Narrative Writing I am indebted to Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell and their book, Patterns for College Writing: A Rhetorical Reader and Guide eleventh edition

What is a Narrative Essay? This type of essay tells a story (in this case, a personal story) and also provides some reflection on that experience. The reflection is the key part of this essay. This is what separates the piece from being just a short story. Did you learn something new? Did you learn a lesson? Is there moral to this? Did this change your perspective? Did you make a discovery about yourself or others?

Structure Thesis statement: you may have an explicit thesis if you would like. This may help you focus on the “lesson” you learned. Ex. “My negative experiences with easy credit have convinced me that first-year college students should not have easy access to credit cards” (84). However, you may choose to imply your thesis, or a general theme, throughout. The example you will be reading does not have an explicit thesis, but rather gets to the “heart” of the matter at the end.

Organization Narrative essays are different from the traditional 5-paragraph essay. For the sake of this assignment, each of you will sort of “book-end” your story with pieces of introduction and reflection. Notice this in the example you will read. The order of your events is up to you. You may want to stick to chronological order, or you may want to start at the end to engage your readers before you work through the events that got you there. You may also want to consider flashbacks in your story (85). Whichever way you choose to do this, make sure your verb tense reflects the order of events. You want to make it clear to your reader how your paper is organized.

Style Narratives are a time to make professional choices about the style of writing. This is where you get to show me what kind of story-teller you are. Focus on adding vivid details – we will try to have a mini workshop on this later.  One great way to do this is to incorporate rhetorical devices. Metaphor, simile, personification, and imagery are all great tools to use. What small pieces do you want to focus on? Just like a director might position a camera to focus on an actor’s face, or on the crumpled paper in their hand, you get to choose what comes “into focus” on your “screen.” – we will also have a mini workshop on this later.

Read the Example Essay What was the hook the author used? Did this attract your attention? What organizational structure did the author use? Was the order of events clear to you? Why or why not? What did this author learn? What sort of reflection do they provide for this event? Did you notice any rhetorical devices? What and where are they?

Weekend Task Using what you already have written, read my comments and make some stylistic decisions: What do you want to keep? Is there anything you need to get rid of? What order do I want to use to present these events? Once you have made those decisions, add two more paragraphs to your paper: one at the beginning and one at the end. These should be your introduction (of sorts) and your conclusion where you reflect on the events that occurred. Why did this stick with you? What did you learn?