How do you write a good narrative?

Answer 1

Start with a compelling situation – something rich in drama, resonance, and potential.

Then, keep surprising yourself until you're satisfied.

Answer 2

Two blades of grass leaned together in the wind.
"I've been working on a memoir."
"I think it's a north wind. Brisk. What kind of memoir?"
"An account of my adolescence."
"A growing pains kind of thing."
"Detailed yet macro. Plenty of digressions about the meadow."
"So a memoir doubling as a niche study."
"I'd call it ambiance. Cultural climate, if you will."
"It gives the piece depth."
"Right. I'm not a narcissist."
"Your inadequacy as subject leaving room for the group."
"I am the prime example. The central text."
"A part of the whole."
"Part for the whole."
"Fiction or non-fiction?"
"The memoir?"
The wind stopped. The blades of grass tilted slowly back to upright positions, stretching toward the high-noon sun, dry and awake.
"Are you fabricating some of it? Heightening the realism for dramatic effect?"
"That's when the meadow comes in. To fill in the gaps of mundane."
"The others, the crabgrass, the dandelions. As related to you. Or otherwise."
"It's a non-fictional work."
It was a lazy, gorgeous afternoon. A lawnmower puttered.
"Are you a fatalist?"
"My writing doesn't shape the way I live. So maybe."
"Your writing is purely observational."
"Outside but in."
"Writing in the first person with a third person's perspective."
"Like an Escher sketch. Or a Mobius strip."
"You leave no other side. No slate for reader opinion."
"They can judge the voice. The story is mine."
The blades of grass were chopped into pieces and scattered like seeds. Unattached and considerably lighter, they skipped across the lawn with the slightest breeze.