Minds Made for Stories: How We Really Read and Write Informational and Persuasive Texts

In this highly readable and provocative book, Thomas Newkirk explodes the long standing habit of opposing abstract argument with telling stories.  Newkirk convincingly shows that effective argument is already a kind of narrative and is deeply "entwined with narrative."

--Gerald Graff, former MLA President and author of Clueless in Academe

Narrative is regularly considered a type of writing―often an “easy” one, appropriate for early grades but giving way to argument and analysis in later grades. This groundbreaking book challenges all that. It invites readers to imagine narrative as something more―as the primary way we understand our world and ourselves.  

 “To deny the centrality of narrative is to deny our own nature,” Newkirk explains.  “We seek companionship of a narrator who maintains our attention, and perhaps affection.  We are not made for objectivity and pure abstraction―for timelessness.  We have ‘literary minds” that respond to plot, character, and details in all kind of writing.  As humans, we must tell stories.”

When we are engaged readers, we are following a story constructed by the author, regardless of  the type of writing.  To sustain a reading―in a novel, an opinion essay, or a research article― we need a “plot” that helps us comprehend  specific information,  or  experience the significance of an argument.   As Robert Frost reminds us, all good memorable writing is “dramatic.” 

Minds Made for Stories  is a needed corrective to the narrow and compartmentalized approaches often imposed on schools―approaches which are at odds with the way writing really works outside school walls.  

Thomas Newkirk is the bestselling author of Minds Made for Stories along with numerous other Heinemann titles, including Writing Unbound, Embarrassment, The Art of Slow Reading, The Performance of Self in Student Writing (winner of the NCTE’s David H. Russell Award), and Misreading Masculinity. He taught writing at the University of New Hampshire for thirty-nine years, and founded the New Hampshire Literacy Institutes, a summer program for teachers. In addition to working as a teacher, writer, and editor, he has served as the chair of his local school board for seven years.