Why Teach Narrative Writing?
Narrative intelligence is the ability to perceive, know, feel, and explain one’s experience and thus to re-create a reality through the use of stories. While the world does not necessarily need more short-story writers, it most certainly needs more people who can tell a good story. Journalists often speak of finding the narrative thread in the events they report. To diagnose, doctors listen to their patients’ complaints and then organize the pieces into a coherent story of an illness. Police detectives compile evidence and clues to shape a case. The best historians and history teachers recount the past as a well-told tale. Corporations invest in expensive advertising campaigns to tell the story a company wants the public to hear about its products. Narrative skills are truly life skills. The challenges involved in teaching narrative writing are not, however, inconsiderable. Student stories tend to go on for much longer than student essays, creating a tremendous reading burden for teach
