Purpose and Audience

Transcription

1 Personal Narratives

2 Purpose and Audience Personal narratives allow you to share your life with others and vicariously experience the things that happen around you. Your job as a writer is to put the reader in the midst of the action letting him or her live through an experience. Although a great deal of writing has a thesis, stories are different. A good story creates a dramatic effect, makes us laugh, gives us pleasurable fright, and/or gets us on the edge of our seats. A story has done its job if we can say, "Yes, that captures what living with my father feels like," or "Yes, that s s what being cut from the football team felt like."

3 Structure There are a variety of ways to structure your narrative story. The three most common structures are: chronological approach, flashback sequence, and reflective mode. Select one that best fits the story you are telling.

4 Methods Show, Don t Tell Don t t tell the reader what he or she is supposed to think or feel. Let L the reader see, hear, smell, feel, and taste the experience directly, and let l the sensory experiences lead him or her to your intended thought or feeling. Showing is harder than telling. It s s easier to say, "It was incredibly funny," than to write something that is incredibly funny. The rule of "show, don t t tell" means that your job as a storyteller is not to interpret; it s s to select revealing details. You re 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 Talk It s s 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 emerge through unique word selection and the use of active rather than passive voice.

5 Choose a Point of View Point of view 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 limited 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. Tense Tense is determined by the structure you select for your narrative. Consider how present vs. past tense might influence your message and the overall tone of your piece. Tone The tone of your narrative should set up an overall feeling. Look k over the subject that you are presenting and think of what you are trying to get across. How do you want your audience to feel when they finish your y piece? Careful word choice can help achieve the appropriate effect.

6 Example of a Personal Narrative A Life Changing Phone Call Introduction Ring, Ring, Ring, the phone rang about five times so loudly that you could even hear it outside. It was late in the afternoon and the sky outside o was pitch dark, like a cave. I remember getting up from the comfortable couch and walking fast to the kitchen to be able to get the phone before they t hung up. But as soon as my foot hit the cold wooden floor, my mom yelled out, I I got it! That most likely meant that it was for her. I checked the caller r I.D. it was from my uncle who lived in California. I ran back to the living room to catch the last parts of my show when suddenly I heard a loud crashing sound. In an instant and without thinking, I ran to the kitchen. My devastated and shattered mom had dropped her mug of coffee and there were pieces of glass scattered all over the floor, like e mixed up puzzle pieces. The coffee spilled onto the kitchen floor like a dark river flowing downstream. Crying with deep feeling and emotion, my mom was sitting ting on the floor. The minute I saw her laying there on the floor, I was worried and d shocked. Anxious and frustrated, I began to scream and demand for her to tell me what was going on. I went up to her very slowly and asked her, Mom what s s wrong? Are you okay?

7 Example #2 Killing for Fun Every summer my family returns to our ancestral home, which is in a community where the same families have lived generation after generation. There are tennis courts, a golf course, boats, and other occupations to help pass the long, hot days. This all sounds very enjoyable, and it usually was, but sometimes it got very boring. Spending every summer with the same gang and doing the same things, under the same grow-ups' noses, began to seem dull, and by the time I was thirteen I was ready to experience the thrill of the forbidden. One afternoon in July, I was supposed to sail in some races with my best friend Mitchell, but the air was so thick and heavy that we decided not to go. We sat around his house all day, waiting for his brother to bring back the family power board so that we could water ski. Thinking back to that summer, I remember how frustrated and irritable we were, our pent-up energy ready to explode. We roamed his house searching for something--anything--to do, but we only succeeded in making one mess after another and angering his mother. Finally we hit on something. We were eating lunch on Mitchell's back porch when we both noticed his father's rifle propped in a corner.

8 Now Mitchell's father had often warned all of us that his rifle was strictly off limits. The rifle itself was not very dangerous, as it was only an air gun that shot small pellets, but he was afraid of its being misused and hurting someone. He himself used it to scare off stray dogs and was usually very careful to put it away, but for some reason on that particular day he had forgotten. We decided that it would be fun to take the rifle out in the nearby woods and shoot at whatever we found there. We had to be very careful not to be seen by the borough residents as they all knew us. For most parents, kids heading for the woods meant trouble. So Mitchell and I sneaked out of his house with the gun and went slinking through some old horse stables on our way to the woods. By the time we arrived at the edge of the woods we felt like spies. There was a caretaker's cottage there, and the caretaker was forever on the lookout for what he thought were troublesome kids. When we successfully passed the cottage our spirits were high, as we had gotten safely through the danger zone on the way to our forbidden project.

9 As we went in to the woods we began to find some animals and birds to use as targets, but try as we might, we could not hit anything. Our pellets lets seemed to disappear in flight, not even giving us the satisfaction of hitting ing a tree and making a noise. Our mission was not succeeding, and we decided to look for an easier target. Finally we startled a mother bird, who flew away leaving her nest t behind. We thought the nest would make a fine target, stationary as it was and with live creatures inside. We took turns shooting at it in an attempt to knock it out of the tree, intoxicated with our power and carried away by the thrill of it all. Mitchell was the one to knock it down. It tottered, and after a little rustling a small object fell out, and the nest followed, landing upside down. Mitchell ran up and excitedly turned it over. The sight was horribly repulsive. Underneath lay three naked pink corpses, staring up at us silently ly with wide dark eyes and wide, underdeveloped, faintly yellow beaks. They looked l as if they had holes in each tiny body. A few feet away a slight movement ent caught my eye. The object that had fallen first was a fourth baby bird. It had survived the shooting and the fall and was flopping around, mutilated as it was. w I poked Mitchell, who was staring at the massacre underneath the nest, and a directed his attention to the desperately flapping pink lump a few feet away.

10 I could see that Mitchell was repulsed by the sight, but being a thirteen-year year-old boy he refused to show it. He made an attempt to maintain a hunter's attitude, and fiercely drove pellet after pellet into the injured bird. We tried to joke about it, and as soon as we were out of sight of the nest we broke into hysterically uncontrollable laughter, trying to avoid thinking about what we had done. On the way home we avoided talking about it, and I felt relieved to part company with Mitchell when we got home. That incident shocked me into thinking about the results of my actions. Mitchell and I were not inhuman monsters, determined to massacre baby birds; we were just bored kids looking for an adventure and not thinking about the consequences. I wonder how much unhappiness and even crime comes from young people acting selfishly and thoughtlessly, out for a thrill. If they had to see the suffering they cause, they would surely think harder before they act.

11 Points to ponder about your own writing 1. What makes the introduction to the subject intriguing? 2. How does the background hint at the subject s significance? 3. Which incidents and details best support the controlling impression? Why? 4. What is the most memorable comment/ image/ quotation in the ending? Why? 5. Does anything else catch your interest or seem important? In what way?

12 Evil What is it? Define it Write about an experience when you first came across evil or became aware that evil existed. It can be through a personal experience, observation, or learning through another s s experience.

13 Green Gulch by Loren Eiseley We stood in a wide flat field at sunset. For the life of me I can n remember no other children before them. I must have run away and been playing by myself until I had wandered to the edge of the town. They were older than I and knew where they came from and how to get back. I joined them. They were not going home. They were going to a place called Green Gulch. They came from some other part of town, and their clothes were rough, their eyes worldly and sly. I think, looking back, that t it must have been a little like a child following goblins home to their t hill at nightfall, but nobody threatened me. Besides, I was very small and did not know the way home, so I followed them. Presently we came to some rocks. The place was well named. It was s a huge pool in a sandstone basin, green and dark with the evening over it and the trees leaning secretly inward above the water. When W you looked down, you saw the sky. I remember that place as it was when we came there. I remember the quiet and the green ferns touching the green water. I remember we played there, innocently at first. But someone found the spirit of the place, a huge old turtle, asleep in the ferns. He was the last lord of the green water before the town poured over it. I saw his end. They pounded him to death with stones on the other side of the pool while I looked on in stupefied horror. I had never seen death before.

14 Suddenly, as I stood there small and uncertain and frightened, a grimy, splattered gnome who had been stooping over the turtle stood up with a rock in his hand. He looked at me, and around that little group some curious evil impulse passed like a wave. I felt it and drew back. I was alone there. They were not human. I do not know who threw the first stone, who splashed water over my suit, who struck me first, or even who finally, among that ring of vicious faces, put me on my feet, dragged me to the roadside, pointed and said, roughly, "There's your road, kid, follow the street lamps. They'll take you home." They stood in a little group watching me, nervous now, ashamed a little at the ferocious pack impulse toward the outsider that had swept over them. I never forgot that moment. I went because I had to, down that road with the wind moving in the fields. I went slowly from one spot of light to another and in between I thought the things a child thinks, so that I did not stop at any house nor ask anyone to help me when I came to the lighted streets. I had discovered evil. It was a monstrous and corroding knowledge. It could not be told to adults because it was the evil of childhood in which no one believes. I was alone with it in the dark.

15 Choose a subject Note the interesting and significant events in this person s s life. List anecdotes (true stories) which show how this person is interesting. add memories, thoughts and feelings you have about each anecdote or idea from this person (if you can)

16 Create a Controlling Impression Show, don t t tell. Thesis is different for this paper. HINT at importance don t t give it away in the beginning. HINT by controlling the impression of the reader. How? Use anecdotes to narrate and details that show.

17 Gather Details In your notes also document sensory details sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. describe actions, movements, and personality traits Document interior monologue if you have access to it. Use sensory details to describe specific places, settings or important happenings. Create an image in the reader s s mind.

18 Talk the talk. Dialogue or direct quotes from the person will help control the impression. Address the following in an anecdote: Where and when Appearance What happened. What was said What you thought about the anecdote.

19 Plan Organization and Pacing Plot your course Organize by chronological order, sequence of events, or by their location (most narratives are in chronological order). Pace Yourself Vary your pace to show passage of time or mood. Short words or sentence speed up the time and make the mood look hurried. Long words and complex sentences cause readers to slow down, drawing out events and creating a serious mood.

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