1. Warm Up: Complete the Brainstorming Sheet
When starting a personal narrative, you’ll want to choose an event that fits all or most of the following:
You experienced this event with others
You remember this event (or how it made you feel) vividly
This event caused a realization or epiphany (either in the moment or later in life) that you still believe today
This event changed or had the potential to change your life in a significant way
The story of this event contains some degree of suspense
5 minutes
End

2. Personal Narrative

3. Personal Narrative

4. Rubric for Personal Narrative

5. Brainstorming
When starting a personal narrative, you’ll want to choose an event that fits all or most of the following:
You experienced this event with others
You remember this event (or how it made you feel) vividly
This event caused a realization or epiphany (either in the moment or later in life) that you still believe today
This event changed or had the potential to change your life in a significant way
The story of this event contains some degree of suspense

6. Examples of Stories (from me)
When my old neighborhood purposefully bullied one family
Neighborhood shooting incident
Little sister almost drowned in riptide
Breaking my femur
Sean dying at the butterfly party
9/11 in 3rd grade
Lightening storm freshman Year at College

7. Find your Personal Narrative Partner (partner list posted on the side board)

8. Exchange Brainstorming Sheets
Choose the option you like better, and talk to your partner about why that option was more intriguing to you

9. Return to your original seat

10. Picking a topic
When your partner picked a topic, did you feel relieved or nervous
If you felt relieved, that’s the one you actually want to write about
If you feel nervous, that’s probably not the one you actually want to do
If you feel nothing, just write the one they picked, and if you hate writing it, at least now you don’t have to blame yourself 

11. Due Dates: Rough Draft is due next Friday (3/9)
Final Draft is due March 23rd
I want electronic copies of BOTH drafts!

12. Helpful hook-writing strategies
Narrative Leads
Helpful hook-writing strategies

13. Why is a hook important?

14. 4 types:
Description
Action
Dialogue
Reaction

15. Description Vivid imagery Where can it help you?
Focuses on sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and feelings
Where can it help you?
Establishing setting/mood

16. Description
I’ll always remember the taste that day left in my mouth—the bitterness of salt water gone dry. It had been unbearably hot and the sand glowed a painful white in the midday sun. I remember peeling my long, sticky hair off of my neck and cradling about a dozen scratchy shells in my arms. The seagulls cawed dully overhead and the waves roared against the shoreline. It was the kind of day where the air was barely breathable, thick with the smell of too many bodies and way too much sun tan lotion.

17. Description
Mom didn’t sound quite right that night. Her voice shook and quivered the way it did when Great Grandmom died. So we knew this wasn’t going to be a normal party. I watched from my car window as the dull yellow streetlights poured out onto the cracked sidewalks and faded cars. That was back when we still had the minivan: a sturdy car with itchy seats and a constant scent of animal crackers and crayons.

18. Action Main character is doing something
Is NOT a section of the climax, but rather an action that take place during the exposition
Helps you generate entertainment value and accomplish characterization

19. Action
“Mom!” I snatched up the sand dollar and ran towards my mom, kicking up sand as I scampered across the blistering beach. Devon followed closely behind as I stumbled up to the place we had laid out our beach supplies. It didn’t take long before my smile slid off of my face. David had raced in too, wheezing out an apology between each gasping breath. The riptide was too strong…and he had left Meghan behind.

20. Action
I snapped on my shoes and grabbed my Gameboy color on my way out the door. “Brittany Elizabeth!” my mother shouted as I clambered into the minivan. I mumbled a quick apology and strapped myself into the car seat. I remember fidgeting uncomfortably on the way there, unable to concentrate on my game. It was not the kind of party, my mom had said, that asked you to bring a present or a cake. That really bothered me. There was something wrong, I thought, about going to a sick kid’s party without even a cake.

21. Dialogue: a Character or Characters speaking
Helps you develop characterization
Helps you to develop mood

22. Dialogue “Where is she?!” my mom screamed.
“I don’t…know…in…ocean…it’s too rough” David sputtered, clutching his knees for support.
I realized they were talking about my little sister Meghan, “David,” I asked, “Is she okay?”
He just looked at me with worried eyes, “I don’t know Britt…I am so sorry.”

23. Dialogue
“Brittany…you need to know,” My mother started in a voice I had never heard her use before, “this isn’t just any party.”
“Is it his birthday?”
“No, sweetheart.”
“Is it because the cancer went away?”
My mom took a deep breath. “No it’s not.” I looked at her and she looked back. There was something unspeakable about a going away party for someone who wasn’t coming back.

24. Reaction: A Character Thinking
Helps to set the mood/tone
Helps to characterize the narrator

25. Reaction: A Character Thinking
I turned the sand dollar over in my hand. I couldn’t believe I had found something so rare! It was fragile though, and I made my self a silent promise to never let it break. I watched David playing in the surf…but where was Meghan? I suddenly realized that David wasn’t playing—he was running. I froze. Why would he be running like that? And why wasn’t my little sister with him?

26. Reaction: A Character Thinking
It was not the kind of party you were supposed to wear a dress though. Not that I minded—nine, I thought, was not the age for wearing dresses. It was the time when you measured summer by the number of grass stains on your knees and popsicle stains on your shirt. Still…I had to wonder. If Sean’s party wasn’t a dress-up party, then what kind of party was it? I thought about the way my mom had been fighting tears when she told us about it. And the way that she told us that it was a “going away” party. Sean has been sick for a long time, I thought. What do they mean by “going away?” Suddenly, it didn’t feel much like a party at all.