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There are three basic narrative modes to keep in mind when writing fiction, narrative journalism, memoir, creative nonfiction—basically anything that involves storytelling. These are summary, scene, and aside.
It’s possible to parse the modes of narrative even further and come up with several more, but these are the basics. If you practice recognizing them while reading, you'll be able to use them more skillfully in your own writing.
Summary, scene, and aside are basically three different ways of handling the flow of time, and as such they move at different speeds.
Summary = fast
Summary covers the most time in the shortest space. For example, you could describe a hundred years in a single sentence with summary. Time can pass in a flash.
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Scene = medium (or “real time”)
Scene tends to unfold at a pace that feels similar to the way we experience the present. In a scene, for example, Darryl might walk to a cafe, meet a friend, drink a coffee, tell a secret, and say goodbye—and we would see him do these things with details that would bring the scene to life. The cafe would provide a specific setting, the coffee might lend an intriguing sense impression or two, and the secret would likely entail dialogue. Setting, sense impressions, and dialogue are all important earmarks of scene.
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Aside = slow
Asides are complicated because they can be anything at all, including scene and summary; but the thing about an aside is that it takes you out out of the main narrative thread, so in this sense narrative time stops for a while.
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If the central narrative itself can be thought of as a journey, summary is similar to driving on the highway. You can cover a lot of ground, but you don’t catch a lot of detail.
Scene is more like walking. You can smell the air. Things feel more real.
An aside is like stopping to have a picnic or take a detour. Asides can be very interesting; they can provide a lot of back story or explore a theme, but you’re not going to progress very far along the journey of the main narrative with one.
Many writers develop a habit of leaning heavily on one mode (usually summary) and as a result under utilize the others. This is a problem because too much of a single mode is tiresome. Too much summary especially gets boring quickly—it's like spending too long on the highway.
True masters of narrative tend to play freely with all three modes. In a Mavis Gallant story, for example, time is always a deeply felt, richly textured presence because she is able to shift so easily between these three modes of storytelling.
Consider the following passage from near the start of her story, “The Moslem Wife”:
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Information of this kind about the meaning of failure had been gleaned by Netta years before, when she first became aware of her little cousin. Jack’s father and mother—the commercial blunderers—had come to the Prince Albert and Albion to ride out a crisis. They were somewhere between undischarged bankruptcy and annihilation, but one was polite: Netta curtsied to her aunt and uncle. Her eyes were on Jack. She could not read yet, though she could sift and classify attitudes. She drew near him, sucking her lower lip, her hands behind her back. For the first time she was conscious of the beauty of another child. He was younger than Netta, imprisoned in a portable-fence arrangement in which he moved tirelessly, crabwise, hanging on a barrier he could easily have climbed.
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In the first part of this paragraph we are clearly on the highway. From this brief summary we understand that Netta, as a child, learned about failure from an event involving her aunt and uncle, who, on the brink of financial ruin, visited the hotel owned by Netta's parents. But then there’s that colon, and with the colon, Gallant shifts gears. All of a sudden, we're in a scene. Netta curtsies (a real-time action), and the paragraph continues in full scene mode.
Because she shifts between scene and summary with such ease, time itself takes on a dynamic and mysterious depth. It flows almost palpably through and between people, connecting history, memory, and insight.
Once you’ve spent some time examining how some of your favorite writers work with the three basic narrative modes, take a close look at a piece of your own writing to see if you lean more heavily on scene, summary or aside. Then start mixing things up.
May the new year be full of exciting time textures for us all,
Kim
kimadrian.com
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PS
My friend Amy Wallen—a wonderful writer and generous teacher—is leading a zoom-based workshop called "The Big Picture" with David Ulin, former Los Angeles Times Book Review editor. This is a chance for a small group of writers with book-length projects well underway to get macro level feedback from two extremely experienced, talented writers. You can find more information here.
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