Personal Narrative

(adapted from essortment.com)

The Personal Narrative, also known as the Reflective Essay, is a piece of writing describing an event of personal significance to the writer. Personal Narratives go beyond merely describing your personal observations and perceptions to examine abstract ideas – love, patience, courage, honor. Your examinations of and reflections on your personal experience should lead you to a new understanding of your beliefs about life, about what it means to be human.

There is very little mystery to writing the personal narrative essay. There is no proper topic for such an essay. An essay can be about a variety of personal experiences. You, the writer, have the right to say what you want about your personal experience. You can write about anything -- Aunt Sally, the funky necklace you bought at a garage sale, the harrowing experience of being stuck in an elevator, the best Christmas you ever had, the worst day of your life. No topic or subject is off-limits; therefore there are endless opportunities to write an essay about your personal, point-of-view of what happened. When writing, rewriting and good editing coalesce, a personal narrative essay becomes a beautiful thing. It shows how the past or a memory’s significance affects the present or even the future.

Getting Started

We all have stories to tell. But facing a blank page is intimidating. Knowing where to begin becomes a real dilemma. A good place to start is with the word I. Write I was, I saw, I did, I went, I cried, I screamed, I took for granted. I is an empowering word. Once you write it on the page it empowers you to tell your story. That’s exactly what you are going to do next. Tell the story. Get it all out. Don’t worry about how many times I appears in the text. Don’t worry how scattered and unfocused thoughts are. Write however your mind tells you to write. This style is often called freewheeling writing or stream of consciousness. Once the story is all down on paper you will go back and begin to shape the essay into a form that says exactly what you want it to say about your experience. If you’re discouraged over what you’ve written, back away from it. Let it rest. Take a walk. Do something that distracts your mind from writing the essay. Many writers find that even while doing something other than writing, their writing mind continues to work out what needs to be said and continues to uncover the multi-layered associations and voices of what they’re writing about.

Questions you should ask yourself before starting:

• As a fragment of my life story, does this event reveal anything important about me or my life?
• Do I have enough perspective to disclose my feelings about this event to these particular readers?
• Can I shape this event into a dramatic story?
• Do I remember enough specific details about action, scenes, and people to write vividly?

• How shall I begin? What can I do in my very first sentence that will capture my readers' interest? Shall I begin with a mystery, or shall I begin by having someone say something or doing something?
• What information should I give first? Should I begin with the main event, integrating essential background information as I tell the story? Should I establish the setting and situation right away?

• Do you have enough descriptive details to recreate the scene and people?

• Who will be reading my work and what do I want them to learn about me?
• What would I feel comfortable disclosing to this audience?
• Which of my experiences would connect to their lives?

Hints On Recalling Specific Sensory Details:

• Pretend you are once again at the scene of the event. Make a list of any significant features or objects that you remember. (Exclude people from your list.) Choose at least three items and write for five minutes on each one. Try to remember and record specific sensory details: size, shape, color texture; side view, back view, top view, view from a distance and from up close; sounds and smells. Does it remind you of something else? Would you compare it with anything else?
• List all the people who played more than a casual role in the event. Choose one or more who played a central role and those who may help you to make clear what this event taught you about yourself. Write about each person for five minutes, describing the person's appearance and actions and stating his or her significance in the event.....Try to reconstruct a conversation between one or more of these persons and yourself. Set it up as dialogue. Try for conversational dialogue-no speeches, just quick, informal exchange of comments.

Organizing Your Personal Narrative

Personal narrative essays are essentially non-fiction stories, ones that are neatly arranged like a road map that take the reader from point A to point B to point C. In life, and in our own personal experience, things aren’t so straightforward as A-B-C. Characters, facts, places, conversations and reporting what happened, where you went, what you saw and what you did isn’t always so neatly pulled together. That is your job, as the writer, to pull together all the elements so they bring the reader to the universal truth, the lesson learned or insight gained in your experience. How do you do this? Through re-writing and re-writing. Each time you redo the story more will be revealed to you. You will get “in touch” with the universal truth. Every rewrite of the story will lead you to the aha! Once you get the aha! the next rewrite will show dramatic improvement. You will be able to arrange events into a chronological sequence that best suits the aha!. When you know the aha! create events, think up examples to better illustrate the theme of your essay. Use the senses when describing anything. The more descriptive language you use, the more you will place the reader right there in the experience with you. Colorful or hard-driving language are the tools of the essayist.

Questions To Ask While Telling The Story:

• What are the high points of my narrative?
• How can I integrate details of the scene, objects, and people smoothly into the narrative?
• How can I let actions and conversations carry the narrative?

Questions To Ask While Writing The Ending:

• How should the essay end? Should I continue the narrative to the end, or should I end

reflecting on the meaning of the experience?

• What do I want the ending to accomplish? Do I want to frame the essay by referring to the beginning? Would it be good to jolt the reader with something unexpected?

Feedback and Editing:

The next step is to get feedback on what you have written. If someone close to you or someone really intimate with the experience you’ve written about says, “Hey, that’s not the way it happened,” don’t worry. Little white lies are serving to drive the aha! of the experience into the mind of the reader. Your truth is embedded in your writing. To enable the reader to visualize or grasp the concept, little white lies are a necessity. Listen to the responses of readers, then go back a rewrite the portions that were unclear to the reader.

Next, have someone read the essay aloud to you or you read it aloud into a tape recorder.

Listen to the flow of words. Listen to where the reader stumbles. Listen where pauses fall. Listen to where the reader runs out of breath. These are all clues as to where more refining or tweaking need to be done. Go back and do it! You are close to sitting back in the chair and saying, “Yes! This is exactly what I wanted to say about what I experienced.” It is a beautiful feeling. Work to achieve it.

To recap how to write a personal narrative essay follow these points:

·Write I on a blank page.

·Tell the story as it flows from your mind.

·Let the story rest in its scattered, unfocused form.

·Begin rewriting, shaping events in a way to best suit what you want to say.

·Rejoice when the aha! of your experience is revealed.

·Re-write, re-write, and re-write. Little white lies are okay.

·Use language that is full of words that tap into the senses.

·Get feedback from a reader.

·Re-write.

·Have the essay read aloud. Listen.

·Fine tune and tweak.

·Grin from ear-to-ear when everything on the page reveals the aha! in the experience perfectly.

·And – Kudos on a job well done!

Essay Requirements

· Your essay must be at least three pages typed, double spaced, with 1” margins.

· Your essay must have an original and intriguing title. “My Narrative Essay” does not work.

· Your rough draft must show evidence of at least three separate editors.

· Work with the provided prompts to get started on your narrative.

· Have fun writing!

Due Date: ________