Walden University Writing Center

Where instructors and editors talk writing.

Narrative Writing For Capstone Projects

The doctoral capstone is a specific type of document that demonstrates your scholarship and your familiarity with academic conventions and existing knowledge in your field. For the dissertation, doctoral study, project study, or project, the primary type of writing required is what is known as “expository”— you inform your reader about current research and/or practice relevant to your topic, explain the type of study you conducted and why it was relevant, and present outcomes and conclusions based on what you found. This may feel different from what we may think of as typical “narrative,” a series of events with a beginning, middle, and end. 

Social science writing, and particularly writing in APA style, is distinct from literary and other forms of expression. The APA (6th ed.) manual even specifies that authors should avoid “devices that attract attention to words, sounds, or other embellishments instead of to ideas” (p. 70). This is why your chairperson, committee members, and editors at the Writing Center will delete literary devices, emotional language, and more overtly argumentative or persuasive elements in your draft. Because the goals of APA style are economy of expression, clarity, precision, and appropriate academic tone, in many ways a more traditionally narrative form of writing is not suitable for what you want to accomplish in your capstone. It can be helpful, though, to think about how narrative writing may still apply while you write in a more formal, academic way.


Telling the Story of Your Data
In your proposal in particular, you want to resist the urge to follow typical narrative forms. The purpose of the proposal is to explain the type of study you want to do, how it fits in with existing research and/or practice, and its potential significance to current scholarship. When it comes to presenting your results, sometimes it helps to think of that section as “telling the story of your data.” This does not mean suddenly slipping into memoir, of course; still, presenting your results with a beginning, middle, and end can help you convey information in a way that your reader can understand and without repeating yourself or jumping from point to point sporadically. What did you do first? What happened during data collection, and did it match what you planned in your proposal? What did you do once you had all your data? How did analysis work, and what did you find? Thinking of the results as the story of your data, even if you still present it in formal, scientific language, can keep you organized and prevent confusion when it comes time to write everything up.


Reflecting on Your Work
Students in certain programs are required to include specific reflections about their study as part of the final document. While, again, you do not want to become overly literary in your description, you can use this section to tell the story of your development as a scholar. Whereas the other sections convey your research skills and academic knowledge through your analysis and use of evidence, this section is your chance to actually provide the story of your own development as a doctoral-level scholar practitioner. For instance, Sections 1, 2, and 3 of your EdD project study are your chance to show you are a doctoral scholar, and Section 4 is your chance to tell readers about it. Using a narrative structure here can help you present this in a linear, focused way.


Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment
The doctoral capstone document is long, with many varied parts, so you will find yourself shifting between different modes of writing depending on the goals of the particular section. While the capstone has certain restrictions, and APA style precludes certain literary approaches, you should still feel comfortable trying out different approaches to conveying your ideas during the drafting process.

Often people can worry that “academic” or “scientific” writing necessarily has to be dry or unengaging, but it is quite the contrary. To return to the words of the APA manual, “In describing your research, present the ideas and findings directly but aim for an interesting and compelling style and a tone that reflects your involvement with the problem” (p. 66). When you set out to write your capstone project, your ultimate goal is to write in a way that the audience can grasp your capstone’s significance and, ultimately, its contribution to social change. Including elements of narrative writing in your capstone project can help your reader do just that.

August Webinar Preview!

Greetings Scholarly Writers! We hope you are accomplishing your summer writing goals and you're staying cool while doing so. We're about to turn the calendar page to August, so it's time to update you on our LIVE WEBINAR schedule for August. We have plenty of offerings that you might find interesting this month. 



Here are this month's offerings: 

Title: Beginnings and Endings: Introduce and Conclude Your Writing
Date: Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Time (eastern): 8:00-9:00pm
Audience: All students who are currently writing coursework or capstone projects.  


Title: APA Formatting and Style: Beyond Citing Sources
Date: Thursday, August 10, 2017
Time: (eastern): 5:00-6:00pm
Audience: All students interested in learning about harnessing effective citation style.


Title: Practical Skills: Paraphrasing Source Information
Date: Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Time (eastern): 1:00-2:00pm
Audience: All students who would like to practice their paraphrasing skills.


Title: Writing Process for Longer Research Projects
Date: Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Time (eastern): 12:00-1:00pm
Audience: Doctoral students writing their capstone project.


Title: Writing at the Doctoral Level
Date: Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Time (eastern): 7:00-8:00pm
Audience: Graduate students or writers hoping to become graduate students.

If you can't join us at the time for  any of these Live Webinars, we also record and archive ALL of our webinar offerings. You can access our entire webinar archive, as well as transcripts for every episode, by following this link to the webinar portion of our website.





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Narrative Writing: Include Relevant Details to Guide Your Reader's Focus

I’m continuing our series on narrative assignments this week, and today we’ll be focusing on details. I have an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, so I have studied narrative structures before, and am here to give you some advice to help you shape your narrative Walden assignments.

As a creative writer, I’ve done a lot of work constructing and deconstructing nonfiction narratives. For your work here at Walden, everything is nonfiction and has a logical flow, but some assignments are more narrative than others in that they require you to recount a story or event. In these cases, the approach and expectations of the reader are similar to writing an academic paper, but it can get tricky because there are so many personal details to choose from. Today I’ll discuss how you can narrow down the details to enhance your narrative.


Let’s say you are asked to tell a story of a leader who inspired you recently in your office. You are telling this story in order to show how some of your course readings apply to real scenarios. The story ends when you’ve explained a specific instance in which this leader inspired you.

Include Relevant Details
Let’s say Linda is the name of the leader in your office who inspired you. Linda handled some very passive aggressive behavior in a meeting very effectively by using some of the techniques you’ve been reading about in class. So, ask yourself, what details are relevant and necessary for the reader to understand what happened? Essentially, what details, if left out, would create a gap in the story? You can list all the details you can think of as an exercise and then pick the ones that you need to include from there. Here are some possible details you can choose from to include in this narrative: 

• You have worked with Linda for 10 years

• You have always admired Linda

• The colleagues in the meeting have a history of negative behavior

• Linda is the manager of the project the meeting was about

Which of these details are essential to understanding the story? 3 and 4 are likely the most important to readers being able to follow what you’re saying. It may seem like 1 and 2 are relevant, because they’re part of your background with Linda, but they are not essential for the reader considering the purpose here is not a profile of Linda and your relationship, but a specific action Linda took.

Here’s an example of how a paragraph might look with all the above details:

I’ve worked with Linda in my office for 10 years and she is a great manager. I have always admired and enjoyed working with Linda. We recently had a meeting for a project Linda managed, and some coworkers were very passive aggressive and not productive during Linda’s presentation. These particular coworkers have a history of negative behavior and have negatively impacted past meetings as well. Linda handled this interaction very effectively by using Townsend’s (2017) approaches of effective communication.

Now this paragraph is by no means ineffective, but you want your readers to focus on the important and most relevant details that will enhance your narrative—and when you include details not tied in to the meaning or purpose of your work, you can create confusion or a muddled narrative.

A revised paragraph with clearer focus might look more like this:

My manager, Linda, is an effective leader, and recently inspired me with how she handled some negative interactions during a meeting. Linda was the manager of the project we had the meeting for, and while the coworkers present were in a different department, we had worked with them before and had some difficulties. In previous meetings the coworkers had not paid attention while Linda presented and were un-receptive during group discussion and brainstorming. During this meeting, these coworkers interrupted Linda during her presentation and whispered to one another during group discussion rather than engaging with the group. Linda used Townsend’s (2017) approaches for effective communication to speak to these coworkers in the meeting space and establish clear communication for the group.

See how this revision actually has more details, but they are about the most relevant aspects of what happened in this narrative. It is important for a reader to know what exactly happened, that this was established behavior, and how Linda handled the situation in order to understand why the writer is inspired by Linda. We can assume that the narrative will continue from here, explaining exactly what Linda said and did concerning Townsend’s techniques.

So when writing a narrative as part of your academic work, remember to:

• Ask yourself: What story am I telling? Why? Where does it end up?

• Write down the details

• Pull out the essential details for your focus

And of course you can always submit your work to the Writing Center! Narratives are very difficult since we know so much background information about the topic, so one of the best practices, and one every creative or other type of writer uses, is to get a second set of eyes on your work. 

Narrative Writing: Scholarly Narrative Overview

In the coming weeks on this blog, our Blog Team will take an in-depth look at a common (yet complex) type of academic writing that Walden University students are often asked to write: Scholarly Narrative Writing Assignments. Narrative writing is mostly associated with creative writing and other forms of informal prose. However, as scholar-practitioners, Walden students must be prepared to share their professional and academic experiences in a variety of scholarly contexts. With that in mind, over the next few weeks this blog will feature expert advice to help writers strike that perfect balance between formal exposition and personal descriptive writing. We hope you learn and enjoy! 

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APA How-To: Citing and Referencing a PDF

Just remember these easy steps when citing a PDF and you’ll find the way to cite it correctly according to APA style guidelines.

AWA Student Spotlight: David Yeary

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