I sometimes wonder: When did writing become WRITING

By Brian Timmerman, Senior Writing Specialist

The strength of any piece of writing (fiction or non) is dependent on the strength of its narrative. Plain and simple. I might even have that put on my tombstone: “Here lies Brian Timmerman: The strength of any piece of writing (fiction or non) is dependent on the strength of its narrative.” Seriously.

And keep in mind, this is not just me telling you this. It’s smart people too. As Mark Turner (2001) concluded in The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language, story (the same lowly technique used by, yes, schlock writers like Danielle Steele) is still the primary mode in which our brains organize information. To use any other method to organize a paper, any paper, he argued, would be ridiculous, counterintuitive to the way we process information (Turner, 2001).

So, a DDP should read like a story?

Yes.

A Praxis?

Story.

Even a KAM?

Yup.

What about a CRS-7?

You made that up didn’t you?

Yes, as simple as it sounds, everything you write needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It needs to, as our own Iris Yob (2007) pointed out, tell a story, and “you...need to follow that story line from beginning to end” (p. 24). It needs to introduce characters (typically a specific demographic that you think is in trouble), and have a plot (a way to get your reader to understand some sort of solution for the characters). And for God’s sake, it needs to have some sort of moral (i.e. “Revoke NCLB,” “We should be less reliant on corn-based products”).

And remember: The strength of any piece of writing (fiction or non) is dependent on the strength of its narrative.