Narrative Techniques 3

f) Naturalistic (or Realistic) Writing.  This technique attempts to describe a situation to the reader in such accurate 
detail that it is almost "photographic."  The work of the French writer, Emile Zola, and also of the New Zealand author,
Katherine Mansfield, often reveals this kind of naturalistic approach.

As I reached over to pick up the pen, my arm gently tipped the vase on the table.  It fell off the edge of the desk 
and spun in the air, the yellow patterns on the porcelain blurring as it revolved.  It was the tip of the vase 
that hit the floor first, followed immediately after by the thud of the red roses as they thwacked on the floor.  The
vase seemed to bounce: first in one piece; then in two pieces; then in a multitude of pieces.  The floor lay strewn 
with rose petals and vase fragments, and a deep pool of water covered the brown wood of the floor boards making it 
seem darker than it actually was.



(g) Imagistic Writing.  Here, the author is not so much concerned about the detail of what happens, but is more 
anxious to create a mood or an atmosphere that reveals to the reader deeper significances and emotions.  Such writing 
is often characterised by the use of metaphor and simile.  

Reaching over, I knocked a yellow vase off the table.  It seemed to hang in the air like some wheel of fate.  Then, 
resolved at last, it spun down to the earth, its life shattered by the uncompromising hardness of the floor.  Everywhere 
there were shards of porcelain and the remnants of twisted flowers - strewn about like wasted dreams on the rack 
of life.  The water, once the lifeblood of the flowers, was now dissipated and lost between the floor boards.



(h) Surrealistic Writing.  We say that something is "surreal" if it is dream-like.  For example, you may have a dream 
that you walk into a room and a washing machine starts talking to you.  While we could all believe that this could 
happen in a dream, it is unlikely to happen in "real" life.  This kind of approach is often used to describe madness.  
A good example of this technique is the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in which a 
character in the story believes that she can see someone who is alive in the pattern of the wallpaper in her room.  

They were there, all of them, watching me when the vase smiled and jumped off the table.  Wicked vase!  Wicked 
hateful vase!  It taunted me for so long with its yellow smiles and wicked winks, knowing that only I could understand its 
spite and fear its cunning.  They thought I was mad of course.  All of them.  You see, they didn't know about the floor, 
about how it pulled at my feet in the darkness and how it conspired with the vase to turn the others against me.  
How could they understand as they looked on the flowers and shattered porcelain that this was all a game - that they 
would leave the room and the vase and the floor and the flowers and the walls would shriek with laughter.  Their turn 
would come and then they would be sorry.  Oh, yes, sorry then.  All of them. 




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