Week 5 — Narrative & Expository Writing

Why this matters

A nursing student writing a personal statement and a new hire explaining to a teammate how to close the register both need a true story with a point, or steps in an order a reader can follow.

In plain language

This week you write in two of the oldest ways people use words: telling a true story and explaining how something works. A narrative (a true story told to make a point) needs more than events; it needs a reason the reader should care. An expository piece (writing that explains or informs) needs steps in an order a reader can follow. In both, you learn to show (give the details of a moment that a reader can see and hear) instead of telling (naming the feeling for the reader). You will use these moves in your first major essay, written from your own experience with no outside sources.

• Already covered: Weeks 1–4 built the writing process, critical reading, the paragraph, and the thesis.
• This week: narration and exposition, and the moves inside them: significance, showing, scene, order, and cutting.
• How they connect: a story's significance does the job last week's thesis did.
• Where we're going next: Week 6, Rhetorical Analysis, turns this close attention on a real speech.

Focus

How do you show a moment instead of telling it, and give a story or an explanation a point and an order a reader can follow?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] tell narration from exposition, and both from argument
• [ ] turn a telling sentence into a showing one with sensory detail
• [ ] give the scene to the moment that carries a story's significance
• [ ] order a story or a process and cut purple prose

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 5 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Writing Studio (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the essay assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: rewrite one telling sentence from your own life as a showing sentence that reaches two senses.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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