Structure of Personal Narrative - 797 Words

CLRC Writing Center Structure of a Personal Narrative Essay â€Å"Narrative† is a term more commonly known as â€Å"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 â€Å"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†¦show more content†¦Para. 1: Beginning Action Topic sentence: Detail 1. Detail 2. Detail 3. Para. 2: Middle Action Topic sentence: Detail 1. Detail 2. Detail 3. Para 3: End Action Topic sentence: Detail 1. Detail 2. Note: Don’t forget to â€Å"Show, Don’t Tell†: List sounds, smells, sights, tastes, and textures that you remember. Your experience is your â€Å"evidence†. Use transition words to mark the passage of time. Detail 3. Conclusion: Analyze and reflect on the action of the story, including how the events are significant to you. Writing Strategies to Consider First Person vs. Third Person Narratives are a mode of writing in which writers often use first person perspective (â€Å"I saw†, â€Å"I did†). Check with your instructor to determine whether you can use â€Å"I† when telling your story. *Verb Tense: Reporting vs. Reflecting The events of most narratives are told in past tense: â€Å"As I hiked, I felt the warm sun on my back.† Use present tense when reflecting on the events: â€Å"Now I know how unprepared I was†. Notice the change in tense in this sentence as the writer reflects on the past event, from theShow MoreRelatedHow Writing Is An Amalgamation Of Different Conventions Stuck Together1578 Words   |  7 Pageshowever the effectiveness and the proper use of these could be called into question. Two specific examples of my essays, the personal narrative, and the argumentative essay, supporting details and evidence, consistent organization, topic sentences and theses, and the coherence, along with conciseness and clarity, are all major points. However, where the personal narrative excelled in the organization, support and evidence, vivid details, and style, it struggled with topic sentences and coherenceRead MoreAnalysis Of The Film Peppermint Candy809 Words   |  4 PagesIn Sopyonje, the narrative structure is linear, which the cause leads to the effect. Peppermint Candy narrators the personal narrative of Youngho by a series of episodic event. The episodic events are a chain of events that are linked through repetition of motifs, which is the scene of railway. The episodic events that follow are in reserves chronological order that highlights the personal narrative of Youngho and the national history. These episodic events are within a twenty-year time frame; henceRead Mo reThe Link in Bringing the City and People Together with Urban Design691 Words   |  3 Pagescollection of arranged urban structures that creates functional spaces for people. This is an interdisciplinary practice that can involve multiple actors in fields such as urban planning, architecture, engineering, landscaping, economics, law, and many more. Strong urban designs can lead to the success of linking built structure together to create a unique space open to interpretation. These interpretations include utilizing the space for social interaction, a narrative about the city, and self-identificationRead MoreBilly Wilder Essay977 Words   |  4 PagesWilder’s stylistic and thematic elements are recognizable and give off a complex reflection of his American and European cultural influences. I think that Billy Wilder should be considered an â€Å"auteur† even if he is not already considered one, for his personal film style and the mere fact that his cynical vision all owed him to create many admirable films across a number of genre boundaries throughout his career. However, film critics tend to disagree and believe that Wilder was too cynical, while alsoRead MoreThe Time Of The Butterflies By Julia Alvarez1678 Words   |  7 PagesAlvarez’s novel â€Å"In the Time of the Butterflies†, she writes fictionalized personal accounts of the Mirabal sisters. Julia Alvarez structures her Novel in three parts with each chapter having a first person narrative for each sister. Alvarez personalized the way each of them would speak, feel and think, to even structuring Maria Teresa parts in the Novel as journal entries. This paper is an attempt to analyze how the structure of Julia Alvarez’s novel â€Å"In the Time of the Butterflies† can give the readerRead MoreEssay on Comparison: Frankenstein The Rime of the Ancient Mariner1680 Words   |  7 Pages In the late eighteenth century arose in literature a period of social, polit ical and religious confusion, the Romantic Movement, a movement that emphasized the emotional and the personal in reaction to classical values of order and objectivity. English poets like William Blake or Percy Bysshe Shelley seen themselves with the capacity of not only write about usual life, but also of man’s ultimate fate in an uncertain world. Furthermore, they all declared their belief in the natural goodness ofRead MoreAnalysis Of Scribner s Article, Scribner756 Words   |  4 Pagesand personal narrative. The whole class was thrown for a curve ball when we were assigned Knoblauch for our first assignment. After rereading the material a few times, I began to understand what Knoblauch was trying to convey to us. His argument states that there isn’t a definite definition of literacy. He breaks literacy into four different categories. Functional literacy, critical literacy, liberal literacy and cultural literacy. Out of all the categories, I connected to literacy as personal growthRead MoreWuthering Heights - Narrative Structure Essay712 Words   |  3 PagesHow effective is the narrative structure in Wuthering Heights? Wuthering Heights has a unique and complex narrative structure. There are the two main narrators, Lockwood and Nelly, they each are eyewitness narrators as they have took part in the story they describe. The novel is organised in such a way that it is a narrative within a narrative, what some critics would call â€Å"Chinese boxes† or frame narrative. Lockwood is used to open and end the novel, Bronte uses him to represents the outer frameRead MoreRebecca Skloot s The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks999 Words   |  4 PagesImmortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the structure plays a crucial role in showing how such obstacles in the Lacks family live as eternally as the famous HeLa cells. Skloot uses her structure to entwine three separate storylines, all set in very different time periods, into a coherent narrative that demonstrates the real immortality of Henrietta Lacks and all that she left behind. Henrietta faces challenges in the hands of medicine that, as emphasized by the novel’s structure, still exist today. When she visitsRead MoreNarrative Is The Root Of Some Fields1510 Words   |  7 PagesNarrative is the root of some fields which includes education, rhetoric, literature, religion, law, history: culture (Wilson, 1989). It can be seen as a tool to create traditions and symbols as means of communication and it is a source to understand and strengthen the identity of the organisation (Kroeze and Keulen, 2013). As a conceptual theme, narrative becomes a self-conscious system and a reflexive field. In other words, the role of narrative in personal lives is to show how it can be utilized