The Personal Narrative

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Assignment Prompt

For this assignment, you will be writing a personal narrative–a story–illustrating an event, moment (or series of moments), or experience exemplifying gratitude. In other words: share a story about a moment, experience, or event where you experienced gratitude either during the experience itself or after the experience took place.

Assignment-Specific Requirements:

Length: This assignment should be at least 550 words.

Thesis: Underline your descriptive thesis statement or the point of your story.

Sources/Evidence Needed:  No outside/secondary sources are needed.

Page Formatting: See Appendix C – Formatting and Submitting Your Work

MLA Requirements: See Formatting your Essay: MLA 8th Edition

Rhetorical Mode

A personal narrative is a story about you. Narrative, from the Latin narrare, means to narrate a tale or a story. The narrative you will write will be a “personal” narrative.  Thus, the story will be written by you, about you, and in a lot of ways, for you. What makes a personal narrative so interesting is that it’s a story with a point or purpose.   In other words, a personal narrative is detailed, descriptive, dialogue-driven, and determined to make a point.

Rhetorical Considerations

Purpose:

There needs to be a reason, not only for writing the narrative, but also for why the reader should read it. The purpose of the personal narrative is to share a meaningful experience and the lesson learned from the experience. Specifically, the purpose of this essay is to share a story about a time you experienced gratitude.

Audience:

In many ways, we write a personal narrative for ourselves to reflect upon an experience, to grow from an event. However, we want you to imagine that your audience is not only you but someone else. The writer needs to know who their audience is and how their needs will affect the way the narrative is composed and presented. For example, in addition to writing this story as an opportunity for personal reflection, you may also choose a family member or friend group as your real or imagined audience.  Selecting a real or imagined audience will help you develop your essay with the right tone. The tone for a personal narrative can be formal or informal; it really depends on your chosen audience.

Form:

This piece of writing will be presented using a story format.  It will have a beginning, middle, and end.  The story will be written with a clear introduction paragraph, a body of story-development paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. While a personal narrative is less “formal” than traditional academic writing, your story should have a thesis statement. Thus allowing the reader to truly understand the point of your story.