Writing a Personal Narrative

1. Writing a Personal Narrative Team Voyager

2. Purpose and audience • Personal narratives allow you to share your life with others. • Your job as a writer is to put the reader in the midst of the action. • A good story creates a dramatic effect, makes us laugh, gives us pleasurable fright, and/or gets us on the edge of our seats.

3. Story Structure • chronological approach • flashback sequence

4. Way of Writing – Show! Don’t Tell • Don’t tell the reader what he or she is supposed to think or feel. • Let the reader see, hear, smell, feel, and taste the experience with sensory words (see, smell, taste, hear, and feel) • Showing is harder than telling. • The rule of "show, don’t tell" means that your job as a storyteller is not to tell us what you think; it’s to share revealing details. • Avoid using "to be" verbs.

5. Let’s Look at an Example • http://www.lepnet.sparcc.org/hck/data/krobinson/files/Personal_Narratvie_Example_2.pdf • http://www.montroseareasd.k12.pa.us/pssa/pssa_samples/Gr5Writing06.pdf • Open up your Personal Narrative packet to the first page.