Assignment:
Effective Writing Essay Two: Narration
Write a narrative essay in which you explore a moment in time. Tell a story about something that really happened to you. As you select a topic. try to connect it in some way to the volunteering you are doing. For example, if you are volunteering at a daycare. you might tell a story from your own childhood, focusing on a time when you were away from your parents and it frightened you. If you are working with the elderly, you might tell a story that involves your own grandparents or an elderly neighbor.
And as you select a topic, keep in mind that conflict is central to narrative writing. Without some kind of problem or tension that must be resolved, there is often little reason to tell the story. Oftentimes the difficult and small moments make the best stories, not the moments when we catch the winning touchdown or win the popularity contest. Graduations and proms, unless they are disastrous, don't work very well either. Also keep in mind as you choose a topic that you may not cover a large period of time (years, months. a whole summer). You should pick a story that takes place over just a few hours or has a few moments that need to be covered over just a few days. Avoid whole football seasons.
The point of narration is not just to tell a story for the sake of telling it. You must focus on a particular event or part of an event and show the reader why it is important enough to share, using the story to prove a main idea. There should be a single, defining moment that stands out (the moment of epiphany), and you should be able to show the reader what you have learned. Sometimes we don't know what we have learned until after writing about the experience (the element of discovery). Don't worry if you don't know when you start writing your essay.
Writing narration involves several techniques that must be incorporated into your essay. We're building on the work of essay one, so you must use descriptive writing: rely on nouns and verbs and get as many senses across as you can. You must also include dialogue, working to recreate actual conversations as you remember them. (Think of how effective both of these techniques are in the essays we've read.) Be sure to use correct punctuation and formatting for incorporating dialogue into the story. Refer to your textbook for guidelines and be sure to ask me questions you have about this.
Your essay must be 3-5 pages in length, typed, and double-spaced; margins should be set at one inch all around. Make sure to title your essay. Revise, edit, and proofread.