Academic historians have not forgotten how to tell a story.
Instead, most of them have purposefully chosen not to tell
stories; that is, they have chosen not to write narrative
history.Indeed, most professional historians use the term
“narrative history” to mean a chronological telling of events,
as opposed to other ways to extract meaningful information from
the past: tracing different themes, for instance, or analyzing
numbers. Narrative history is a particular kind of history-
writing whose popularity comes from the fact that it resembles a
story. It lays out the events of the past in chronological
order, with a beginning, middle and end. I think that conception
of “narrative” misses some of the key qualities that appeal to
folks outside of the profession. “Narrative” has a more
elaborate meaning for fiction writers, and specifically those
who write within genres and/or for young readers—in sum, writers
who have to create engaging plots. When fiction writers discuss
narrative, they’re not just thinking of o