How to Use narrative in a Sentence

narrative

1 of 2 noun
  • He is writing a detailed narrative of his life on the island.
  • People have questioned the accuracy of his narrative.
  • A lot of narratives are put on you.
    — Rebecca Ford, Vanity Fair, 9 June 2026
  • This has been their narrative for a long time.
    — Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 9 Apr. 2026
  • So first of all, that narrative is just wrong about me.
    — ABC News, 7 Jan. 2026
  • Push back on the false fraud narrative.
    — Monique B. Jones, Chicago Tribune, 20 Apr. 2026
  • Both narratives are built around a hope that the worst is in the past.
    — Author: Brittny Mejia, Anchorage Daily News, 16 May 2020
  • Okay, maybe this narrative needs to die.
    — Luca Evans, Denver Post, 27 Mar. 2026
  • Like, there was no through line narrative.
    — Jem Aswad, Variety, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Like, there was no through-line narrative.
    — Hannah Dailey, Billboard, 6 Nov. 2025
  • The idea of selling a narrative is all over this episode.
    — Erin Qualey, Vulture, 22 Apr. 2026
  • But that narrative has flipped.
    — Jake Henry Smith, Glamour, 4 May 2026
  • Lyra is a skilled maker too, not with gold but with narrative.
    — Lev Grossman, The Atlantic, 23 Oct. 2025
  • That will be part of the narrative of his return.
    — Sam McDowell, Kansas City Star, 2 Apr. 2026
  • There’s so many false narratives that get piled on top of each other.
    — Eric Johnson, Recode, 24 Nov. 2018
  • In the years since, a narrative has surfaced about the movie.
    — Simon Bland, IndieWire, 8 Oct. 2025
  • The feature marks the first narrative movie in over a decade.
    — Borys Kit, HollywoodReporter, 10 June 2026
  • In this set of narrative tree-rings, ice sheets cover the earth.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 9 July 2021
  • But first, could a hug change the narrative on school shootings?
    — The Christian Science Monitor, 28 Oct. 2019
  • That’s not a narrative people can hold in their minds.
    — Marlow Stern, Variety, 28 Apr. 2026
  • Both sides have unique narrative arcs to seal closed, as well as likable fan bases.
    — Steven Louis Goldstein, New York Times, 2 Oct. 2025
  • If the narrative around these things were to change, then so would its value.
    — Destiny Jackson, Deadline, 9 Jan. 2026
  • This is no time for real narrative build.
    — Steven Louis Goldstein, New York Times, 28 Oct. 2025
  • Who can aid and abet this narrative effort?
    — Jessica M. Goldstein, Vulture, 10 Apr. 2026
  • The Mariners don’t do easy narratives.
    — Tyler Kepner, New York Times, 9 Oct. 2025
  • There were only sort of a few of those kinds of narratives that came up over and over again.
    — Recode Staff, Recode, 5 July 2018
  • Will watched how quickly false narratives took hold.
    — Michael McCarter, USA Today, 27 Feb. 2026
  • But then the narrative began to evolve.
    — Matthew Carey, Deadline, 19 Mar. 2026
  • The film does not attempt to map each death into a clear narrative.
    — Lise Pedersen, Variety, 21 Apr. 2026
  • The fault is in our stars and not us, according to this narrative.
    — Anthony Hennen, National Review, 26 Oct. 2021

narrative

2 of 2 adjective
  • Did one of those narrative threads come to you first?
    — Nina Mesfin, New Yorker, 5 Oct. 2025
  • The world does change, and that means narrative forms change with it.
    — Mark Dawidziak, cleveland, 3 Nov. 2019
  • First, brands lose narrative depth.
    — Sudhir Gupta, Forbes.com, 9 Apr. 2026
  • None of it makes much sense in a narrative frame, but that seems beside the point.
    — Los Angeles Times, 7 May 2020
  • This section has a narrative verve that the other parts of the book lack.
    — Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2021
  • Well, the reception of their work is one of the narrative threads of the book.
    — Natalie Daher, Longreads, 4 Apr. 2018
  • Tell me about the process of coming up with the the narrative thread in your segment.
    — Jeff Ewing, Forbes, 30 Oct. 2021
  • Loose ends are left untied, and dead ends lurk around narrative corners.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 5 Sep. 2022
  • Hard to pull off onscreen without a narrative voice-over track.
    — Ty Burr, BostonGlobe.com, 15 Aug. 2019
  • Share my counter-narrative with your husband, and sort your feelings out.
    — Amy Dickinson, oregonlive, 18 Apr. 2021
  • Without Lott, there would be no counter-narrative for those who have come to need one.
    — Mike Spies, The New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2022
  • That loss of narrative drive aside, there’s much pleasure to be had alongside the food for thought.
    — Bob Verini, Variety, 6 June 2022
  • And we must not be deluded by the narrative logic of a fairy tale.
    — Sasha Dovzhyk, CNN, 14 Dec. 2022
  • Sometimes the narrative changes and people can come back.
    — Literary Hub, 11 Mar. 2026
  • Our attitude is that what first needs to happen is a narrative shift.
    — Jackie Bischof, Quartz, 26 Oct. 2021
  • In the second half of the season, this show makes a lot of bad narrative choices, too.
    — Annalee Newitz, Ars Technica, 7 Feb. 2018
  • The stories are told in narrative form and through letters, poems and even lists.
    — NBC News, 17 Aug. 2020
  • These non-narrative passages provide clues for what Moss is up to.
    — Leo Robson, The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2021
  • For all the goings on, the first five episodes don’t exactly build up a narrative head of steam.
    — Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 28 Oct. 2022
  • With more narrative freedom, the Kens might have ruled with more menace.
    — Sonia Rao, Washington Post, 26 July 2023
  • Because your clips are non-narrative, your viewers have little to go on in terms of you, the poster.
    — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 9 Apr. 2020
  • This may be a side effect of the narrative voice Wheeler has chosen.
    — Christine Pivovar, kansascity, 25 Aug. 2017
  • Seeing everything through one pair of narrative eyes limits what the show can achieve on stage.
    — Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune, 21 July 2022
  • For me, the sweet spot is ten hours or shorter and most of the timefiction or narrative nonfiction.
    — Rebecca Worby, Outside Online, 24 Feb. 2022
  • Still, the fun tracks fit into the album’s narrative arc of letting go and feeling free.
    — Deasia Paige, ELLE, 2 Aug. 2022
  • In a narrative way, I was obsessed with the order of the songs, what song came after what.
    — Rebecca Milzoff, Billboard, 12 May 2023
  • Everything is drawn with the broad-strokes shorthand of a music video, where narrative depth is rarely the point.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 13 Feb. 2021
  • There's a big trans narrative missing form the Me Too movement.
    — Brittney McNamara, Teen Vogue, 21 Mar. 2018
  • Bode's cut comment clearly pointed to this narrative fact.
    — Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 7 Nov. 2025
  • But Norco, for all its narrative propulsion, finds loopy joy in the journey, too.
    — Clayton Purdom, Chron, 8 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'narrative.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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