Writing Stack Exchange
Writing Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [narrative]

A narrative is an account of events. This tag should be used for anything related to story-telling, including elements and principles or structure.

This tag should be used for questions about s and s for your and to your reader.

Narrative is the tags for the descriptive questions in the writing process. "How do I show X to my reader?", "What techniques can I uses to make my reader feel Y?" Question related to the events or structure of your story should use the tag instead.

283 questions
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Is there such a thing as too inconvenient?

I find myself often being irritated at elements in situations that help characters succeed, elements which are also highly unlikely or even illogical. But often, if not more, I find myself angered by things that too inconvenient. Improbably…
A. Kvåle
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Dead parents: something to avoid?

A lot of people die in my story, some of them are parents. One of the main characters for example lost his father (and one brother) in a car crash when he was young, which he was a part of. He became partially deaf as a result. This happened before…
user23083
29
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13 answers

How to tell readers that I know my story is factually incorrect?

Sometimes, it so happens that I do some research for a story and find that a major plot point could never work in real life. At this stage, I can either continue with my impossible (for a non-fantasy, non-scifi setting) idea, or scrap it…
tryin
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29
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7 answers

Where can I find resources for bedtime story plots?

For past ten months, my wife and I have been telling bedtime stories of our own making to our older daughter (who recently turned 4). We do it on alternate evenings. The stories have a nearly-constant set of characters who face various situations…
Boris Bukh
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7 answers

How can I make "acts of patience" exciting?

This answer to the question Averting Real Women Don’t Wear Dresses introduces a distinction between acts of patience and acts of daring. [...] when it comes to telling a story [...] acts of daring are easy to show, and acts of patience are not…
sesquipedalias
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24
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12 answers

Problems Blending Sci-fi & Traditional Fantasy?

I have been cautioned against blending: Traditional fantasy elements Such as magic systems and exotic, less plausible creatures (on a scientific level - magic tends to explain away these beasts) Traditional sci-fi elements Such as advanced…
DVNO
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8 answers

What can I do with a part that I feel is necessary to a story but it's an absolute drudgery?

I've just written such a paragraph: He turned around and started walking to the nearby store. He bought a bread and a yoghurt. Then he came back and gave the groceries to the homeless guy. There are several points to this text: I feel like all…
Rico
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8 answers

How to get readers to care about a dead character?

My story happens as a result of one of the main characters getting murdered. I'm wondering how to get readers to care about someone who's not even in the story (as far as the readers know anyway) or at least sympathize with the other main character…
Touchebag
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5 answers

The seven story archetypes. Are they truly all of them?

The seven archetypes are as follows: Overcoming the Monster. Rags to Riches. The Quest. Voyage and Return. Comedy. Tragedy. Rebirth. But surely, there are more? For example, riches to rags? That is one, right? Or would that go into another one,…
A. Kvåle
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Can I have a non-living thing with its own perspective?

We typically have third person or first person narratives in literature. I have a requirement - to unveil the suspense, I want a non-living thing to share its perspective in the final chapter. Is this permissible, justified and/or sensible?
undocumented sophistication
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A poker game description that does not feel gimmicky

I'm writing a scene in which four characters play a high-stakes poker game. So far my narrator has been an omniscient third person, who just does not wish to enter into the characters' heads. I started going around the table. I have the fingers…
NofP
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6 answers

Making him into a bully (how to show mild violence)

Joe is the worst. Nobody likes him, not even the so-called friends he teams up with at school, filling other students with terror. He's sarcastic, nasty, and a bit of a racist, and especially anti-Semitic. Over-all jerk. When some of the other…
Cyn
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How can I convey an absolute truth from the author to the reader without a mentor character?

There are sometimes moments in works of fiction where the author needs to convey something to the reader without ambiguity. Let's say the situations around the characters get so weird that the author starts to worry that the reader will think it is…
Andrey
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Is omniscient observer POV really dead?

I am in the midst of reworking my latest manuscript into a shape that someone might be inclined to publish. To help me along I hired a professional editor and writer, whose comments and suggestions, for the most part, have been very helpful.…
Candon
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How important is it for multiple POVs to run chronologically?

The way I am currently designing a story with three distinct POVs. An issue I am running into, however, is that one of these has much more to do in the first third than the other two while having less to do later. Because of this, I am considering…
Weckar E.
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