“…the process of realizing imaginative work in a concrete form.”

Madison Smartt Bell

As writers, we’ve all heard the terms ‘narrative’ and ‘story’ interchangeably, yet they are both separate hinges on the same door. Together, they help create something useful and strong—something as concrete as its surface and as abstract as what exists behind it—but each need their own attention. In their simplest definitions, ‘narrative’ functions as the structure, the technique of how something is written. Its opposite, the content and subject matter, functions as the ‘story’. Their combination comes through in Bell’s quote, revealing the need for the concrete process of narrative so our writing may sustain its own powerful shapes, carry on its own meanings.

The question which remains is, why place my emphasis on ‘narrative’ rather than the creation of ‘story’? Why structure, when writers consistently break technique and create the impossible?

In my own writing, story seems to come as immediately as I witness it crossing the street with a torn bag of groceries, as purposefully as I hear a couple give advice to their single friend. How to craft them is less immediate.

It’s what leaves me sitting in front of my writing, waiting: for the story to arrange itself, for the image to show itself, the characters to develop and change themselves, and the reality to grasp itself. There will always be writers who innately feel structure as the texture of their imagination, but for those of us who cannot, understanding Narrative Design will give our stories the strength of bone, of muscle, and of root.

Any complete architectural masterpiece will always reveal how it is made, how it has been designed. The only issue is, looking at one, we don’t see the decades of scaffolding, the setup and takedown of molds, the years of preplanning, the blueprints gone unprinted, and the stones left behind in place of one stronger and more durable. We observers and readers see only the building, the final product. Yet, there is something else onto which we can grasp, something to help us see those invisible details.

Just as quickly as we take in the view and find ourselves immersed, there exists an emotion which permeates our impression.

We feel—at the core of our understanding—the strength in façade, the union in juncture, the security in foundation, the breathability in width, and the comfort in walls that keep a ceiling from collapsing; we can feel how all combine to allow the light which warms every single room.

Our ability to sense these emotions is produced in Bell’s process of realization. It’s the world where imagination meets board and beam, where brainstorm meets word and sentence, where abstract meets concrete and roots itself as more than an image—a force—in our minds.

So, let’s seek structure.

Let’s feel for and hold that cement in our hands, and clasp with it our imagination, creating the molds of something real, because by giving our stories their narrative functions, we make the unbelievable believable and allow ourselves to relate something entirely unrelatable.  

Narrative Design is giving the grandeur of cathedrals to an abandoned shack. It’s the broken doors and shattered windows that make us at one with their neglect.

It’s finding someone’s lean-to fence and giving it a function, making it useful without adding a post or a screw.

It’s the breaking down of elements to discover them on their own; it's piecing them back together to create a different puzzle.

It’s taking from shadow, and making something that breathes with heartbeats.

Narrative Design is the promise of what something will be—the promise that something will be—just like blueprints or scaffolding. They tell the author where they’ve been, what’s been built and what needs to be built next before this piece fits, before that piece fits. It shows us what needs to be moved, or traded to produce lines of sight, measured angles, or perspectives.

It’s what allows our readers the truth in magic wands, or the reality of our best stuffed friends adventuring on their own.

And yet, the design of how we choose to cement our visions isn’t always the final product. This is, perhaps, the most important element to understand in my Un-Writerly Guide. I am not writing to prescribe forms, but rather to show that design is already always infinite in any separate work that we write, in time, in place, and inspiration.

Like any guide that seeks to equip its readers with help, with insight, this is a guide that aims to structure the walls of writing as resolute as diamond. This is a guide to help engrain each writer’s emotion within their ‘narrative’, so it may seep out between the words in their ‘story’, cleared of any debris.

We each find our own Narrative Design, and I am here to prove that.

For our beginning writing exercise, I want us to seek the “narrative” in our favorite pieces. Whether it's pulled from our own, or someone else's work, take a passage that shows you part of an overall structure. Does it set the scene? Does it develop a character? Does it drip with emotion? Tell us what structure you see in the passage, and share your insights from which we may learn.

I will post a passage of my own in the discussion, and always look forward to reading and discussing your ideas.

I wholeheartedly welcome you all to The Un-Writerly Guide to Narrative Design.