Personal Narative Ess@y
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English1121Paper1andrelatedhandouts2023ONLINE.docx2
English 1121: College Writing and Critical Reading
19% of final grade
Paper #1—Personal Narrative
The assignment: Write about a significant experience, a time when you learned something important about yourself, about another person, or about life. This must be your personal experience; this is personal narrative.
The audience: Your readers do not know you. They should be able to read your paper to visualize the moment and learn about the significance of this experience.
What to do: Choose a specific event that lends itself to interesting storytelling like the pressure-filled school experience in “Shame” by Dick Gregory or Annie Dillard’s vivid account of being chased in “The Chase” in your Mercury Reader. You must “recreate [the] experience so that readers can actually feel what it was like to be alive at that moment in the writer’s life” ( The Call to Write 158). Be sure that you “show” rather than “tell” your readers about this event through use of vivid description, details, dialogue, simile, metaphor, and other writing strategies. The stories you’ll read in the Mercury Reader are great examples of personal narratives. Be an interesting storyteller!
What not to do: Avoid writing about experiences that lead to the cliché, such as high school graduation, getting your driver’s license, a date with a boyfriend/girlfriend, Christmas, and other holiday gatherings. Avoid writing about playing a video game or virtual interactive game. Do not write about an event that covers several years, such as your grade school basketball career. Do not plagiarize or use AI for this assignment.
Your final draft should:
1. be narrowly focused on a specific event
1. be well developed
1. be effectively organized
1. be interesting
1. utilize vivid description
1. use required writing strategies: simile/ metaphor, listing, repetition, advanced sentence structure, dialogue, etc.
1. have clear autobiographical significance
1. have an effective beginning and ending
1. be carefully edited
Format and style guidelines—the final draft of the paper must:
1. be a minimum of four complete pages in length, typed, and double-spaced
1. use Times or Garamond 12 point font and follow MLA guidelines for style (such as one-inch margins, no extra space between paragraphs, etc.)
1. be turned in as required in the proper folder in “Assignments” under “Assessments” in D2L with narrating strategies marked appropriately in Microsoft Word:
11. underline all your use of repetition, listing, calendar/clock time, and temporal transitions.
11. bold all of your similes and metaphors.
11. highlight in yellow all of your advanced sentence structure.
1.
A Few Tips on How to Be Successful in English 1121
Successful Students:
1. Log in to D2L frequently, paying close attention to assignment requirements, deadlines, and required reading.
1. Are prepared. Have books, computer access, and other required materials.
1. Ask questions of the instructor and classmates when confused. Communicate with the instructor in the Individual Discussion Area, waiting 24 hours for a response weekdays and expecting a response on Monday for questions asked over the weekend.
1. Are positive and self-motivated, keeping up with reading, homework, and papers.
1. Participate actively in discussion, peer group workshopping, editing, and other opportunities. They communicate clearly and illustrate comprehension of course materials and discussion.
1. Take advantage of free services on campus, like the Academic Support Center/Tutoring Services.
1. Let the instructor know of emergency situations as they occur.
1. Carefully follow assignment instructions and exceed minimum page numbers for papers.
1. Respect the writing process, revising drafts substantially and editing carefully, turning in work they have written.
1. Participate actively in class discussion, meaning they comment with insightful comments and also respect the opinions of others and offer others a chance to speak.
Unsuccessful Students:
1. Log in to D2L sporadically/infrequently. Students who have long periods between logins are more likely to fail.
1. Are unprepared. They wait to get books and course materials or fail to get them.
1. Remain silent when confused rather than reaching out to the instructor and classmates or panics and sends numerous emails/phone calls in a row rather than posting in the Individual Discussion Area and waiting for a response.
1. Have a negative attitude and/or procrastinate with reading, homework, and papers.
1. Show a lack of participation and respect for classmates and instructor by failing to work in peer groups, failing to respond,
1. Don’t take advantage of campus services and/or extra credit opportunities.
1. Wait or fail to tell the instructor about emergency situations.
1. Don’t follow assignment instructions and turn in the minimum or less than the minimum regarding assignment requirements.
1. Ignore the writing process, revising minimally and editing carelessly, or turning in plagiarized/AI created work
1. Act impulsively and irresponsibly regarding communication with classmates and instructor or are disrespectful or negative.
Show vs. Tell: What does it mean?
Showing rather than telling is a way to produce vivid writing. It is true that writers who tell and writers who show may both be equally earnest and sincere in their attempts to explain events to the reader. The difference between the two is that showing helps the reader see, feel, taste, smell, and experience what you are writing through rich description, specific details, and creative metaphors. Writing that shows moves beyond the ordinary to become writing that is vivid and interesting. For example, compare the following passages:
|
Telling: · He crossed the street.
· Varner had a weird look.
· It was freezing outside that day.
· She was a shy girl.
· Each morning I ride the bus and wait with the other people. Sometimes the bus is late and we get angry. Some guys start fights just to have something to do. I’m always glad when the bus comes. |
Showing: · Standing for a moment on the edge of the pavement to adjust his cap—the cleanest thing about him—he looked casually to the left and right and, when the flow of traffic had eased off, crossed the road. -Allan Stilltoe
· Varner looked at him sharply, the reddish eyebrows beetling a little above the hard little eyes. -William Faulkner
· It was a bright, cold day, the ground covered with a sleet that had frozen so that it seemed as if all the bare trees, the cut brush and all the grass and the bare ground had been varnished with ice. -Ernest Hemingway
· Eva, shy and chinless, straining her upper lip over two enormous teeth, would sit in corners watching her mother. -Katherine Anne Porter
· A bus arrived. It discharged its passengers, closed its doors with a hiss and disappeared over the crest of a hill. Not one of the people waiting at the bus stop had attempted to board. One woman wore a sweater that was too small, a long skirt, white sweater socks, and house slippers. Another man wore shoes with the toes cut out, a soiled blue serge jacket and brown pants. There was something wrong with these people. They made faces. A mouth smiled at nothing and unsmiled, smiled and unsmiled. A head shook in vehement denial. Most of them carried brown paper bags rolled tightly against their stomachs. -E.L. Doctorow |
Portions adapted from Gray and Caplan, Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Composition. NCTE.
Clichés to avoid—these are just a few!
Faster than a speeding bullet stick out like a sore thumb
Butterflies in my stomach smile from ear to ear
Hit me like a ton of bricks grinning from ear to ear
All good things come to those that wait play your cards right
Red as a rose low-hanging fruit
Black as the night if you play your cards right
White as snow ignorance is bliss
Sweet as candy love is blind
Light as a feather what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
Heavy as lead the grass is always greener on the other side
Every cloud has a silver lining the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
There is a light at the end of the tunnel she cried a single tear
Every rose has its thorn at the speed of light
There are plenty more fish in the sea ugly as sin
Haste makes waste a diamond in the rough
If you can't beat them, join them nerves of steel
Hot as hell time flies
Cold as ice opposites attract
Crystal clear haste makes waste
Pleased as punch the writing’s on the wall
Mad as hell head over heels in love
Beating a dead horse what goes around comes around
Chip off the old block laughter is the best medicine
When all is said and done frightened/scared to death
In the twinkling of an eye misery loves company
Afraid of his own shadow
Take it or leave it
You could hear a pin drop
Happy as a clam
Blind as a bat
Clean as a whistle
Busy as a beaver
Drunk as a skunk
Free as a bird
Bald as an eagle
American as apple pie
Easy as pie
Like a kid in a candy store
Thin as a rail
Dry as a bone
Fit as a fiddle
Straight as an arrow
At a snail’s pace
I know this place like the back of my hand
Famous Novels—Great First Lines
Having an opening line or two that grab your reader’s attention is crucial for making a reader want to continue. Frequently a student’s first draft opening paragraph is cut (or possibly even the first couple of paragraphs). Don’t tell your reader what you’ll write about or give away too much of the story; if you do, your reader won’t be compelled to keep reading! These are some opening lines to famous novels. Consider the ways these line are startling, interesting, and compelling.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
— 1984 by George Orwell
“In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.”
– The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . .”
– A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
– Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
“Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.”
– The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
– The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
“I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.”
– Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”
– The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”
– To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
“The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happen to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.”
– The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf stream and he had gone 84 days now
without taking a fish.”
– The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”
– The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
“124 was spiteful.”
– Beloved by Toni Morrison
“All children, except one, grow up.”
– Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
“The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.”
– The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
– One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“We slept in what had once been a gymnasium.”
– The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
– A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
— The Personal History of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
– The Crisis by Thomas Paine
English 1121
Personal Narrative—Paper #1
An “A” paper for this assignment will:
be fresh and lively, descriptive and detailed. The writing will be excellent overall and will far exceed the minimum requirements for the assignment. The focus of the paper will be narrow enough to allow the author to place the reader firmly inside an interesting story. The author will successfully use dialogue, simile, metaphor, and other narrating strategies to show rather than tell about the events and to convey the significance of the experience. The writing will be advanced stylistically and will appeal to the senses. The paper will be organized, will follow MLA format, and there will be few to no spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors. It will make the reader say, “Wow!”
A “B” paper will:
have descriptive and detailed writing. The writing will be above average and will exceed the minimum requirements for the assignment. The paper will have a narrow focus and will be interesting. The author will use dialogue, simile, metaphor, and other narrating strategies to show the events and the significance of the event will be clear. The writing may not be as fresh, descriptive, or stylistic as the “A” paper, but it will be organized, will follow MLA format, and there will be few spelling or grammatical errors.
A “C” paper will:
have some descriptive and detailed writing, but it could most likely be expanded to show rather than tell. The writing will meet the minimum requirements of the assignment, including length. The focus may be able to be more specific. The paper will use some dialogue, simile, metaphor, and other narrating strategies. The paper may have some organizational problems and/or some spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors. Oftentimes C papers show little revision.
A “D” paper will:
lack descriptive and detailed writing. It may barely meet or not quite meet the minimum requirements of the assignment. It may not meet the length requirement. There could be problems with focus, organization, development, punctuation, and grammar.
An “F” paper will:
not be descriptive and detailed. It will not meet the minimum requirements of the assignment, may not meet the length requirement, and will have problems with some of the following: focus, organization, development, punctuation, and grammar.
Revision To Do List
Be sure to revise your paper a great deal between first and final draft. Here’s a list of “To Dos”:
1. REVISE, REVISE, REVISE!
2. Make sure that you use simile and metaphor. Remember to avoid clichés!
3. Find a place where you can use repetition, but remember that it should not be a random place. It should be where you want to stress a point to your reader.
4. Use listing in at least two places to add detail to your paper. Remember that the first part of the sentence before the dash or colon needs to be a complete sentence.
a. The room was a disaster zone of clutter—broken bottles, ripped magazines, old pizza boxes, and dirty laundry.
5. Look at your beginning and be able to label it. What kind of a beginning is it?
6. Describe the people in your paper in descriptive, yet concise ways. (Do not describe them in blocks of data: “Brian was 5 feet 10 inches tall, about 160 pounds, and had brown hair and blue eyes.)
7. Make sure that you use dialogue somewhere in your paper. Strive to use it well like David Sedaris and Sherman Alexie. Remember that the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, and there should always be a period after your speaker tag (she said).
a. “Hey! What are you doing? You’re going to get into a ton of trouble,” he yelled as the red convertible sped away in a cloud of dust.
8. Throughout the paper, show instead of tell. Create images by being descriptive.
9. Eliminate any use of “you” that isn’t in a direct quote.
10. Do you meet the length requirement? You must have a minimum of four complete pages (3 pages and two paragraphs are NOT four pages!). If you do not, you will not receive a C. Revise and show some more.
