Your Name

Core 101/103-section number or time

Van Noy, Galbraith, or LaFon

Date

Paper #1: Reflective Narrative

Paper #1 could also be called a “descriptive narrative”: use your powers of narration and description to recall a significant event or person and to make us see your subject and ultimately your point. (Even descriptive papers have one, like an argument for your own perceptions. It may be stated outright or implied as in a dominant impression or mood). To begin this paper, develop a full and accurate understanding of your subject, in all its concrete and vivid detail, building upon and clarifying what you already know. As you recreate your subject’s properties and attributes, also examine its possible significance and implications. How have you come to understand it?

An essay about a remembered event should tell an interesting story (narration), it should give a vivid presentation of the scenes and people (description), and it should also give an indication of the event's significance (reflection). Careful though, skillful writers don't just append the "moral" artificially at the end, like a tailgate, but integrate it into the "tale."

Here are some possibilities to essais (French for "to attempt"):

1. "An American Childhood” deals with a kind of epiphany, when the writer realizes that you must throw yourself into what you are doing. Can you think of a similar moment when you discovered something about yourself, or perhaps when something was made startlingly clear to you? Consider moments of intense awareness, realizations, important changes that took place within yourself. Will your essay be able to answer the question: So what? (that is, will it make some general point?)

2. Years later we view events differently than we do at the time they are happening. Can you think of something someone told you once (some advice) or something that happened to you, that didn’t make sense then but you can now understand? Perhaps you’ll recall a significant event people warned you about, or when you had to face something or someone difficult, like Jean Brandt in "Calling Home." Perhaps you'll recall a significant event that turned out better than you thought (“When the Walls Came Tumbling Down”) or one that was worse than you expected (“Longing to Belong”).

Remember some of the basic features of this kind of writing: These essays describe the writer’s own experiences, but readers can relate to them because they are really concerned with something sharable about human experience in general. Examine the subject carefully for a long period of time. Study it at close range and with focused awareness. Use all of your senses. Since you’re recollecting or recreating you subject, details may be sketchy. Talk to friends about the event, share your story, and have them ask questions of you. If you can, talk to someone else who was there.

Here are some things to help you:

· Description: Create a vivid and specific presentation of your scene or people. Move in close and choose specific details. Use figurative language if you can.

· Deeds: Narratives rely on the actions of characters to tell (or show) their story, or to create suspense.

· Dialogue: Use dialogue if you can, especially if you're writing about another person. Dialogue lets us infer what people are like from what they say (see also relevant pages in our book, especially the Brandt essay).

· Denouement: Personal narratives admit to a range of things: jealousy, pride, embarrassment, joy, panic, failure, success. We all know these feelings, and readers will want to see how you develop them. But in addition to disclosing remembered feelings, good writers can convey the event’s significance and bring the essay to a satisfactory close (denouement=outcome; Old French for "untying"). Personal victories (say, from sporting events) don’t always work well. Defeat is a better teacher.

Peer Review is scheduled for Sept. 11-13. For the peer review to work for you (and all of us), your draft (DUE Sept 9) should be as complete as it would be if you were to hand it in for a grade.

Revised Version Due: Sept 20. Length: 4-6 pages.

Please double space and left justify. Use a Times Roman Font, 12pt.

As long as we're alliterating, here are some things that might hinder you:

Badger: Beware of him if he appears too early.

Broadness: The event is too broad ("my childhood," "the championship season").

Beaches: The paper overstates a minor event, such as beach week, or can't find the significance in it. (This topic might work better if it was handled humorously, looking back at how important it seemed then but now?)

Brevity: Can be a good thing, but not in the key scene or anecdotes.

Boring: If the event isn't important to the writer, will it be to the reader? How will the essay have some bang for its buck.

Blameless: The writer comes off as either too much the hero or too much the blameless victim.

Boom: The essay lowered it when it tried to convey the significance; it's too heavy-handed. Can it be more subtle or integrated?

Banana Peels: When somebody slips on them, they can be dangerous, but also funny. Can you add humor, without being or cruel (or doing someone injury)?