The narrative chronicle is a type of chronicle that reports the actions of characters in a current time and a specific space.
Regarding language, narrative chronicles have a simple and direct language and often use humor to entertain readers. In addition, they can present the direct speech, where there is the reproduction of the characters' speeches.
Narrative chronicles involve the most diverse types of narrator (narrative focus) and, therefore, can be narrated in first or third person.
In addition to the narrative chronicle, it can be essay-argumentative or descriptive. However, we can find a chronicle that is both narrative and descriptive at the same time.
It is worth remembering that the chronicle is a short text in prose where the main characteristic is to report everyday events in a chronological way, hence its name. This type of text is widely used in the media, for example, newspapers and magazines.
How to make a narrative chronicle?
To produce a narrative chronicle we need to consider the main elements that make up a narrative. Are they:
- Plot: story of the plot, where the theme or subject that will be narrated appears.
- Characters: people present in the story and who can be main or secondary.
- Time: indicates the time at which the story is inserted.
- Space: determines the place (or places) where the story takes place.
- narrative focus: is the type of narrator who can be a character in the plot, an observer or even omniscient.
Furthermore, we must note that the facts are narrated in chronological order and its structure is divided into: introduction, climax and conclusion.
It is important to highlight that unlike other long narrative texts, such as a novel or a novel, the narrative chronicle is a shorter text.
In this sense, being a short story, it usually has few characters and a reduced space.
So, after understanding all the elements that make up a narrative, we choose the theme, which will be its characters, the time and space in which it takes place.
Know more: How to make a chronicle.
Examples of narrative chronicles
1. Learn to call the police (Luís Fernando Veríssimo)
I'm a very light sleeper, and one night I noticed someone sneaking around in the backyard.
I got up in silence and followed the slight noises coming from outside, until I saw a silhouette passing through the bathroom window.
Since my house was very secure, with bars on the windows and internal locks on the doors, I wasn't too worried, but it was clear that I wasn't going to leave a thief there, quietly spying.
I softly called the police, reported the situation and my address.
They asked me if the thief was armed or if he was already inside the house.
I clarified no and they told me that there was no vehicle around to help, but that they would send someone as soon as possible.
A minute later, I called again and said in a calm voice:
“Hi, I called a little while ago because there was someone in my backyard. No need to be in a hurry anymore. I've already killed the thief with a 12-gauge shotgun blast, which I keep at home for these situations. The shot did a lot of damage to the guy!
Less than three minutes later, five police cars, a helicopter, a rescue unit, a TV crew and the human rights gang, who wouldn't miss it for anything in this world.
They caught the thief in the act, who kept looking at everything with a haunted face. Perhaps he was thinking that this was the Police Commander's house.
In the midst of the tumult, a lieutenant approached me and said:
"I thought you said you had killed the thief."
I answered:
"I thought you said no one was available."
2. Two old people (Dalton Trevisan)
Two poor, very old invalids, forgotten in an asylum cell.
Beside the window, twisting the cripples and craning his head, only one could look out.
Next to the door, at the end of the bed, the other peered at the damp wall, the black crucifix, the flies in the thread of light. Envyingly, he asked what was going on. Dazzled, he announced the first:
“A dog lifts its little leg on the post.
Later:
“A girl in a white dress jumping rope.
Or yet:
“Now it's a fancy burial.
Seeing nothing, the friend brooded in his corner. The eldest ended up dying, to the joy of the second, finally installed under the window.
She didn't sleep, looking forward to the morning. I suspected that the other didn't reveal everything.
She dozed for a moment—it was day. She sat up in bed, craning her neck in pain: between the ruined walls, there in the alley, a pile of rubbish.
3. Brave girl (Rubem Braga)
Leaning up here, on the 13th floor, I stared at the door of the building, waiting for his figure to appear below.
I had taken her to the elevator, both anxious for her to leave and saddened by her departure. Our conversation had been bitter. When I opened the elevator door for her, I made a tender gesture in farewell, but, as I had predicted, she resisted. Through the opening of the door I saw his head in profile, serious, descend, disappear.
Now he felt the need to see her leave the building, but the elevator must have stopped on the way, because it took a while for her rapid figure to emerge. He went down the stairs, made a small turn to avoid a puddle of water, walked to the corner, crossed the street. I saw her for a moment walking along the sidewalk in front of the cafe; and she disappeared without looking back.
"Brave girl!" — that's what I muttered at random, remembering an old verse by Vinicius de Moraes; and at the same moment I also remembered an occasional phrase by Pablo Neruda, one Sunday when I went to visit him at his house in Isla Negra, Chile. "What brave are las Chilenas!" he had said, pointing to a woman in a bathing suit entering the sea in front of her in the cloudy morning; and she had explained that she had been walking along the beach and had only wet her feet in the foam: the water was icy, cutting.
"Brave girl!" Downstairs, in the street, her small figure was touching, reduced by the vertical projection. Would she go with wet eyes or would she just feel her soul empty? "Brave girl!" Like the Chilean woman who faced the sea on Isla Negra, she also faced her loneliness. And I stayed with mine, stopped, dumb, sad, watching her leave because of me.
I lay down in the hammock, feeling a headache and a bit of self-disgust. I could be this girl's father—and I wonder how I would feel as a father if I knew of her adventure, like this one, with a man my own age. Nonsense! Parents never know anything, and when they do, they don't understand; they are too close and too far to understand. He, this father she talked about so much, would not believe it if he saw her enter my house for the first time, as he did, with his bag over his shoulder, his light step and his nervous laugh. "How did you think I was?" I remember looking, half amused, half scared, at that agile blond moketone that only he spoke looking me in the eye, and he made the most intimate and grave confessions interspersed with childish lies—always looking me in the eye. He told me that half of the things he told me over the phone were pure fabrications—and soon he invented others. I felt that her lies were a skewed way she had to tell herself, a way to lend some logic to her muddled truths.
The tenderness and trembling of his hard youthful body, his laughter, the cheerful insolence with which he invaded my house and my life, and his predictable fits of weeping—all disturbed me a little, but I reacted. Have I been rude or petty, have I left your little quivering soul poorer and more alone?
I ask myself these questions, and at the same time I feel ridiculous asking them. This girl has her life ahead of her, and one day she will remember our story as a funny anecdote from her own life, and perhaps the she tells another man looking him in the eye, running her hand through his hair, sometimes laughing - and maybe he suspects it's all lie.
Read too:
- Chronicle
- Argumentative Chronicle
- Narrative Elements