Work, at least
initially, with a broad definition of
‘narrative’.
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Focus on what is said.
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Remember that themes frequently come from prior research and are
often refined and supplemented by work on the selected
materials.
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Remember also that the narrative materials are often used to
confirm, exemplify, illustrate, and explore these prior
themes.
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Focus on the individual text as a whole. Even if you are working
with multiple narratives/cases, you should work on each text as a
whole – after close
reading of the individual text, you can then move on to explore
themes across texts.
You might want to use
a template structured as a table (in many instances you will be
working with just one narrative text/case). This is useful both as
a data organization and presentation aid. For
example: