How to Write a Narrative Ballad

A narrative ballad is simply a ballad that tells a story in real life or in fantasy. The best way to write one is to approach it in the same way that you would write a story, with a beginning, middle and an end. Narrative ballads can rhyme or they don’t have to rhyme. However, if they have a sense of rhythm and rhyme in them they are easier to listen to and to remember. Parallelism, repeating structures or words, is also a device that is often used in Narrative ballads. This was done in ancient times because Narrative ballads used to be told and retold as entertainment or news.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Introduce the Protagonist. In the opening stanzas you will need to introduce the Protagonist, or the person the ballad is about. Take for instance the Australian ballad “The Man from Ironbark”, the first line is, “It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town.” The first line and the rest of the first stanza set up the narrative by telling about the protagonist. In your narrative ballad you should introduce your main character in the first stanza. Say where he/she is from, and say what he/she did or will do. Patterson uses parallelism in that he ends every stanza with the word “Ironbark.”

2. Introduce the Antagonist in the next stanza. The antagonist in the narrative ballad is the character who works against the main character, in the previous case the barber. The second stanza starts, “The barber man was small and flash as barbers mostly are.” This stanza tells who the barber is and what he will do to the protagonist. “Just watch me catch him all alive, the man from Ironbark.”

3. Mention what is happening in your narrative in the next stanza. For instance, in “The Man From Ironbark” the next stanza starts, “A grunt was all reply he got, he shaved the bushman’s chin.” Here the poet tells that the barber is starting to do something, and by the end of the stanza he has fooled the bushman into thinking his throat is cut.

4. Relate the consequences in the remaining stanzas. These stanzas concentrate on telling the consequences of the preceding action and its heroic or comical conclusion.

5. Rewrite and edit the ballad for unity and rhyme. A practical way to actually write a narrative ballad is to firstly write the whole story in stanzas without worrying about rhyme or devices. Then when you rewrite it and polish it, you will find that because you have done the bulk of the work already, your mind is much clearer to work on refining the narrative.

6. Recite the ballad aloud to a group. Narrative ballads should be shared!

Tips & Warnings

• Use multiple viewpoints for your ballads
• Read some narrative ballads to get an idea of how they are written.
• Don't be afraid to rewrite the ballad to make it the best that it can be!