2 Narrative, Exposition, Description, Reflection, Persuasion
In this chapter, we will practice:
- recognizing and composing the five types of writing: narration, exposition, description, reflection, persuasion
- recognizing how different types of writing “make up” texts
- recognizing how different types of writing work in and across different genres
- thinking about how voice can work differently in different types of writing
There are five kinds of writing we will discuss and practice in this class. Genres are made of kinds of writing pushed together or developed into compositions that suit their purpose, audience, community, and conversation. Some genres are largely comprised by a particular kind of genre (romance novels are primarily made of narrative writing) and others are composites (lab reports are made of expository writing and also descriptive and also, perhaps in their conclusions, reflective).
Narrative
A narrative is the sequence of events that make up a story, including characters, plot, setting, and theme. It’s the way in which a series of events is told. A narrative can be expressed through various forms, such as written or spoken language, images, or film. It can be part of a larger text, such as including a story as part of your college application essay or personal testimony in a newspaper editorial, or it can comprise the entire text, such as a children’s book or sci-fi novel.
Some narratives move in chronological order (i.e. what happened first, second, third, etc.). Some begin at the end and work backward. Others jump between events in a way that, eventually, brings attention to particular themes or relationships. These choices made by the storyteller impact the meaning and reception of a story. Details like dialogue, setting description, voice, and sensory language enhance the message of the narrative.
Storytelling is a thing humans do to create connections, to convey information, and to understand their world. Humans relate to each other through stories and therefore find stories incredibly interesting and persuasive. Narratives help us relate to one another and provide a way to understand our differences.
Because readers are so familiar with storytelling in their lives, they expect to read detailed descriptions of specific scenes from a person’s experience and relate those experiences to a greater theme or point of significance. They expect to hear “what happened” told in an engaging way. Writers can meet reader expectations by including vivid details about the experience and relating the narrative to something larger than itself.
Most narratives include:
| A beginning middle and end | Where does the story start? What happens? Where does it stop? |
| A main character and main set of characters | Who is the story primarily about? What are they like? What do they do? What are their relationships to each other? |
| A setting in time and place | Where and when does the story takes place? |
| Rising, climactic, and falling action | What happens to the main character that begins and continues their journey? What happens at the journey’s most significant/charged/pivotal/emotional moment? What happens after the journey’s climax? |
| A primary message, idea, or theme | What is the narrator trying to tell the audience through their story? |
When writers use vivid and sensory detail to share a narrative, they help the reader connect to their story in meaningful ways. Some of the best narratives attend to most or all of our five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell). If a writer wants to convey to their readers their personal connection to a cherished family recipe, then they might describe in sensory detail what the freshly baked bread looks like, the sounds of their grandmother’s clamoring in the kitchen to prepare the bread, how the warm bread melts in your mouth at the first bite, how the bread springs back slowly when you press down on it, or the aroma that overtakes your house on a Sunday afternoon when the bread is finished baking. Most readers can relate to some or all of these details through various life experiences, which will help to pull them into the journey that the narrative takes.
Narrative essays, like the one you will likely be writing in Unit 1, have an introduction and conclusion that frame the key events of the story. Narrative essays can also be written in media res, which is Latin for “in the midst of things,” and works like most movies or TV dramas, diving into a critical situation and explaining backstory, etc. as events unfold.
PRACTICE: PARTS OF A NARRATIVE
Below are a series of student narrative essay examples. In small groups, select one to read. Then, together, identify your chosen text’s elements (see chart above). Please be as specific as possible and be prepared to share your group’s answers with the class.
HELPFUL RESOURCES
For step-by-step instruction on writing narrative as well as examples, visit Excelsior’s Online Writing Lab page at Narrative Essay..
Exposition
Expository writing is writing that aims to explain and inform. Textbooks, news articles, infographics, encyclopedias, business documents, tech manuals, and research papers are all genres primarily concerned with exposition. In an expository piece, a topic will be introduced and laid out in a logical order and readable language without (obvious) reference to the author’s personal opinions. Expository writing is generally:
- concise and easy to understand
- used to report on a situation or event , addressing who, what, why, where, when, and/or how
- nuanced, offering different views on a subject to avoid bias and present as much information possible
- used to explain an idea or process that may be difficult to understand
- research-, experience-, or fact-based
Exposition is found across academic disciplines and in many areas of our lives. Recipes are a form of expository writing as are the directions to put together an IKEA coffee table. Note that it is often tailored to its audience. For example, a medical researcher is going to explain a new medication differently (in more or fewer steps, with more or less jargon) to a patient than they would to a fellow doctor or nurse.
While you certainly might use exposition in your Unit 1 Narrative Essay, this class will spend more time developing expository writing skills in Unit 2.
The aim of descriptive writing is to help the reader visualize, in detail, a character, event, place, or all of these things at once. The author might describe the scene in terms of all five senses. Descriptive writing allows the writer a great deal more artistic freedom than expository writing does. Many genres contain description from novels to advertisements and marketing to poetry to scientific research.
Powerful description can be created through:
- sensory or bodily language (“I felt bad” vs. “I felt like my stomach was lodged in my throat”)
- specific details (“She looked angry” vs. “Her pointed face was drawn, the corners of her mouth turned down, and her eyes flashing.”)
- strong verbs, nouns, and adjectives (“The owl landed on a tree branch” vs. “The brittle branch creaked under the gnarled owl’s bulk as he settled.”)
See the sections on “Imagery” and “Figurative Language” on the Syntax & Style page for more help with description.
Persuasion
The aim of persuasive writing, or argumentation, is to influence a reader to assume a particular point of view and/or pursue particular action. The speaker will express a position, offer evidence, and create appeals to move their reader. Advertisements, product logos and packaging, political speeches, newspaper editorials, bumper stickers, protest signs, and family debates over whether to get tacos or pizza for dinner involve obvious forms of persuasion. Less obvious forms are history textbooks, monuments and memorials, the clothes we wear, job resumés, social media bios, even tattoos. We will examine persuasion, rhetoric, and argumentation in more detail in Unit 3.
Reflection
Writing reflectively involves critically analyzing an experience, recording how it has impacted you, and thinking about what you will do with your new knowledge. Writing reflectively forces us to articulate things that have happened to us and things we have done, which then helps us process knowledge, understanding, personal memories, and even trauma. Many therapists, for example, ask their patients to keep journals or write letters to important people in their lives. You can think of reflecting as documenting your response to a thing. It is your ideas and your feelings; there is no “right answer.” Reflection is a process and tool for understanding.
In this class, your instructor will ask you to reflect on writing or reading experiences you’ve had in the past and writing or reading experiences you have in this class. Reflecting on our learning and on our writing helps us know more about our brains, about our learning processes, about our learning needs, and about our selves as speakers and consumers of media. It helps realize what matters to us and what we struggle with, what we are thinking and how our thinking has changed, what we want to say and how we can say it.
The key to reflective writing is to be analytical rather than only descriptive. A detailed description of what happened is an integral first step, but writing reflectively requires:
- writing in first-person
- asking and thinking through why
- asking and thinking through how
- probing details, consequences, feelings
- connecting our experiences to other present, past, and future experiences to notice patterns or themes
Note that while the other types of writing discussed here are aimed primarily at outside audiences, reflective writing is writing for ourselves (and our teachers, friends, or mentors). You are your audience. What do you need to remind or understand about yourself?
For more information about writing reflections, see the Student Resources section on “The Writing Process.”
PRACTICE: IDENTIFYING TYPES OF WRITING
Undergraduate history majors at CSU-East Bay and art majors at CSU-Chico collaborated a few years ago to create the “Leyendas Monstruosas” catalog–a collection of researched essays tracing the origins and communal significance of Latinx urban legends. As a class or groups, select an essay to read carefully and, together, answer the following questions:
- What genre are students writing in? How do you know?
- What communities is the piece speaking to and what is its purpose? How do you know?
- Where in the essay do you see narrative, exposition, description, persuasion, and/or reflection?
- What do each of the pieces do differently and how do they work together to engage the reader and convey information?
- As a reader, do you think the pieces of the essay fit together? Are there pieces you think would make more sense in a different order? What do you notice about the introduction and conclusion?