Writing a Personal Narrative :: Personal Narrative Writing

Purpose and AudiencePersonal narratives allow you to share your purport with others and vicariously look the things that happen around you. Your job as a writer is to put the reader in the midst of the action allow him or her live through an have sex. Although a great deal of written material has a thesis, stories are different. A good story creates a outstanding effect, makes us laugh, gives us pleasurable fright, and/or gets us on the shore of our seats. A story has fatiguee its job if we can say, Yes, that captures what living with my incur feels like, or Yes, thats what being cut from the football team entangle like. StructureThere are a variety of vogues to social structure your narrative story. The three most common structures are chronological approach, flashback sequence, and thoughtful mode. Select one that best fits the story you are notification. MethodsShow, Dont TellDont tell the reader what he or she is supposed to think or feel. Let the reader see, hear, s mell, feel, and taste the experience directly, and let the sensory experiences lead him or her to your intended thought or feeling. Showing is harder than telling. Its easier to say, It was incredibly funny, than to write something that is incredibly funny. The rule of show, dont tell means that your job as a fabricator is not to interpret its to select revealing details. Youre a sifter, not an explainer. An easy way to accomplish showing and not telling is to avoid the use of to be verbs. Let People TalkIts amazing how much we learn about people from what they say. One way to achieve this is through carefully constructed dialogue. Work to create dialogue that allows the characters personalities and voices to push through through unique word selection and the use of active sort of than passive voice. Choose a Point of ViewPoint of look is the perspective from which your story is told. It encompasses where you are in time, how much you view the experience emotionally (your tone), and how much you allow yourself into the minds of the characters. Most personal narratives are told from the first-person circumscribed point of view. If you venture to experiment with other points of view, you may want to discuss them with Miss Burke as you plan your piece.