Personal Narrative Project

1. Personal Narrative Project

2. Writing About Ourselves • Memoirs • Personal Essays • Facebook • Twitter • Journals • Blogs

3. Your Project • Write about an event from your life. • Do NOT write about your entire life thus far • What is your purpose? • Who is your intended audience? • What voice will be best for conveying your purpose to your audience?

4. Key Features • A Good Story

5. A Good Story • Write About Something that Interests You • Don’t worry about whether your story will be interesting to your audience. • Your passion for any topic should translate to your audience and draw them in. • There are ways to be experimental with conventional stories and make them fresh and unique.

6. A Good Story • Anything in writing can be done well. • Twist Endings • Mocumentary TV Shows • Spoof • Clichés • Find something unique about your story and include it in your project to keep your audience engaged.

7. A Good Story • A Good Story is a Complete Story. • Beginning, Middle, and End • Give yourself time to tell the whole story properly. • Don’t leave your audience with unanswered questions. • Start working on your project NOW • Past students’ projects

8. Key Features • A Good Story • A Clear Focus

9. A Clear Focus • Write about a particular event or aspect of your life. • Parents’ divorce • Graduation • Coming to College • Losing a loved one • Do NOT write about your entire life thusfar.

10. A Clear Focus • This project is too short to successfully tell about your entire existence. • It will start to feel like a listing of facts. • “I was born… I grew up… I went to school… My audience died of boredom reading this…”

11. Key Features • A Good Story • A Clear Focus • Vivid Detail

12. Vivid Detail • Incredibly important in writing. • We’ll see this multiple times this semester. • Describe anything your audience needs to know to fully appreciate your story. • Describe anything the audience can relate to. • Sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures. • Metaphor and Analogy

13. Vivid Detail • However, be careful. • Anything in writing can be done well. • Anything in writing can be done badly. • No absolutes. • It’s possible to be too descriptive, which starts to feel tangential and makes your story feel unfocused. • Keep your audience connected.

14. Vivid Detail • It is possible to be too descriptive. • However, I have never lowered a student’s grade for being too descriptive. • Better to have too much detail than not enough. • Worst you’ll get is a note about unnecessary detail.

15. Pertinent Detail • Decide which details your audience needs to know about the characters and settings in your story. • Do we need to know that John is white, or that he always wears a Lions jersey, or that he’s exactly 6’1” tall? • Maybe. Maybe not. As our author, it’s your responsibility to make these decisions.

16. Key Features • A Good Story • A Clear Focus • Vivid Detail • A Clear Significance

17. A Clear Significance • Benefits of Non-Fiction. • Audience can see how these events have affected a real person. • Helps them get more invested. • Raises the stakes of the narrative. • Creates emotional resonance in your audience.

18. A Clear Significance • Relatability is key. • Many of you will be writing about inherently relatable themes. • You can make less relatable stories accessible to a broader audience through analogy and comparison.

19. Key Features • A Good Story • A Clear Focus • Vivid Detail • A Clear Significance • A Specific Genre

20. A Specific Genre • You must write this project in a genre from the approved list. • A Genre that relates to the story being told. • A Genre that relates to you personally. • Don’t choose a genre that will be easy.

21. A Specific Genre • Conventions and Design • Look at real-world examples • Analyze how the example looks and sounds. • Voice, Purpose, Audience • Remember, you can write your projects in multiple genres.

22. Key Features • A Good Story • A Clear Focus • Vivid Detail • A Clear Significance • A Specific Genre • An X Factor

23. An X Factor • How you tell your story is completely up to you. • Be experimental. • Try new things. • Make the story work in a unique way.

24. An X Factor • Play with elements of fiction. • Change the POV. • 1st, 2nd, 3rd person • Tell the story as a different character. • Play with structure. • Use an unconventional timeline • Incorporate Genre and Sub-genre

25. Things to Avoid • There are a few common mistakes I see every semester that will count against you. • Make sure your project is substantial. • Incomplete stories or stories without enough detail will definitely lose points. • Make sure your story is focused. Don’t go off on tangents to make the story seem longer.

26. Things to Avoid • Spend time on the genre aspect of the project. • Really think about how the genre you’re using should be designed. • Use of a standard paragraph based genre (short story or essay) will cause you to lose 20 points.

27. Getting Started • Choose a topic. • Write out the story you want to tell in detail as a short story. • Brainstorm what other genres you could use to tell this story well. • Research your chosen genre. • Write and design your final project.

28. Rough Drafts • Don’t forget: • I’m here to look at rough drafts of any of your projects and give you notes. Don’t hesitate to email me with drafts, ideas, or questions so I can be helpful to you as you work on this and future projects. • Turn in your rough drafts with your final project.

29. Any Questions?

30. Writing Activity • Generating Ideas: Personal Narrative • Fill out the worksheet. • Try to come up with something for all 8 items on the list. • Don’t spend too long on any one item. • Write a few sentences and then move on.

31. Writing Activity • Choose one event from the list you just created and spend some time expanding those few sentences into a more complete and significant narrative. • Be detailed • Where and When does the event take place? • Who are the other characters? How do they speak?