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The Four Narrative Forms of Fiction

I reckon that any book you ever try to write has exactly four different types of narrative that ultimately make up that book. Yes... I counted like twice, and without any leg to stand on, I'm making an observation that I've noticed in writing. No, this isn't something I looked up or learned in a writing course. I'm not saying I'm definitively "right", just that it might be something someone ought to think about. Furthermore, when I say narrative form, I'm not talking about narrative modes (Point of Views), narrative voice, or narrative time. I'm talking about something a little bit broader. I'm also not talking about rhetorical modes or the fiction-writing mode, although my four are a dumbed down and re-organized version of the fiction-writing mode, and if you've heard it before by any other name, well, I'm sure you'll bug me about it in the comments. 

Others have noticed this observation too, but it usually comes in the form of talking about pacing, how boring a work is, or how "dry" the writing is. However, all of these things are ultimately informed by what you write, and what you write can be broken down into certain structures, as I'm about to do now. Are there exactly four types of narrative form that make up a fiction? No... But I'm breaking it up this way in order to help you understand how to control your writing better, and perhaps find out what your writing is missing.

The four types of narrative form are Descriptions, Exposition, Dialogue, and Action. DEDA for short. Those four types of narrative ultimately make up everything your novel is. Either you're describing something, explaining something, having people talk, or having people do something. It makes sense when you really think about it like that. Your narrator is either explaining or describing something, or your characters are talking or doing something. If any of those four things wasn't happening, your story certainly wouldn't be going anywhere.

Each type of narrative form differs in many ways. The spacing between scenes of dialogue is radically different from the spacing in a scene of exposition. Exposition would be far more condensed, with a lot more content to process, while dialogue would be more open, but less obvious or informative. This doesn't always hold true. You can have an information-dense dialogue or an airy, inconsequential form of exposition, but they still sit as unique narratives onto themselves.

Which combination of writing you use is instrumental to pacing. A lot of action with little description cranks up the pace. Throw in a ton of description and exposition with only a few actions, and that pace slows to a crawl. Have people talking and you can have entire chapters were nothing happens but dialogue. As my previous chapters suggested, people often love good banter, so sometimes that is not a bad thing.

Understanding what each of these techniques does in your writing is important to good writing. As you develop as a writer, the key will eventually be to blend these four methods together, to create something with a balance of all four. What balance? Well the balance certainly isn't ¼, ¼, ¼, ¼... how you balance out your exposition, dialogue, description, and action is entirely up to you. Certain parts of your book may be very action heavy, other parts might be dialogue heavy, and a third part might crank up the descriptions.

Furthermore, you may want a book overall that's very action-heavy. The Michael Bay of books, if you will. On the other hand, you may want a book with a lot of banter, the Quentin Tarantino of books, if you will. There are many different ways to write a book, so it is up to you to decide how you'll do that. You've probably been warned away from exposition heavy books, and you might be right, although a book that mixes exposition well with dialogue and descriptions can often get away with quite a bit of exposition.

So you want to understand your four narrative forms, and you want to mix them up, switching from using one to the other depending on the effect you want. The ultimate goal will be the pacing of your story. Mix them badly, and pacing will be uneven and confusing. Mind you, pacing is affected by other things too. How much time passes, for example, in a given amount of writing also affects pacing. If the last ten chapters took place over one day and the next two chapters take place over ten years, your story may have bad pacing no matter how you write it, but I theorize that true pacing isn't really set by how much happens, but by how it's presented, and it's presented through your narrative forms.

And while I talk about uneven pacing, I am NOT saying an entire book should follow a certain pace. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you want to write an engaging book, the pace should change. In particular, the pacing should crank up near the end. You should feel the franticness and desperation at the climax of a story. Pacing should go up and down... just like in real life, we have our lows and our highs. Sometimes, everything is easy and we have it all in our hands, other times, we're frantically desperate to catch up.

So mix up your narrative form. Experiment a bit. Write a dialogue heavy story, then write the same story full of descriptions and exposition. See how it feels different as someone reads it. Do they perceive it differently? Do you? Playing with the narrative forms is a great way for you to understand the structure of your book, and to learn how you can control it. If there is something missing from your book, if it comes off dry or uninteresting, maybe it's pacing? Maybe you need more dialogue... or more description... or maybe more action. Whatever it is, understanding the tools you have to work with goes a long way towards performing the repairs you need to make.

Oh, and one last thing. Although I divide them into four different categories, those categories are NOT mutually exclusive. Although we tend to think of exposition as a paragraph of exposition, or dialogue as a line of dialogue, there is no reason you can't write an expositional dialogue, or a descriptive exposition, or an action-heavy dialogue (quips anyone?). When I talk about mixing, I'm not talking about writing a paragraph of dialogue, then a paragraph of exposition, then a paragraph of description. By the time you've mastered this skill, many paragraphs should have elements from multiple narrative forms, if not all four of them at once. Don't waste your words, slim-line this stuff, and create your own narrative structure that keeps things interesting.