
Narrative scenes are ones in which the story is being told, not shown. Last week we looked at a passage from Lisa Gardner’s thriller Right Behind You, which gave us an excellent example of a POV character narrating a tale.
This is a common technique in the mystery/suspense genre, and especially in the opening scene, which sometimes is in omniscient POV.
While writers are admonished to “show, don’t tell,” there are times when it’s masterful and the best method to instead narrate the information needed to get across to readers.
When artfully done, narrative scenes can be as riveting as cinematic scenes that play out as if watching a movie. Continue Reading…