Personal Narative Ess@y

How to Organize Paper #1.html

How to Organize Paper #1

Because this paper is a personal narrative, there are no “hard” rules about how many paragraphs or where to make paragraph breaks. I can, however, give you some general guidelines.

1. General Guidelines:
   1. Appropriate paragraph breaks usually occur when there is a shift in
      1. focus, place, or time
   2. Sometimes you can break a paragraph to give the reader a break. (You may be able to write a page and a half of description of your camp site or the river you went tubing down, but a reader likely doesn’t need that much description, and he/she likely will need a paragraph break.)
   3. A paragraph typically needs at least three sentences.
   4. The exception is if you use a one-sentence paragraph to either a) draw attention to a really serious moment, or b) transition in an attention-getting way between moments/ideas. Typically, you would have no more than one, one-sentence paragraph in a personal narrative. See how Langston Hughes uses the one-sentence paragraph in “Salvation.”

 

1. Is this a five-paragraph essay? (As in a paragraph of introduction, three paragraphs of content, and a paragraph of conclusion.)
   1. NO
   2. Use as many paragraphs as you need to tell the story. For example, in your Mercury Reader, these personal narratives have the following number of paragraphs.
      1. “The Chase” has 21 paragraphs.
      2. “Salvation” has 15 paragraphs.
      3. “Shame” has 36 paragraphs.
      4. “The Jacket” has 12 paragraphs.
   3. Each paper will be different and will have a different number of paragraphs. Do NOT use your introductory paragraph to write “In this paper, I will tell you about the time that I. . . .” Use an attention-getting introductory paragraph.

 

1. Dialogue—if you include quoted dialogue of two or more people, each time a person speaks there needs to be a new paragraph. Look at page 27 of “Shame” for appropriate use of back and forth dialogue.