Narrative Essay

For your first formal assignment, write a 1000 word essay about some time in your life when you have had a shift (change in position or way of thinking) about a certain issue that is very important to you.  I would like you to focus on a single (or related set of) experience(s), a single person, or a place in your life.  The paper should revolve around a personal experience that either altered how you think or feel about an issue, idea, belief, etc., or simply affected you in a profound way.  Reflection on the experience and what it means to you should play as strong a role within the paper.  By focusing on one event, you can begin to familiarize yourself with examining your life and your voice through writing.  I have gotten all sorts of topics for this paper.  People have written about births, deaths, weddings, divorces, graduations, etc.  They have also written about important people or important places in their lives.   I cannot tell you what to write about, since I do not know your life. This is a personal paper.  Because it is about you, it is pretty easy to write!  (Most of us actually like to talk about ourselves, right?)  Since it is a personal paper, please use “I”/first person.  Be sure to give me lots of specific detail to back up your points.   Your paper should have a clear thesis statement–a one or two-sentence statement that summarizes the major point you will be advancing in the paper.  This thesis statement generally appears in the first paragraph.  Subsequent paragraphs should focus on key ideas in support of your thesis.  The paper should end with a concluding paragraph.  Checklist for this paper:1.  Do you have a thesis?  Does it express something specific and significant?   2.  Does each body paragraph have a main idea?  Does each body paragraph have a topic sentence?3.  Are there any “holes” in the narrative?  You might want to let someone read over your draft (in fact, I strongly encourage it) to check for that.  You can send your draft to me at any time, or you can post a draft on the Paper discussion board.4.  Is the paper personal?  Does it tell a story from YOUR point of view?  How so?  (Don’t talk about something that happened to someone else and not include yourself at all.  The focus should be on YOU.)  5.  Does the paper actually describe a shift in thought?  How so?  (The paper should tell how you thought/felt before the event/person/place in your life, what you thought/felt during your interaction with the event/person/place, and what happened afterward.)6.  DO NOT USE SECOND PERSON/”YOU’S” in ANY of your papers for this class.  Try printing out your draft and circling all of the “you”s–you might be surprised at how many you use!7.  Check to make sure all of your paragraphs have sufficient detail.  If the paper seems to slow down or get boring (i.e. the “flow” gets disrupted), think about what you could do to remedy that.  You could include more detail, consolidate and move that information to another paragraph, or just get rid of it altogether if it’s not needed.8.  Does the paper seem cohesive?  Have you given the whole story?  Again, I’d strongly recommend you let someone else read it, since sometimes it’s hard for the writer to be objective of their own work.9.  Please check for grammar errors.  If you’re using Microsoft Word, you’ll see that it underlines certain words or phrases with squiggly lines.  Check those areas and see if you need to fix anything.  Please note that Word is not always correct!  That’s why you still have to know how to use correct grammar and spelling–the software is not perfect.10. Paper must follow proper MLA format.