Lecture: Narrative & Expository Writing
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 5
Opening
Think about a driving test. Afterward, a friend probably asked how it went, and you told a story: the waiting room, the cones, the moment your tire touched the curb. Then someone younger asked how to get ready for theirs, and you gave them steps. Same morning. Two completely different kinds of writing. In this lecture I want to name those two kinds and the moves inside them, so you can make each one on purpose.
Here's where we are. In Week 1 you learned the rhetorical situation and the writing process. In Week 2 you learned to keep what a text says apart from what you think of it. In Week 3 you built a paragraph from a point through evidence to explanation. And in Week 4 you learned the thesis, the sentence that states an essay's main claim. This week you use all of that to write a true story and an explanation. Next week, in Week 6, you'll turn from your own writing to how a real speech persuades.
Most of my examples come from one illustrative experience, written for this course and attributed to no one: a first camping trip in the rain. You'll see the same night told badly, told well, over-written, and explained. Let's begin with what makes those versions different jobs.
1. Two jobs: narration and exposition
The camping night can be written two ways. You can tell what happened that night, or you can teach someone how to pitch a tent in the rain. The experience is the same; the job is different.
A rhetorical mode is a way of developing a piece of writing, named for the job the writing does, such as telling a story, explaining a process, analyzing a text, or arguing a claim. This week covers two of them. Narration is the mode that tells a true story in order to make a point. Exposition is the mode that explains or informs, such as how a task is done or how something works, without arguing that the reader should take a side.
That last part matters. Exposition explains; it doesn't argue. If the camping explanation began, "Every family should go camping," it would have switched jobs. Argument is a real mode, and it gets its own week, Week 7. This week, an explanation wants the reader to understand, not to agree.
So here's a test. Ask what the piece wants from its reader: to live through a moment and see a point, to understand, or to agree. That's narration, exposition, or argument.
Pause and try this. A short piece explains how a food bank sorts donations. Another says the town needs a second food bank. Which one is exposition?
Run the job test before you answer.
Here's the answer. The piece on sorting donations is exposition, because it wants you to understand a process. The piece about a second food bank wants you to agree that something should change, so it's argument.
2. Significance: the story's point
Have you ever listened to someone tell you everything that happened at work, in order, and then stop? Clocked in, restocked, ate lunch, clocked out. You wait for the point, and it never arrives. Nothing was wrong with the events. The story had no reason to exist.
That missing piece has a name. Significance is a narrative's "so what?": the point the story exists to make, which does the work a thesis does in an essay and may be stated in a sentence or implied by a final image. Last week your thesis told the reader what the essay would prove. In a story, the significance tells the reader why these events were worth their time.
You can deliver it two ways. You can state it. In the camping story, the stated version is: "That night taught me that preparation happens before the weather turns, not during it." Or you can imply it with a final image. The implied version is: "The next weekend, we pitched the tent twice in the backyard, in full sun." Nobody says the lesson out loud. The reader sees a family practicing in the sunshine and gets it.
Neither choice is the correct one. Which you pick depends on your audience, the question from Week 1.
Pause and try this. "The next weekend, we pitched the tent twice in the backyard, in full sun." Is that ending stated or implied significance?
Think about whether the lesson is ever named.
Here's the answer. It's implied. The sentence never names the lesson about preparation; it shows an action that carries the lesson, and the reader draws the conclusion.
3. Showing instead of telling
Imagine a friend who says, "The concert was amazing." You nod, but you don't feel much. Now imagine the friend says the bass was so loud their water bottle buzzed against the railing. Suddenly you're there. The first sentence gave you a verdict. The second gave you something to experience.
Telling is writing that names a feeling or a judgment, such as "I was miserable" or "it was a disaster", and so asks the reader to accept the writer's word instead of experiencing the moment. Showing is writing that gives the concrete sensory detail of a moment, such as what could be seen, heard, or felt, so the reader experiences it and reaches the feeling without being told it. And a sensory detail is a detail that reaches one of the five senses; it's the evidence that showing is built from.
Here's the told version of the camping night: "Our first camping trip was a disaster. I was miserable and frustrated the whole time, and setting up the tent was the worst part." Every key word is a judgment: disaster, miserable, frustrated, worst.
Now the shown version: "Rain drummed on the car roof and ran off the brim of my cap, down the back of my neck. The tent poles kept slipping through my wet fingers, and the instruction sheet in my pocket had turned to gray pulp. My sister held the flashlight in her teeth and said nothing." You hear the rain. You feel water down your neck. You see the gray pulp. The word "miserable" never appears, and you know exactly how that night felt.
Here's the rule I want you to remember. Showing is specific sensory evidence, not more adjectives.
Pause and try this. In the shown version, which detail reaches the sense of touch?
Picture yourself standing in that rain.
Here's the answer. The water running down the back of the neck, and the poles slipping through wet fingers. Both are things you'd feel on your skin, not things you'd see or hear.
4. Concrete and abstract words
Try to picture "disappointment." Now picture a birthday cake with the frosting slid off one side. The second picture shows up at once. The first barely shows up at all.
A concrete word is a word that names something a reader can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell, such as a cap, a flashlight, or a tent pole. An abstract word is a word that names an idea, a feeling, or a judgment that cannot be pictured directly, such as misery, frustration, or disaster.
Go back to the two camping versions. The told version leans on abstract words: disaster, miserable, frustrated. The shown version leans on concrete ones: cap, tent poles, instruction sheet, flashlight. That's most of the difference between them.
Abstract words aren't bad; "preparation" is abstract, and the stated significance needs it. They're poor at making a reader live through a moment. And exposition needs concrete words too. "Choose a good spot" leaves a reader guessing. "Choose the highest flat ground so that water drains away from you" tells them exactly what to look for.
Pause and try this. "Flashlight" and "frustration": which one is the abstract word?
Try to picture each one.
Here's the answer. "Frustration" is abstract. You can picture a flashlight, but you can't picture frustration itself; you can only picture what caused it or what it looked like on someone.
5. Scene and narrative summary
A road-trip movie doesn't show every hour of highway. It cuts to the lake, then slows down for the one conversation that matters. Writers make the same choice.
A scene is a stretch of a narrative that slows down to show one moment in full, with sensory detail and often dialogue, because that moment carries the story's point. A narrative summary is a stretch of a narrative that moves quickly over time that does not carry the point, such as a three-hour drive covered in one sentence.
The camping story does both. The narrative summary is: "We drove for three hours, found our campsite, and unloaded the car as the clouds came in." One sentence, three hours. Then the scene, the shown version, spends three sentences on a few minutes, because the slipping poles and the ruined instructions are where the point lives. The story is about preparation, so the moment when the lack of it bites gets the detail. The drive doesn't.
Here's how to decide. Write your significance first, then find the moment where it's easiest to see. That moment gets the scene. Detail is aimed, not poured.
Pause and try this. In the camping story, which stretch takes the most time but gets the fewest words?
Think about the clock, not the page.
Here's the answer. The three-hour drive. It gets one sentence of narrative summary, because nothing in those hours carries the point about preparation.
6. Order and the words that signal it
Picture a coworker training you to close a coffee shop. They tell you to lock the door, then mention you should have counted the register first. Every step is right, and you still can't close the shop. The order is missing.
Both modes need an order. Chronological order is the arrangement of events in the order they happened, the usual order for a narrative. A time transition is a word or phrase, such as "by the time", "at last", or "the next weekend", that tells the reader how far a story has moved forward in time. Process order is the arrangement of an explanation as the steps of a task, in the order a reader would carry them out. And a sequence transition is a word or phrase, such as "first", "next", "then", or "finally", that marks a step's place in a process.
The camping story runs from the drive, to the rain, to the poles, to the next weekend, and its time transitions, "as the clouds came in", "at last", and "the next weekend", carry the reader forward. The explanation has five steps. First, practice pitching the tent at home on a dry day. Next, choose the highest flat ground. Then lay out the ground sheet and tent and connect the poles. After that, clip the tent to the poles and stake each corner. Finally, stretch the rain fly over the top and stake it tight. Scramble those steps and the explanation fails. You can't clip a tent to poles you haven't connected.
Pause and try this. In the tent explanation, which sequence transition opens the step about staking each corner?
Walk through the steps in order.
Here's the answer. "After that." It opens the fourth step, which comes after the poles are connected and before the rain fly goes on.
7. Cutting purple prose
Imagine a restaurant review that says the soup "danced upon my grateful tongue like a symphony of the gods." You learn nothing about the soup. You learn a lot about the reviewer's adjectives.
Purple prose is over-written prose that piles on adjectives, adverbs, and grand comparisons; it draws attention to the writing and buries the moment it was meant to show. Here's the purple version of the camping night: "The cruel, relentless, icy rain poured down furiously from the dark and angry heavens as my heart sank into a bottomless ocean of misery." That sentence has plenty of words, and it still shows no moment you could picture.
The cure is to cut until one concrete detail does the work. Cut "cruel, relentless, icy." Cut "furiously." Cut the angry heavens and the ocean of misery. What's left that a camera could record? Rain, and a person under it. So you write: "Rain ran off the brim of my cap, down the back of my neck." Now you can feel it.
Cutting is a skill you'll keep building, and Week 13 gives you the full toolkit. Here's a preview. "Due to the fact that the survey was very short, there were many students who completed it" becomes "Because the survey was short, many students completed it." That's 17 words cut to 9, with the meaning intact.
Pause and try this. In the purple version, is "a bottomless ocean of misery" showing or telling?
Ask whether a camera could record it.
Here's the answer. It's telling, dressed up. "Misery" names a feeling, and the ocean around it is a grand comparison that no reader could actually see, so it adds words without showing anything.
8. Checking the machine
Suppose you paste your camping paragraph into a chatbot and ask it to make the paragraph better. It hands back something smooth in seconds. Read it with the same marks you use on your own drafts.
A chatbot asked to "improve" a story often does a few predictable things. It pours in adjectives and grand comparisons, which is purple prose. It praises the draft without pointing to anything, which is hollow praise. It can swap your plain sentences for polished ones that sound like no one in particular, which erases your voice. And it doesn't know what happened that night, so any detail it adds, like a thunderclap or a sleeping bag, is invented.
Here's an illustrative revision a chatbot might return: "The relentless rain cascaded mercilessly over us like a cold betrayal, the poles defied my desperate fingers, and my sister stood beside me like a silent sentinel." Mark it. "Relentless," "cascaded mercilessly," and the two "like" comparisons are purple. "Desperate" is telling. And look at what's gone: the gray pulp and the flashlight in her teeth, the two details that made the scene real. The original is stronger. The tool drafts; the writer judges.
A better question is narrower: ask it not to rewrite, but to point to the one sentence that needs more sensory detail. Then write that detail yourself.
Pause and try this. Which detail from the original shown version did the chatbot's revision drop?
Compare the two versions in your head.
Here's the answer. The flashlight held in her teeth, and the gray pulp of the instruction sheet. Both were concrete, both were true to the night, and the revision traded them for comparisons.
9. Your first major essay
Now you get to use all of this. Your first major essay asks you to pick one mode and write from what you already know, with no outside sources. Your memory and your expertise are the material.
If you choose narration, start with your significance in one sentence. Find the moment where it's easiest to see, and make that your scene. Move quickly through the rest with narrative summary. Keep chronological order, signal it with time transitions, and end with a stated or implied significance.
If you choose exposition, decide what your reader should be able to do or understand by the end. Put the steps in process order, open each with a sequence transition, and use concrete words a reader can act on. And don't argue. Explain.
Either way, Week 4's structure still holds: an opening, body paragraphs that each do one job, and an ending that lands the point.
Pause and try this. You're writing a narrative. Which do you decide before you choose your scene?
Think about what the scene is for.
Here's the answer. Your significance. The scene goes to the moment where the significance is easiest to see, so you can't pick the scene until you know the point.
Closing
Let me pull it together. Narration tells a true story to make a point, and exposition explains without arguing. A story needs significance, stated or implied. Showing is specific sensory evidence, not more adjectives, and concrete words let a reader picture the moment. A scene goes to the moment that carries the point, and narrative summary covers the rest. Stories run in chronological order with time transitions, and explanations run in process order with sequence transitions. Purple prose gets cut until one concrete detail does the work. And a chatbot's "improved" story gets the same marks as your own draft.
Later in this module, the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz give you a chance to do all of this yourself. Next week, in Week 6, Rhetorical Analysis, you'll take this same close attention to words and point it at how a real speech persuades its audience.
Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com