Read the narrative all the way through without making any marks on the paper. When finished, write down your immediate thoughts, impressions and reactions to the piece in a paragraph. Note anything that stood out to you, whether it was a surprise ending, a logical fallacy, a shift in tense or a passage that personally resonated with you.
Evaluate the content of the narrative. Read the material a second time, marking major structural elements as you go along. Underline a thesis statement or topic sentence. If the work is fiction, note the story's introduction and how the characters are presented. Number the points made in the body of the work, and pay attention to the author's tone and voice. Note if these are consistent throughout the work, along with tense and point of view. If any of these shift, ask yourself if the writer did this as a demonstration of skill and to advance her writing, or if it was a mistake. At the end of the narrative, mark the conclusion and ask if it coincides with the stated purpose.
Return to your original response paragraph and add more notes focusing on the author's content and style. Ask whom the author intended to write for, and if his writing would succeed at communicating with the intended audience. For example, a narrative describing the human brain for a group of surgeons reading a medical journal would need to have a different style and assume greater audience knowledge than an author narrating information about the human brain intended for publication in a middle school science textbook. If the intended audience will not be able to understand the narrative, then it cannot be evaluated well. If the audience is unclear, then an equal problem is posed by the narrative and its ability to communicate.
Evaluate the bias of the narrative. Determine if it is fiction or nonfiction, note if the author's writing slants toward a certain perspective and decide whether or not it provides factual information about opposing viewpoints, if applicable. For example, a narrative about the "Arab Spring" could be written from the viewpoint of a revolutionary sympathizer or a supporter of the established governments present in the affected countries. Determine what the bias of the narrative is and decide if it presents an accurate and balanced portrayal of opposing arguments, types of characters or different theories.
Evaluate the mechanics of the narrative. Re-read the material and mark errors in spelling, grammar and structure. A narrative riddled with errors needs to receive a lower evaluation than one that is mechanically sound and structurally tight. Papers, books and articles that are mechanically sound are free from grammatical errors, superfluous text and distracting narration that loses sight of the narrative's original focus.
Utilize a rubric to score and evaluate a narrative based on style, voice, clarity, purpose and mechanics. This rubric can either be the final evaluation tool or used to write an evaluative narrative about the material.