The Narrative Frame: Prewriting a Narrative Essay
Planning the Frame of a Narrative Essay
While it may seem challenging to write a narrative essay, effective planning and organization can make the process more manageable.
What is a Narrative Essay?
Writers draft essays for many reasons: to inform, describe, persuade, or tell a story. A narrative essay tells a story. However, writing a narrative essay involves more than just recounting events. The writer must also explain why the story is meaningful and how it helps readers understand the world better. The narrative essay is an avenue by which writers reflect on events from the past, which means they must be able to convey to readers the shifts in time and perspective the narrative requires.
One way to do this is through a technique called the "narrative frame."
Defining the Frame Technique
Eric Berlatsky, a scholar of narrative theory, says the frame is “one of the most difficult and confusing of narratological concepts” (2009). Despite this, the flexibility of the narrative frame makes it useful for many different types of writing, including narrative essays.
The frame of a narrative essay works much like the frame used in fiction writing. The simplest way to think about the narrative frame is that it helps create a "story within a story." In fiction, a famous example is Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, where pilgrims tell stories to each other during their journey. In a narrative essay, the writer uses the frame to reflect on a meaningful moment from the past. This reflection, often given in the conclusion as the thesis of the essay, reveals why the story is important to tell in the present moment.
How to Apply the Narrative Frame in an Essay
Writing a framed narrative essay requires the writer to think both about the past and the present during the planning and organizing stages of the writing process. They have to think like their past selves while thinking like their current selves. In the body of the essay, the writer tells a story about the past. In the introduction and conclusion, the writer reflects on that story from the present, explaining why it is significant.
One of the best ways to plan a framed narrative essay is to use a structured prewriting method. Because narrative essays require jumping between past and present, a more organized approach to planning and organizing can help clarify the writer’s thoughts.
A Prewriting Strategy for Narrative Essays
Here’s a simple prewriting technique for planning the frame of your narrative essay:
- Create a chart with three columns labeled “Past,” “Present,” and “Insight.”
- Brainstorm in each column using techniques like clustering, listing, or outlining. Don’t worry about the order; you can move between columns freely.
- After you’ve filled the columns, look for connections. Ask yourself questions like:
- Is there a lesson or insight from the present that stems from a past experience?
- Is something happening now that is making me reflect on a moment from the past?
- Can a past experience help me understand a situation in the present?
- Once you’ve identified a meaningful connection between past and present, use it to develop your thesis or main insight. This will guide your essay and explain to readers why the story matters.
- Place the thesis in the conclusion, where the reader can realize the significance of the story as the culmination of the past experience.
Final Thoughts
By using the frame technique, the writer tells a story from the past while offering insight from the present. Although planning this type of essay can be difficult, careful prewriting can help you structure your ideas and effectively communicate the significance of your story.References
Berlatsky, E. (2009). Lost in the Gutter: Within and Between Frames in Narrative and Narrative Theory. Narrative, 17(2), pp. 162-187.
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Copyright Amy Lynn Hess. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.
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