The Art of Description and the Avoidance of Sentimentality

When writing an artful narrative in a North American, Eurocentric culture, such as ours, it's considered essential to avoid "sentimentality."

Definition: The quality or state of being sentimental especially to excess or in affectation. Marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism. Resulting from feeling rather than reason or thought [a sentimental attachment] [a sentimental favorite]. Having an excess of sentiment or sensibility.

Writers recommend describing an event or a situation, from as objective a viewpoint as possible, avoiding excesses of feeling words. Allow the reader to interpret the character's emotions through his or her actions, rather than telling the viewer what he or she is feeling. By doing this, you will employ symbols and metaphors that suggest a specific act is revealing something about the character's true emotional state. Often used examples are the "excessive washing of hands" or "spilled coffee."

Here is a quote from a good essay I recommend reading on narrative. Click here to view the full article.

"A narrative is a moving picture. Like description, narratives need to have a rich texture of details so that the reader is seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching. The reader should experience the story, not simply hear it.

Stories add the element of time to description. Often stories start at the beginning and then follow the sequence of events chronologically. However, an effective variation on this pattern is to start in the middle of things and then use flashbacks to fill in the background information. This method is especailly effective in holding the reader's attention.

There are two extremes you want to avoid in writing a narrative. First, you can simply tell the story, event by event, without giving it any texture because you leave out descriptive details and dialogue. At the opposite extreme is a narrative that attempts to tell everything, painting detailed descriptions of every scene, quoting everything that is said, even speculating about the thoughts of the characters. A good narrative has texture, but it is suggestive rather than exhaustive. After all, the reader's imagination needs some room to fill in details. Giving too many details not only overwhelms the reader's imagination, it also slows the pace of the narrative.

Pacing is an important concept in narrative writing. Basically, pacing means that the writer sometimes slows the pace by putting more detail in, but sometimes she also hurries over details. A good way to know where to put in details and where to leave them out is to think of a narrative as consisting of episodes (smaller scenes that are strung together to make up a longer story). If you divide your story into a few short episodes, then you want suggestive detail within the episodes, but you want to hurry over the transitions between them. Think of episodes as pearls on a string. Make the pearls full orbed; keep the string stringy. The reader dwells in the episodes, but she needs to be oriented to them, and that is the function of the transitions."

How to Write a Narrative Essay
by Jesse Seldess, Professional Writer

Click here to learn how to write a narrative essay with these easy-to-follow tips.

Mutilation by Patrick Roscoe
Patrick Roscoe is an award-winning fiction writer who's dense narratives are filled with powerful and often disturbing imagery.

"Flies grow drowsy and drunk in Tanzanian sun, bumble against the mesh-screened window, burst with the promise of blood. Beside the sill, a small boy kneels on the floor of red tiles polished once a week by the silent houseboy; a scent of wax lingers like an eternal reprimand in the air. With a pin pinched between thumb and finger, the child contemplates the flies, discerns which is the fattest or biggest or most lazy. His left hand holds the chosen one in place and his right hand guides the pin into its body. Time holds its breath while the insect's thin hard encasing is being penetrated, then exhales in relief as the silver sliver eases into inner softness. The wings of the fly beat and buzz as red liquid drools upon the window ledge, glues its body there. With one finger, the boy paints lines and shapes upon his blank anonymous arm. He can draw numbers, letters of the alphabet, or more elusive symbols. Recently, he has learned to spell his name."

To read the rest of the story, click here.

Click here to view the Wikipedia Entry on Narrative