Narrative

Writing
Structure Moldez
Presented by: Chariz
 What is a Narrative research?

A form of qualitative
research in which the
stories themselves becomes
the raw data.
 OVERALL AND EMBEDDED WRITING STRATEGIES

Qualitative researcher needs to

address how he or she is going to
compose the overall narrative
structure of the report and use
embedded structures within the
report to provide a narrative
within the approach of choice.
 Narrative Writing Structure

 Narrative researchers encourage individuals to write narrative

studies that experiment with form (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).

 Researchers can come to their narrative form by first looking to

their own preferences in reading (e.g., memoirs, novels), reading
other narrative dissertations and books, and viewing the narrative
study as back-and-forth writing, as a process.
 Overall and Embedded Writing Structures of Narrative Research

Narrative Overall Writing Structures Embedded Writing

Structures

• Flexible and evolving processes. • Epiphanies

• Three-dimensional space inquiry • Themes, key events or
model. plots
• Story chronologies. • Metaphors and transitions.
• Temporal or episodic ordering of • Progressive-regressive
information. methods or zooming in and
• Reporting what participants said out.
(themes), how they said it (order of • Themes or categories.
their story), or how they interacted • Dialogues or
with others (dialogue and conversations.
performance).
 Riessman (2008)
These would be the elements of :
• Summary and/or the point of the story;
• Orientation (the time, place, characters, and situations);
• Complicating action (the event sequence, or plot usually with
a crisis or turning point); evaluation (where the narrator
comments on meaning or emotions);
• Resolution (the outcome of the plot); and
• Coda (ending the story and bringing it back to the present).
 Narrative Writing Structure

4 The entire report may be a poem, a

play, or another dramatic rendering.

3 The dialogue might contain features of a

performance.
2
Larger writing structure would focus on direct speech
and dialogue.

1 In a narrative study focused on the interrogation

between speakers (such as the interviewer and
the interviewee).
 Embedded Structure
The writing of a narrative needs to not silence some of the
voices, and it ultimately gives more space to certain voices
than other. (Czarniawska, 2004).

- Progressive-regressive method
- Epiphany
- Foreshadowing
Progressive-regressive Method
Whereby the biographer begins with
a key event in the participant’s life
and then works forward and
backward from that event.
 A man's girlfriend gets pregnant, but he isn't
ready to be a father.

 An old woman wishes to reconnect with her

family but is slowly losing her memory.

 A woman wishes to travel the world but is too

scared to leave her home.
Epiphany
Defined as interactional moments and experiences that mark people’s
lives (Denzin, 1989).
Four types:

 The major event that touches the fabric of the individual’s life;
 The cumulative or representative events, experiences that continue for
some time;
 The minor epiphany, which represents a moment in an individual’s life;
and
 Episodes or relived epiphanies, which involve reliving the experience.
For example,

In the middle of a typical argument with his

wife, Jayther realizes he has been the one
causing every single argument, and that in
order to keep their marriage, he must stop
being such an aggressive person.
Other narrative rhetorical devices include the use of
transitions. Lomask (1986) refers to these as built into the
narratives in natural chronological linkages. Writers insert
them through words or phrases, questions (which Lomask
calls being “lazy”), and time-and-place shifts moving the
action forward or backward.
In addition to transitions, narrative
researchers employ foreshadowing, the
frequent use of narrative hints of things
to come or of events or themes to be
developed later.
For example,

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Romeo says he prefers to die sooner than
live without Juliet’s love: “Life were
better ended by their hate, Than death
prorogued, wanting of thy love.”
THA T’ S A L L !
THA N K Y OU !!