...CLRC Writing Center Structure of a Personal Narrative Essay “Narrative” is a term more commonly known as “story.” Narratives written for college or personal narratives, tell a story, usually to some point, to illustrate some truth or insight. Following are some tools to help you structure your personal narrative, breaking it down into parts. The “Hook” Start your paper with a statement about your story that catches the reader’s attention, for example: a relevant quotation, question, fact, or definition. Introduction Set the Scene Provide the information the reader will need to understand the story: Who are the major characters? When and where is it taking place? Is it a story about something that happened to you, the writer, or is it fiction? Thesis Statement The thesis of a narrative essay plays a slightly different role than that of an argument or expository essay. A narrative thesis can begin the events of the story: “It was sunny and warm out when I started down the path”; offer a moral or lesson learned: “I’ll never hike alone again”; or identify a theme that connects the story to a universal experience: “Journeys bring both joy and hardship.” “Show, Don’t Tell” Good story telling includes details and descriptions that help the reader understand what the writer experienced. Think about using all five senses—not just the sense of sight—to add details about what you heard, saw, and felt during the event. For example, “My heart jumped as the dark ...
Words: 797 - Pages: 4
...Structure of a Personal Narrative Essay “Narrative” is a term more commonly known as “story.” Narratives written for college or personal narratives, tell a story, usually to some point, to illustrate some truth or insight. Following are some tools to help you structure your personal narrative, breaking it down into parts. The “Hook” Start your paper with a statement about your story that catches the reader’s attention, for example: a relevant quotation, question, fact, or definition. Set the Scene Provide the information the reader will need to understand the story: Who are the major characters? When and where is it taking place? Is it a story about something that happened to you, the writer, or is it fiction? Thesis Statement The thesis of a narrative essay plays a slightly different role than that of an argument or expository essay. A narrative thesis can begin the events of the story: “It was sunny and warm out when I started down the path”; offer a moral or lesson learned: “I’ll never hike alone again”; or identify a theme that connects the story to a universal experience: “Journeys bring both joy and hardship.” “Show, Don’t Tell” Good story telling includes details and descriptions that help the reader understand what the writer experienced. Think about using all five senses—not just the sense of sight—to add details about what you heard, saw, and felt during the event. For example, “My heart jumped as the dark shape of the brown grizzly lurched toward me out of the woods” provides...
Words: 797 - Pages: 4
...Camille Hoffman 5/10/11 8C My Narrative My English teacher, Ms. Peterson, told us that our next assignment was to write a narrative speech on an influential event in our life. She told us that we might want to write about a near-death experience or a life-changing event, as long as it had a moral and it had to be autobiographical. It couldn’t be made up or about someone else. I thought about this for a long time, trying to come up with a topic. It was difficult because I have a pretty stable life. I thought that maybe I could talk about the time I got separated from my class on the ski trip. I wandered around, lost, while the rest of the class was on the bus waiting for me, until the ski patrol finally found me, but that didn’t happen to me; that happened to one of my friends. Then I considered the time I was on vacation in Nicaragua. It was raining heavily, and I went to cross what looked like a creek. As I stepped into the water, I lost my footing and got sucked into a drainpipe and almost died, but that didn’t happen to me either. That happened to my dad. I could always give a speech on the time I went to the Museum of Tolerance, and learned about the tragedies of the Holocaust, but I’m pretty sure that happened to Sam. Or maybe I could tell that story about the time I had an asthma attack when I was trying to save someone during junior lifeguards, but that wasn’t me, that was Anna. What if I told the class about the time I snuck out of the house to go to a party...
Words: 532 - Pages: 3
...The Narrative Essay The narrative essay is simply a complete account of an incident or incidents contained in one cohesive essay. The narrative essay is useful when writing an incident report, such as an automobile accident or a criminal action. By far, one of the best uses of the narrative is when introducing the thesis for a longer work, i.e. a research paper. Your audience for this essay is your fellow classmates and the teacher. Assignment Write a narrative essay, the purpose of which is the serve as evidence for the position you have taken on an issue. The issue in the sample essay is how the writer lost his teeth. The essay must be a minimum of 380 words and no more than 400 words. You will superscript the number of the comma rule that justifies it over each comma. When you turn in your final draft, you must turn in a minimum 100-word, process paragraph expressing what you learned as a result of this assignment. Learning Objectives • To format documents correctly in accordance with MLA; • To understand the structure of a narrative paragraph; • To understand your own unique voice (syntax and tone); • To eliminate sentence fragments, run-ons, and comma splices; • To eliminate point of view errors; • To eliminate verb tense errors; • To eliminate punctuation errors – commas; • To have fun. The Narrative Structure A narrative is a story, and like a story has a definite underlying structure. The parts of a narrative are the situation, conflict...
Words: 2000 - Pages: 8
...Narrative Writing Prompt “Round’em Up and Move ‘em Out!” and “A Life on the Trail” give information about how life was on a cattle drive. Think about what might have happened if you were actually participating on a drive. Write a narrative for your teacher about being on a cattle drive. Be sure to include narrative elements such as sensory details, dialogue, figurative language, and description as they are appropriate in your writing. Use details and information from the passage in your narrative. Writer’s Checklist My narrative has an effective beginning, middle, and end. My narrative flows smoothly from one idea to another. My narrative develops plot, character(s), and setting. My narrative includes specific and relevant details,...
Words: 704 - Pages: 3
...Essay is Better: A Narrative or A Descriptive? Ever read a story and say to yourself, “What’s happening?” Whenever I read a descriptive essay, that’s what I would say. In this essay I would be comparing and contrasting two types of essays, a narrative and descriptive. I have chosen “Are the rich happy?” by Stephen Leacock 1916 and “Sister Flowers” by Maya Angelou, n.d. By writing my essay, I want to give my views on each and decide which I would rather write. Narrative Essay A narrative essay reflects a personal opinion that is based on your own experiences. This helps you bring a reader into your very own mind and shows him/her the topic you’re writing about through your eyes. Telling a story or event the way it happened for you. It also could provide a sort of lesson or moral to be learned from the outcome of the story as well as what the writer did that contributed to it or not. It’s more on a personal level that any one reading could say that happened to them or that they learned from the story by not doing whatever it was that the writer did. In Stephen Leacock’s “Are the Rich Happy?” the author writes about his experiences with his friends, with of modest income. Most of it, all in his opinion, points out the problems or troubles those with an existential amount of funds in their bank accounts. He goes on to give some examples that he encountered several of his friends going through. “A friend of mine who has ten thousand dollars a year told me the other day with...
Words: 1095 - Pages: 5
...To begin with this article is concerned with Nasca iconography on ceramics and art. The main argument is that the Nasca artists based their imagery on things they may have seen and experienced in the world around them. It argues that the ceramics are responsible to represent selected features of their environment. The article mentions that the Nasca art describes a time, place and culture. Furthermore, the article indicates that Nasca art is strongly concerned with the imagery of war, thus, indicating that there might have been a lot of violent conflict in this culture. It also mentions that the war for the Nasca people was internal as in the art there was no foreign prisoners, nor scenes of homage or tribute-paying rites. In addition, the...
Words: 397 - Pages: 2
...about the city. Yet, in actuality, I know none of the history surrounding this city, or the communities that make it up. During orientation, Jennifer Arnolds took a group of students and me on a bus tour of the Rondo community. While on the bus I remember thinking about how I knew these buildings and physical spaces that we were occupying, but the stories that Jennifer was telling were unfamiliar to me. I-94 has been a staple in my life as long as I can remember, it’s the freeway to get to our Santa pictures in the winter, and the road that brings me home after spending the day at...
Words: 1114 - Pages: 5
...The primary purpose of historical narratives is to report as accurately as possible what happened at each particular place and time in history. But each of the writers in this unit (De Vaca, Bradford, and Equiano) went beyond merely reporting the facts; they had other, more personal reasons for writing what they did. Each of them had a personal agenda. Equiano’s personal agenda in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was to shame his white audience into abolishing the slave trade by describing the horrible events that took place on the ship. While he did state facts about the ship, Equiano described personal experiences to persuade the audience more. For example, Equiano describes the smell of the hold as being “…so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to...
Words: 781 - Pages: 4
...These former slaves, were born in the last years of slavery or during the Civil War provides us with a look in their lives in their lives The narratives are a very positive travel in time. It gives us a glimpse of slaverys and makes us understand what slaves had to endure. The slave narratives use the actual voice of the slave and their believe in GOD. The first slave narrative that I will dissuss is Fountain Hughes from, Baltimore, Maryland. Hughes was 101 during this interview and was born a slave in 1848 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fountain Hughes was grandfather was owned by Thomas Jefferson. Fountain Hughes were left poor and homeless after slavery and speaks about having to carry a pass to get from one place to another, his thoughts on soldiers and slave auctions. Hughes starts off his interview explaining why he believes people should never buy with credit. Hughes didn’t believe in owing money to creditors. Hughes’s states in his interview “I, nothing in the world worries me. I can sit here in this house at night, nobody can come and say, "Mr. Hughes, you owe me a quarter, you owe me a dollar, you owe me five cents." No you can't. I don't owe you nothing (Hughes, Library of Congress). Growing up as a slave restricted Hughes from a lot of the things that human beings take for granted. Hughes when on to explain what happened after he was free. Slaves were homeless, without food, jobs, and money. Hughes compares him and other slaves to cattle. He felt this way because...
Words: 762 - Pages: 4
...One day I was driving with my eight-year-old brother to the store and he began to talk to me about Christopher Columbus and how they are learning that he discovered America in school. He looked at me straight in the eye with a confused face and said “that's not what he did Esme he was a murderer,” he knew this because when my sisters and I would talk about certain aspects of history he was there listening to everything. This was around the same time that we were discussing censorship through school curriculum so I felt that if my little brother understood it then other children could too. When he was talking about this it sounded a lot like the class was learning from a hegemonic device. School is where kids are being taught the “history” of how America came to be a diverse country. Through the course Culture Power and School Knowledge, one can see that the “history” being taught through the Master Narrative is one-sided. The Master Narrative focuses on “history” that comes from the people who hold power therefore excluding the actual experiences of the people of color meaning that it is a hegemonic device. Being a...
Words: 1753 - Pages: 8
...Learning Journal Week 4 Learning Summary- Social Media in Our Life Recently, the fact that social media affect people’s everyday life more deeply has been brought into our focus. With the booming of smart phone, more people delay on the social media to communication with friends, reading the news and even buying goods or foods. In everyday morning, the first thing for most of people is updating the news in social media. Caring about what happened last night, the fresh news in the morning and recording the feelings at this moment. Siapera given an umbrella term for social media that social media is an integrate technology, social interaction and user-generated content. And he also identify three main characteristics of social media which are allowing users to create, downloading and sharing content, to publish their profile and personal information, and to connect with others. (Siapera,2012). The rapidly development of social media have both advantages and shortcomings, there is no doubt that social media makes people communicate more convenient and can make more friends in this way and also keep a close connected with old friends. However, the weakness is the face-to-face communication will be reducing and excessive delay on the social media will influence the normal daily life. In this week, I recognized several overviews of the social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn… and understood how to use designated computer software and the basic principles of...
Words: 2244 - Pages: 9
...Things are not always what they appear to be When you read something on the surface, without really digging into it, you may not see the true meaning of what the author is trying to tell you. When looking at Mein Kampf (My Struggle) by Art Spiegleman, Resurrection by Frederick Douglas and What Sacagawea Means to Me by Sherman Alexie, it is very easy to miss the point that each author is trying to get across. Although each of these stories was written for a different audience the stories being told are very similar in nature. One purpose of each story is to tell a story, which is why both authors used narration in which to do so. Narratives are usually very sequential in nature. Using narration when telling a story helps to draw people...
Words: 1164 - Pages: 5
...and forgotten people. They all face a new struggle, a struggle to find their identity. "Identity- who we are, where we come from, what we are- is difficult to maintain in exile. Most other people take their identity for granted. Not the Palestinian, who is required to show proofs of identity more or less constantly." (Page 546) Said, being Palestinian himself, tells us this story in what was called a "hybrid" type of writing. He does this by letting the pictures take precedence in telling his story but then describes each picture by going back and forth from a history point of view, to his own recollections of his childhood. The way he describes each picture makes you feel as if you were at one time in that picture and can feel an emotional connection to it. Through each photo, we get a really sense of what it is like to be Palestinian, to have it all taken away and how they started new. The way Said puts the story together without any time frame, is an example of why his writing style was described as a hybrid. He will start with describing a picture by telling us facts about his country and then interrupt himself, like he's actually have a conversation with the reader and tell us a memory, or how that particular photo makes him feel. By writing like this, he makes the reader able to feel comfortable enough and be able to really relate to what Said feels and thinks. It's almost as if he chose all of the photographs first, photographs that really portray his country, and write...
Words: 2364 - Pages: 10
...Amanda Church Compare and contrast draft Professor Elizabeth Parks English 121 May 19, 2014 I. Introduction- The Narrative, “This Old House: The Heart is a Lonely Menagerie” leaves more to the readers imagination than the Descriptive essay, “Once More to the Lake”. II. First Difference: Specific word usage and paragraphs A. The narrative has dialogue and uses action to get the reader’s attention. The paragraphs can be short even one word, depending on if the writer is showing a conversation between two or more people. For example in the Narrative, “This Old House: The Heart is a Lonely Menagerie”, David has multiple conversations with people throughout the essay giving you an idea of what is actually taking place and helping to put you into the situation. B. Descriptive essays normally have longer paragraphs which include a lot of detail. These types of essays also require carefully chosen words so that the reader can visualize what the writer is intending to say. For example in “Once More to the Lake” He makes it a point to tell you every detail you could possibly imagine about the lake. III. Second Difference: The Structure of the essay A. A narrative should have a plot, setting and characters. It should also cover all important events. In the Narrative the plot is about how David wants the little things in life to be of importance and not have to worry about all the hub bub of showing off your belongings. He wants to relax and lead a simple life...
Words: 1090 - Pages: 5
