efforts in 1981. By April 1982 the two men had attempted to culture samples from 30-odd patients—all without success. Then the Easter holidays arrived. The hospital laboratory staff accidentally held some of the culture plates for five days instead of the usual two. On the fifth day, colonies emerged. The workers christened them Campylobacter pyloridis because they resembled pathogenic bacteria of the Campylobacter genus found in the intestinal tract. Early in 1983 Warren and Marshall published their first report, and within months scientists around the world had isolated the bacteria.

—MARTIN J. BLASER, “The Bacteria behind Ulcers”

In addition to calendar time (years, months, days), writers sometimes also refer to clock time (hours, minutes, seconds). Here is a brief narrative from an essay profiling the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital in New York City:

9:05 p.m. An ambulance backs into the receiving bay, its red and yellow lights flashing in and out of the lobby. A split second later, the glass doors burst open as a nurse and an attendant roll a mobile stretcher into the lobby. When the nurse screams, “Emergency!” the lobby explodes with activity as the way is cleared to the trauma room. Doctors appear from nowhere and transfer the bloodied body of a black man to the treatment table. Within seconds his clothes are stripped away.

—GEORGE SIMPSON, “The War Room at Bellevue”

Use temporal transitions to establish an action sequence.

Whereas writers tend to use calendar and clock time sparingly, they regularly use temporal transitions such as when, at that moment, before, and while to establish a clear sequence of actions in narrating onetime or recurring events.

Onetime Events To see how temporal transitions work, let us look at the concluding paragraphs of a remembered-event essay in which Russell Baker recounts what happened after his final flight test, his last chance to become a pilot. The “he” Baker refers to is the flight check pilot, T. L. (nicknamed “Total Loss”) Smith:

Back at the flight line, when I’d cut the ignition, he climbed out and tramped back toward the ready room while I waited to sign the plane in. When I got there he was standing at a distance talking to my regular instructor. His talk was being illustrated with hand movements, as pilots’ conversations always were, hands executing little loops and rolls in the air. After he did the falling-leaf motion with his hands, he pointed a finger at my instructor’s chest, said something I couldn’t hear, and trudged off. My instructor, who had flown only with the pre-hangover Baker, was slack-jawed when he approached me.

“Smith just said you gave him the best check flight he’s ever had in his life,” he said. “What the hell did you do to him up there?”

“I guess I just suddenly learned to fly,” I said.

—RUSSELL BAKER, “Smooth and Easy”

Look closely at the two transitions in the first sentence. The word when presents actions in chronological order (first Baker stopped the plane, and then Smith got out). While performs a different function, showing that the next two actions occurred at the same time (Baker waited to sign in as the check pilot returned to the ready room). There is nothing complicated or unusual about this set of actions, but it would be hard to represent them in writing without temporal transitions.

Recurring Events Temporal transitions also enable writers to narrate recurring events. In the following narrative by Monica Sone about her daily life in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, we can see how transitions (highlighted) help the writer represent actions she routinely performed:

First I typed on pink, green, blue and white work sheets the hours put in by the 10,000 evacuees, then sorted and alphabetized these sheets, and stacked them away in shoe boxes. My job was excruciatingly dull, but under no circumstances did I want to leave it. The Administration Building was the only place which had modern plumbing and running hot and cold water; in the first few months and every morning, after I had typed for a decent hour, I slipped into the rest room and took a complete sponge bath with scalding hot water. During the remainder of the day, I slipped back into the rest room at inconspicuous intervals, took off my head scarf and wrestled with my scorched hair. I stood upside down over the basin of hot water, soaking my hair, combing, stretching and pulling at it.

—MONICA SONE, “Camp Harmony”

Use verb tense to place actions in time.

In addition to time markers like calendar time and temporal transitions, writers use verb tense to represent action in writing and to help readers understand when each action occurred in relation to other actions.

Onetime Events Writers typically use the past tense to represent onetime events that began and ended in the past. Here is a brief passage from a remembered-person essay by Amy Wu. In addition to the temporal transitions once and when in the opening sentence, which let readers know that this particular event occurred many years earlier, the writer also uses simple past-tense verbs (highlighted):

Once, when I was 5 or 6, I interrupted my mother during a dinner with her friends and told her that I disliked the meal. My mother’s eyes transformed from serene pools of blackness into stormy balls of fire. “Quiet!” she hissed, “do you not know that silent waters run deep?”

—AMY WU, “A Different Kind of Mother”

In the next example, by Chang-Rae Lee, we see how verb tense can be used to show more complicated relationships between past actions that occurred at different times in the past:

When Uncle Chul amassed the war chest he needed to open the wholesale business he had hoped for, he moved away from New York.

—CHANG-RAE LEE, “Uncle Chul Gets Rich”

You do not have to know that amassed is simple past tense and had hoped is past perfect tense to know that the uncle’s hopes came before the money was amassed. In fact, most readers of English can understand complicated combinations of tenses without knowing their names.

Let us look at another verb tense combination used frequently in narrative: the simple past and the past progressive:

When Dinah Washington was leaving with some friends, I overheard someone say she was on her way to the Savoy Ballroom where Lionel Hampton was appearing that night—she was then Hamp’s vocalist.

—MALCOLM X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

This combination of tenses plus the temporal transition when shows that the two actions occurred at the same time in the past. The first action (“Dinah Washington was leaving”) continued during the period that the second action (“I overheard”) occurred.

Occasionally, writers use the present instead of the past tense to narrate onetime events. Process narratives and profiles typically use the present tense to give the story a sense of “you are there” immediacy:

Slowly, the dank barroom fills with grease-smeared mechanics from the truck stop up the road and farmers straight from the fields, the soles of their brogans thick with dirt clods. A few weary souls make their way over from the nearby sawmill. I sit alone at the bar, one empty bottle of Bud in front of me, a second in my hand. I drain the beer, order a third, and stare down at the pink juice spreading outward from a crumpled foil pouch and onto the bar.

I’m not leaving until I eat this thing, I tell myself.

—JOHN T. EDGE, “I’m Not Leaving Until I Eat This Thing”

Recurring Events Verb tense, usually combined with temporal transitions, can also help writers narrate events that occurred routinely:

Many times, walking home from work, I would see some unknowing soul venture across that intersection against the light and then freeze in horror when he saw the cars ripping out of the tunnel toward him. . . . Suddenly, the human reflex would take over, and the pedestrian would jackknife first one way, then another, arms flaying the empty air, and often the car would literally skim the man, brushing by him so close it would touch his coat or his tie. . . . On one occasion, feeling sorry for the person who had brushed against the speeding car, I hurried across the intersection after him to cheer him up a little. Catching up with him down by 32nd I said, “That was good legwork, sir. Excellent moves for a big man!” but the man looked at me with an empty expression in his eyes, and then moved away mechanically and trancelike, heading for the nearest bar.

—WILLIE MORRIS, North toward Home

Notice also that Morris shifts to the simple past tense when he moves from recurring actions to an action that occurred only once. He signals this shift with the temporal transition on one occasion.

Use action sequences for vivid narration.

The narrating strategy we call action sequences uses active verbs and modifying phrases and clauses to present action vividly. Action sequences are especially suited to representing intense, fast-moving events like chase scenes and sports. The following example by George Plimpton shows how well action sequences work to show what happened during a practice scrimmage. Plimpton participated in the Detroit Lions football training camp while writing a book profiling professional football. This is what he experienced:

Since in the two preceding plays the concentration of the play had been elsewhere, I had felt alone with the flanker. Now, the whole heave of the play was toward me, flooding the zone not only with confused motion but noise—the quick stomp of feet, the creak of football gear, the strained grunts of effort, the faint ah-ah-ah of piston-stroke regularity, and the stiff calls of instruction, like exhalations. “Inside, inside! Take him inside!” someone shouted, tearing by me, his cleats thumping in the grass. A call—a parrot squawk—may have erupted from me. My feet splayed in hopeless confusion as Barr came directly toward me, feinting in one direction, and then stopping suddenly, drawing me toward him for the possibility of a buttonhook pass, and as I leaned almost off balance toward him, he turned and came on again, downfield, moving past me at high speed, leaving me poised on one leg, reaching for him, trying to grab at him despite the illegality, anything to keep him from getting by. But he was gone, and by the time I had turned to set out after him, he had ten yards on me, drawing away fast with his sprinter’s run, his legs pinwheeling, the row of cleats flicking up a faint wake of dust behind.

—GEORGE PLIMPTON,Paper Lion

By piling up action sequences, Plimpton reconstructs for readers the texture and excitement of his experience on the football field. He uses the two most common kinds of modifiers that writers employ to present action sequences:

Participial phrases: tearing by me, stopping suddenly, moving past me at high speed

Absolute phrases: his cleats thumping in the grass, his legs pinwheeling, the row of cleats flicking up a faint wake of dust behind

Combined with vivid sensory description (the creak of football gear, the strained grunts of effort, the faint ah-ah-ah of piston-stroke regularity), these action sequences re-create the sights and sounds of people in motion.

Use dialogue to dramatize events.

Dialogue is most often used in narratives that dramatize events. It reconstructs choice bits of conversation, rather than trying to present an accurate and complete record. In addition to showing people interacting, dialogue can give readers insight into character and relationships. Dialogue may be quoted to make it resemble the give-and-take of actual conversation, or it may be summarized to give readers the gist of what was said.

The following example from Gary Soto’s Living up the Street shows how a narrative can combine quoted and summarized dialogue. In this passage, Soto recalls his first experience as a migrant worker in California’s San Joaquin Valley:

“Are you tired?” she asked.

“No, but I got a sliver from the frame,” I told her. I showed her the web of skin between my thumb and index finger. She wrinkled her forehead but said it was nothing.

“How many trays did you do?”

I looked straight ahead, not answering at first. I recounted in my mind the whole morning of bend, cut, pour again and again, before answering a feeble “thirty-seven.” No elaboration, no detail. Without looking at me she told me how she had done field work in Texas and Michigan as a child. But I had a difficult time listening to her stories. I played with my grape knife, stabbing it into the ground, but stopped when Mother reminded me that I had better not lose it. I left the knife sticking up like a small, leafless plant. She then talked about school, the junior high I would be going to that fall, and then about Rick and Debra, how sorry they would be that they hadn’t come out to pick grapes because they’d have no new clothes for the school year. She stopped talking when she peeked at her watch, a bandless one she kept in her pocket. She got up with an “Ay, Dios,” and told me that we’d work until three, leaving me cutting figures in the sand with my knife and dreading the return to work.

—GARY SOTO, “One Last Time”

Quoted dialogue is easy to recognize, of course, because of the quotation marks. Summarized dialogue can be harder to identify. In this case, however, Soto embeds signal phrases (she told me and she then talked) in his narrative. Summarizing leaves out information the writer decides readers do not need. In this passage about a remembered event, Soto has chosen to focus on his own feelings and thoughts rather than his mother’s.