Belajar Bahasa Inggris Tentang Narrative Text
Writing, for
everyone, starts with essays and story writing. Knowingly or unknowingly, all
of us write in different modes and styles, mainly persuasive, narrative,
descriptive, and expository. While persuasive writing influences the reader’s
way of thinking about particular subject, descriptive writing is when the writer
portrays a person, place or a thing, by giving minutest details about it.
Expository writing, on the other hand, explains or defines a particular subject
with less of description and more of information. And narrative writing is
nothing but story telling – fictional or non-fictional. Out of all the forms of
writing, this genre is the most widely written as well as read, since it is
very easy to narrate one’s experiences or to relate to someone else. Narrative
writing is used for writing plays, movie scripts, personal essays as well as
biographies, but their basic purpose remains the same – entertaining the
readers.
About narrative
paragraph, Furaidah et al. (2008:1.71) said that narrative paragraphs describe
a sequence event or tell a story. In
other words, narrative paragraphs describe an experience. The logical
arrangement of ideas and sentences in a narrative paragraph is chronological,
i.e. according to time order.
An effective
narrative paragraph has three important characteristics. First, it tells a
series of events or actions. Second, the events are organized chronologically
or by time sequence. And the last, it shows the writer’s point or purpose.
A
narrative paragraph tells a story
Narration tells a
story about a series of events or actions. The events may be real nonfiction as
in histories, biographies, and newspaper stories or imagery or fiction, as in
short stories, novels and plays.
Since events or
actions play a central role in any narrative writing, it is very important to
choose verbs carefully. Verbs create the actions in a story. In general, verbs
in active voice are preferable to those in passive voice. Active verbs help
keep the story moving and make the events seem more alive to the reader. For
example, the sentence “He kicked the ball wildly” sounds more alive than “The
ball was kicked wildly”.
A
narrative paragraph is organized by time order
In addition, the
series of events in narration are generally arranged by time order or
chronological order. This means that the story begins with what happened first,
then moves on to what happened next and ends with what happened last. For
instance, you want to tell about your terrible day. You would probably have a
series of events to tell.
A
narrative paragraph makes a point
When writing a narration,
you should have a purpose. In other words, you tell a story to teach something,
persuade, or make a point. Otherwise, your readers will probably wonder why
they need to bother to read your story. Your purpose will guide you to select
the details to include and those to exclude in your story. It is your job as
the writer to emphasize the details that are significant to the purpose or the
point of the story and then omit the rest. Consider, for instance, the story
about a terrible day. If your purpose is, for example, to tell your readers
that getting up late will tend to cause a lot of troubles, then you should put
only those terrible events which are caused by your getting up late, and omit
the rest. So, you should not include all the events happening after terrible
events, since they are not relevant to your point. However, you might need to
include those events when you have a different purpose which make them
relevant.
Narration is more
often about past story, but sometimes it is also about repeated present story.
Past and present narrations have similarities and differ mainly in when the
story takes place. Therefore, in writing both present and past narration, you
need to keep yourself aware with your choice of verb tenses.
To achieve coherence in
your narration, you should make use of appropriate time expressions to show
clearly to your readers the relationship among the events in your story.
Besides, your skill in choosing appropriate tenses is also very important for
this purpose.
Furthermore, make
yourself sure that you keep in mind your point or purpose of writing. It will
help you achieve unity in your paragraph by telling you which ideas to include
and to exclude.
Writing
a Narrative Paragraph
A paragraph, as you
have learned, consists of, at least, a topic sentence and supporting details,
but this is not always the case for narrative paragraphs. A narrative may
appear with or without a topic sentence. When you write a narrative paragraph
with a topic sentence, your topic sentence should determine the total time of
your story, and then followed by the supporting details in the form of a series
of chronological events as its parts. However, when you do not have a topic
sentence, you can just begin with the first event of your story.
Narrative writing
always follows a specific structure. The five elements that form this structure
are:
Three main kinds of
narrative writing are: Personal, Imaginative, and Biographical according to http://www.buzzle.com/articles/narrative-writing.html
accessed 06/01/14
Personal
A personal narrative
is where the writer narrates the events of his life in a chronological order,
either to inspire or to entertain the readers. It can be a memorable experience
or something that the writer has accomplished. The narrative illustrates the
effect it had on his life. While writing a personal narrative, one should pay
attention to the flow of the story. A good personal narrative affects the
readers in a similar way in which it has affected the writer. Diaries and
autobiographies are good examples of personal narratives.
Imaginative
Imaginative writing
is basically writing fiction, writing something that is not factual. In this
genre, the writer develops imaginative characters in interesting settings,
either to entertain the audience or to convey his point of view. Using this
creativity, the writer can go beyond reality and create unusual situations and
events that could never happen in real life. But he has to make sure that the
plot sounds convincing to the readers. Short stories, novels, screenplays, and
dramas are examples of imaginative writing.
Biographical
Unlike a personal
narrative, a biography is a non-fictional account of someone else’s life. The
writer describes this person (subject) through his eyes. This kind of narrative
depends entirely on the events that have taken place in the subject’s life, or
public figure. The writer might also include why he chose that particular
person as a subject and how he/she made a significant in his life.
Based on the
description of narrative writing above, it can be summed up as follow:
To summarize,
narrative writing tells a story or a part of a story. Narrative writing is
found in novels, biographies, autobiographies, essays, and short stories.
Narrative writing depends on the personal or imaginative experience of a
person. A narrative writing should contain an entire story—beginning, middle,
and end. It should cover all the necessary details that explain the story. The
narrator should be able to pass on his thoughts and views to the reader. Keep moving on!
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