HFCC Learning Lab
Creative Writing 9.4
The Elements of Narrative Form
The creative writer works in a manner similar to that used by all craftsmen. Using the
writer’s medium of words, he/she builds a structure that produces reactions in those who
experience his/her work. The ability of readers, viewers, and listeners to respond effectively to
what has been produced depends to a great extent on how well they understand the craftsman’s
purpose and appreciate the techniques he/she has used to create his/her meaning.
The most basic plan for narrative fiction (story telling: short stories, novels, dramas and
narrative poetry) is a simple one. Authors introduce their characters. These characters encounter
problems. They effectively cope with their difficulties or they fail, and the stories end. We then
are left to ponder the meaning of the events which have occurred.
Ordinarily, life moves along in a routine manner, ebbing and flowing with the “ups and
downs” which human beings come to expect in the process of living. Sometimes good things
happen (“up”), and sometimes unpleasant things happen (“down”, but life usually is matter of
routine, expected events, and basically “flat”)
In regularity of this sort, not enough is happening to produce the kind of story most
people want to read or see. (Would you enjoy a movie which recounted only the daily events in
the life of an ordinary person?) In order to create reader interest, writers either begin with
exceptional people and events or they put ordinary people in unusual (stressful, exciting)
circumstances, forcing them to cope, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, in what can go
so far as to become battles to save their lives.
The word used to refer to these events in a narrative (or story) is plot. Plots vary, but
typical story patterns develop in the following manner.
1. Characters are introduced. Their location (setting: time and place) is established. Mood (or
atmosphere) may be developed. The introductory section where the reader gains this background
is referred to as the exposition.
2. Plots begin to develop when unsettling events or challenges occur. (The point where a major
problem is established sometimes is referred to as the attack.)
3. From here on, characters in the stories attempt to solve main and associated problems that
become more tense and exciting as complications occur and characters attempt to find solutions.
(This section often is called Rising Action.)
4. When events develop to the point of greatest tension, the story line reaches a climax.
(Characters either succeed in doing what they wish or they fail. Either problems are solved or the
people involved are overwhelmed and defeated.)
5. The usually brief section following the climax, called the falling action, unravels (or resolves)
and concluded stories, producing new stability.
These events are described in the following plot diagram:
Climax
Falling action
Rising action
Complications
Resolution(the unraveling and
conclusion.)
A major problem
occurs (Attack)
The story begins.
Exposition
The story ends.
Life settles
down and goes
on.
The main elements of narration (plot, character, setting, mood, narrative point of view, theme
tone) can be illustrated in this brief summary of a story by Jack London, “To Build a Fire”, in
which some of the author’s words are used to indicate the line of development of the story and to
illustrate other elements of narration. London’s intentions are suggested in comments made in
parentheses.
Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside
from the Yukon trail and climbed the high earth bank, where a dim and little-traveled trail led
eastward through the fat spruce timberland… There was no sun or hint of sun, though there was
not a cloud in the sky. It was clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible over the face of
things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark…(The author establishes Setting and Mood).
The man flung a look back along the way he had come…North and south, as far as his
eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hairline that curved and twisted…to the
south, and that curved and twisted away into the north…This dark hairline was the trail…that led
south five hundred miles to the Chilkoot Pass, Dyea…and that led north seventy miles to
Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on the
Bering, a thousand miles and a half thousand more. (The reader gains additional understanding
of setting. Also, note how small a human being becomes when placed in a landscape that spans
thousands of miles.)
But all of this—the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail,…the tremendous cold, and the
strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man…even though he was a
newcomer in the land…and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was
without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not
the significances. Fifty degrees below zero…impressed him as being cold, and that was all. It did
not lead him to mediate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in
general…, and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s
place in the universe…Fifty degrees below zero was to him just…fifty degrees below zero. That
there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.
(Although the author makes his reader understand man’s vulnerability in this vast, barren,
cold landscape, the failure of the man on the trail to appreciate the potential dangers of such an
environment suggests the kind of limited vision which leads a person to make serious mistakes.
Before beginning his journey, this man had rejected the experience of an “old-timer” who
advised him not to travel on severely cold days without a trail partner. His refusal to recognize
the value this advice makes the reader aware of the man’s prideful self-assurance, stubbornness
and folly. Suddenly, one of the dangers the Yukon veteran had warned him against occurs: he
breaks through at a point where the snow is supported by a thin film of ice covering a stream and
“wet himself halfway to the knees before he floundered out…” This point is the attack in the
story line: The main problem has been introduced. Immediately, the man’s legs are covered with
a crust of ice. This must be removed and his clothing dried to prevent freezing, which could
immobilize him. He quickly proceeds to build a fire.)
He worked slowly and carefully…He knew there must be no failure. When it is seventyfive below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire—that is, if his feet are
wet…all of this the man knew. The old-timer…had told him about it…,and now he was
appreciating the advice.
(He begins building a fire under a spruce tree from which he breaks off limbs and gathers
tinder. although he benefits from what he has been taught, as soon as the fire is blazing and he
settles back to remove his boots, the man’s smug sense of self-assurance returns.)
“The fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old-timer…and
smiled…Well here he was; he had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself…All a
man had to do was keep his head and he was alright. Any man who was a man could travel
alone…”
As the man begins to remove his frozen boots, “it happened. It was his own fault…He
should not have built the fire under the spruce tree…” Each time he had pulled a branch from the
tree, he had sent a shimmer through it. “High up in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow.
This fell on boughs beneath,” starting an avalanche which “descended without warning upon the
man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out.”
(Suddenly the man becomes aware of his mortality, but hurriedly puts the dark thought of
death out of his minds with a conscious effort to solve his problem.)
“The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of
death…Then he grew very clam…It was up to him to build the fire over again, and this second
time there must be no failure.”
(Although the man has previously stated “the cold did not matter”, his hands are so numb
as to be almost useless. He gathers fuel for the fire by using his hand as a rake, pulling together
pieces to burn, but also collecting bits of moss. He has difficulty lighting matches, finally doing
so by holding them between the heels of his hand. In attempting to feed the burning twigs,
however, he accidentally scatters them and puts the fire out. Each unsuccessful attempt is solve
his problem is a complication.)
Desperate but still resourceful, as he looks about for another solution to his problem, “his
eyes chanced on the dog…the sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered the
tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who had killed a steer and climbed inside the carcass and so
was saved. He would kill the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went
out of them. Then he could build another fire…His arms flashed out to the dog, and he
experienced genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch, that there was
neither bend nor feeling in the fingers. He had forgotten for the moment that they were frozen,
and he could only encircle its body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion
the dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled…He realized that he could not kill the
dog…With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath knife not throttle the
animal. He released it…”
(The man can think of nothing else to do, and yet something must be done; he is slowly
freezing. A reader can sense that the climax of the story is close at hand.)
“A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him…He realized that it was no
longer a mere matter of life and death with the chances against him. This threw him into a panic,
and he…ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life. Slowly, as
he ploughed and floundered through the snow, he began to see things again…The running made
him feel better enough, he would reach the camp and the boys…And at the same time there was
another thought in his mind that said he would never get to camp with the boys;…that the
freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead…Several times he
stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed…When
he recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind the conception of
meeting death with dignity…With this new-found peace of mind, came the first glimmerings of
drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death…There were worse ways to die.”
(His though turns suddenly to the old-timer who had warned him not to take this trip
alone, and his response reveals the change which has taken place in this man who felt he had all
of the answers: “You were right, old hoss: you were right,” he mumbles. This moment of the
character’s acceptance of his fate signals the ending of the story. From here on, the author
quickly develops the resolution and conclusion of his tale.)
“Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying
sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him and waiting…As the twilight drew on,…the
dog whined loudly. And still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of death. This
made the animal bristle and back away…Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of
the camp it knew, where there were the other food providers and fire providers.”