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#atozchallenge : N is for Narrative #fiction #writing #quotes

Theme: Quotes from Authors and Bookish People about Writing

On my other blog, I’m writing a fiction a day for the A to Z Challenge based on the prompts given by blog friends, and ace photographer J W Richardson. If you’re in the mood for some fiction, go pay a visit to Daily (w)rite.


Today at Amlokiblogs, we’re talking about the very basics of fiction, Narrative.

A narrative (or play) is any account
of connected events, presented to a reader or listener in a sequence of
written or spoken words, or in a sequence of (moving) pictures. The word “story” may be used as a synonym of “narrative”. It can also be
used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative. 

These are some of the quotes from those who know what a story or narrative is all about: 

“Story should be a descent — the feeling that there is an intense gravity to the narrative that draws you down, down, down.”
― Chuck Wendig
 
“To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.”
― Umberto Eco

“All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth — yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it’s best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.”
― Vera Nazarian

“A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.”–John Updike

“Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.”

― A.S. Byatt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What sort of narratives do you find fascinating? What kind of stories do you like to read or write?

Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

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