Narratives

I’m sure I hear a lot of narrative in a day, but the moment I have to recall them I can’t remember what they were, so…

These aren’t from one day but they are the first things that came to mind.

• Personal narrative - Woman describing her son’s hip replacement as the basis for taking a human biology class.
• Fable - Children’s picture books, they always seem to have a good moral.
• Informational - Newspaper story about a baby Orca in Puget Sound.
• Fable - Church sermon on man walking to D.C. who stops to help a woman with a broken car.
• Fable - “Step Away” song by me and my cousin.

Honestly I am having difficulty with the concept of “narrative”. The definition seems straight forward enough, but when applying it to things, I get confused. So I made so sub-categories to help myself. Narratives, to me, can be personal, a fable, or informational.

 

Personal would be a first person account of an event from your life that explains a change or decision process. It allows for others to make personal connections by comparing their own narratives that may be similar.

 

Fable is a story, which is not necessarily real, told to deliver a moral or point through examples or general concepts.

 

Informational is when real world events are described alongside educational points. The main story if the event, but it is also being used as a vehicle to carry interesting or necessary information to the public. This could be a fun article in the paper about the new orca pup or a broadcaster over the radio talking about real people just as an interesting side note.

 

 

For me, watching the videos was more powerful than just reading personal narratives. The speakers had rhythms and cadences to their voices, and their faces expressed more emotions than can be describe in text. In the translation from speech to writing, you lose those fundamental human connections that don’t transition into language. The story being told has a rawer feel when it comes in video form, it seems like there is less revisions and editing (though I’m sure there are some) and things don’t get left out. The viewer has the opportunity to see, not just imagine, the emotional content of the speaker. It also makes the event feel more real. With videos, you have the ability to say, “This is real, that person is an average Joe, just like me.” With writing, there is less personal connection, you have to do more work synthesizing the context, who is this person, what are they like, how do I imagine them looking, instead of just taking in the point of the narrative.

 

 

Personal narratives are so much more affective to me on video or face to face because much of the time they are about comparing stories with others to find common ground, it can be difficult to make such a human connection with writing. Writing is certainly capable of stirring sympathetic emotions, but not as much of a connection.

 

Information is really best in text or audio form. Whereas reading an article about the whales in the Puget Sound was interesting and uplifting, if I had been listening to some instructor about it, my mind would have wondered. Reading a story like that or hearing it on the radio is an engaging way of passing along the narrative while leaving the hands and/or eyes free to do other things. It may be an interesting topic to some people, but I would bet that if most had to engage in watching and hearing the information from a speaker, they would become disinterested and lose focus. If that were to happen, the event and information would become less memorable.