How to Write a Personal Narrative Essay
There is very very little mystery to writing the personal narrative essay. There is no proper topic for such an essay. An essay can be about a variety of personal experiences. You, the writer, have the right to say what you want about your personal experience. You can write about anything -- Aunt Sally, the funky necklace you bought at a garage sale, the harrowing experience of being stuck in an elevator, the best Christmas you ever had, the worst day of your life. No topic or subject is off-limits; therefore there are endless opportunities to write an essay about your personal, point-of-view of what happened. Often the reason behind wanting to write a personal essay is unclear. Once the writing begins and the events are recorded and recounted it becomes clear that the writer is searching to find the meaning, the universal truth, the lesson learned from the experience. When writing, rewriting and good editing coalesce, a personal narrative essay becomes a beautiful thing. It shows how the past or a memory’s significance affects the present or even the future. We all have stories to tell. But facing a blank page is intimidating. Knowing where to begin becomes a real dilemma. A good place to start is with the word I. Write I was, I saw, I did, I went, I cried, I screamed, I took for granted. I is an empowering word. Once you write it on the page it empowers you to tell your story. That’s exactly what you are going to do next. Tell the story. Get it all out. Don’t worry about how many times I appears in the text. Don’t worry how scattered and unfocused thoughts are. Write however your mind tells you to write. This style is often called freewheeling writing or stream of consciousness. Once the story is all down on paper you will go back and begin to shape the essay into a form that says exactly what you want it to say about your experience. If you’re discouraged over what you’ve written, back away from it. Let it rest. Take a walk. Do something that distracts your mind from writing the essay. Many writers find that even while doing something other than writing, their writing mind continues to work out what needs to be said and continues to uncover the multi-layered associations and voices of what they’re writing about. Personal narrative essays are essentially non-fiction stories, ones that are neatly arranged like a road map that take the reader from point A to point B to point C. In life, and in our own personal experience, things aren’t so straightforward as A-B-C. Characters, facts, places, conversations and reporting what happened, where you went, what you saw and what you did isn’t always so neatly pulled together. That is your job, as the writer, to pull together all the elements so they bring the reader to the universal truth, the lesson learned or insight gained in your experience. How do you do this? Through re-writing and re-writing. Each time you redo the story more will be revealed to you. You will get “in touch” with the universal truth. Every rewrite of the story will lead you to the aha! Once you get the aha! the next rewrite will show dramatic improvement. You will be able to arrange events into a chronological sequence that best suits the aha!. When you know the aha! create events, think up examples to better illustrate the theme of your essay. Use the senses when describing anything. Example, …It was a stellar day. The air had a salty tang to it as it blew off the ocean. Little white caps broke not more than twenty feet out then rushed to meet the shore. Above me sea gulls screeched and circled in a cloudless blue sky. The sun was in its Spring zenith…. The more descriptive language you use, the more you will place the reader right there in the experience with you. Colorful or hard-driving language are the tools of the essayist. Essay writing forces you to shape your experience until it can be fully understood by others. Use every tool available in the writing craft. Construct dialogue, use metaphors but most importantly, use language with a wide breadth of sensory detail. If you find yourself getting lost, stop writing. Start reading other essays. Every issue of Reader’s Digest always has at least two. Read eight back issues of a magazine with personal narrative essays in their content. By osmosis, you’ll get the feel of how essays are constructed. Go back and do the rework on yours. Include dialogue, include examples that best support or illustrate the aha! of the experience you’re writing about. Beef up the description of a character. Give them succinct, meaningful
dialogue that pushes the reader closer and closer to the aha! of your essay. The next step is to get feedback on what you have written. If someone close to you or someone really intimate with the experience you’ve written about says, “Hey, that’s not the way it happened,” don’t worry. Little white lies are serving to drive the aha! of the experience into the mind of the reader. Your truth is embedded in your writing. To enable the reader to visualize or grasp the concept, little white lies are a necessity. Listen to the responses of readers, then go back a rewrite the portions that were unclear to the reader. Next, have someone read the essay aloud to you or you read it aloud into a tape recorder. Listen to the flow of words. Listen to where the reader stumbles. Listen where pauses fall. Listen to where the reader runs out of breath. These are all clues as to where more refining or tweaking need to be done. Go back and do it! You are close to sitting back in the chair and saying, “Yes! This is exactly what I wanted to say about what I experienced.” It is a beautiful feeling. Work to achieve it. To recap how to write a personal narrative essay follow these points: ·Write I on a blank page. ·Tell the story as it flows from your mind. ·Let the story rest in its scattered, unfocused form. ·Begin rewriting. Shaping events in a way to best suit what you want to say. ·Rejoice when the aha! of your experience is revealed. ·Re-write, re-write, and re-write. Little white lies are okay. ·Use language that is full of words that tap into the senses. ·Get feedback from a reader. ·Re-write. ·Have the essay read aloud. Listen. ·Fine tune and tweak. ·Grin from ear-to-ear when everything on the page reveals the aha! in the experience perfectly. ·And – Kudos on a job well done!
Personal Narrative- Lost Wallet
A wallet, or purse for some, is a precious item in which most people carry things more essential than money towards everyday life. If some people were to lose that portable safe, they may be offset for the rest of that day. The person without that wallet could be cranky or depressed for a while. Maybe something of great sentimental value was in that wallet. This person could stay hold these feelings for a long time, until they find their belongings by which case they are filled with joy. I, personally, keep anything I may have interest in knowing where it is, in my wallet. I am very good about always having my wallet and never losing it...until recently. In my wallet, I store dire personal items such as my lisence and some pictures. Among other things, I have my money, like everybody else, and certificates for stores. This summer, I went to the Keys with my family. I drove down there with my wallet and took it everywhere with me, like I would any other time. Well, when someone doesn't have pockets, then it is hard to keep their wallet right next to them at all times. I was carrying my wallet out from the hotel, along with my keys, and set both on top of the car. When I figured out that I needed the keys in order to get in the car and turn it on, I took them off the top of the roof, leaving my wallet behind. I sat in the car, car door open, waiting for my dad to make it to the car so we could all go to a diving area. Once he made it to the car, without thinking, I closed the door and started the car. I had been driving about half a mile before I realized that my wallet was no longer on my body. Immediately, I pulled the car over, and the next hour or so was spent looking for my wallet. All I could think about was what I would lose if I didn't find my wallet. The week before was my birthday, and I was given $60 to Best Buy and $50 to Auto Zone. Aside from that I had $3 in cash. While walking up and down the road that my wallet flew off on, my sister found my two Best Buy cards. That eased my mind a little. However, that was all we found of my dear wallet. My family and I gave up after wasting an hour of finding nothing. Losing my wallet made me depressed for the rest of the day. I could not believe I did something so stupid. The next day, I recieved a call from my grandmother. She was contacted by the sherriff’s department from Marathon county, where I was during this fiasco. When she answered the phone, the sheriff said "This is Deputy 'so-andso' from the Marathon County sheriffs department. Do you know Ellie Stricklen?" This startled my grandmother. The sheriff then continued to explain to her that he had found my wallet, some two miles from the hotel in which I was staying. He left her information on how to contact him if she wished to retrieve my wallet. My grandmother called me and relayed that information. I got with the sheriff and recovered my wallet. That made my day, knowing that everything I had lost in my wallet was now returned to me, except for my three dollars in cash, which didn't really matter to me at that time. Since that single event, I have lost my wallet two other times, none as serious as before. I have also lost something sincere to me by putting it on top
of the car. However, I was fortunate enough to get it back. The carelessness of my misplacings have taught me a lesson, simply think before I act. This is something everyone is taught numerous times. Only now, it is easier for me to apply that to my actions. If I follow that idea, I could avoid future problems like this, preemptive caution. It took a scare like this for it to finally kick in to me.
Personal Narrative- My Laptop
Writing technologies have been shaping the way people live since the beginning of time. In the Stone Age, our ancestors used tablets to organize important thoughts, keep track of daily activities, and pass on their knowledge to future generations. Arguably, their method of writing was inefficient as much effort was being put into carving and preserving the tablet, while the end result contained little information relative to its size. As technologies evolve, we have refined our methods of writing and have come up with newer, cheaper, and more efficient ways to communicate. Living in the age of information explosion, my most intimate experience with writing technologies comes from the use of my ACER. In this essay I will first describe how I have been shaped by my laptop, then provide nuanced detail about my use of it, and finally explain why my relationship with it is interesting. First, my laptop has shaped my style of living for the better. I believe college is a time of exploration and experimentation, where the breadth of one's participation in various activities is more important than depth of involvement in any single one. Throughout my undergraduate years, I have taken the opportunity to travel and try many new things. Specifically, I have participated in a few three to six month internship / cooperative education program in order to learn more about my own career aptitude. During temporary relocations to Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and Taipei, my laptop has always accompanied me and provided great mobility to wherever destination. In the most practical sense, through the use of Outlook Express and AIM, my VAIO helped me communicate with colleagues during the day, and family and friends at night. Beyond that, though, I believe the convenience of relocation that is implied in laptop ownership has vastly broadened my world views and has allowed me to become more independent as a young adult. Other than being a necessary traveling companion, my laptop has also become an integral part of my life while at school. For instance, I use it to manage mutual fund investments, organize lecture notes and homework, read the news (I spend a lot of time at cnn.com), edit video clips, etc. There are a multitude of other things I do with my laptop, most of which are meaningful and
essential, and some of which are purely for fun. I cannot live without my laptop, it's quite simple. Throughout the years, I have become increasingly dependent on it for day-to-day activities such as corresponding with professors, keeping in touch with families, and friends, as well as organizing personal documents such as music, pictures, and the like. I still make a habit of carrying it wherever I go, and probably spend more time with this so-called writing technology than any other object or person. In the event of an emergency evacuation, it would definitely be the first thing I take and the last thing to let go. My laptop is royal blue and it is a part of me.
Personal Narrative: My Motivation to Win in Sports
Winning isn't everything. It is the only thing. Like my father before me, I have a violent temper with which I have been struggling all my life, and with which I have had to effect a compromise. It is ineradicable, but it must not be irrational. I will demand a commitment to excellence and to victory, and that is what life is all about. Dancing is a contact sport. Football is a hitting sport. I think that a boy with talent has a moral obligation to fulfill it, and I will not relent on my own responsibility. Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale. Fatigue makes cowards of us all. The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender. The will to excel and the will to win, they endure. They are more important than any events that occasions them. I hold it more important to have the players' confidence than their affection. To play this game, you must have that fire in you, and there is nothing that stokes that fire like hate. The strength of the group is in the strength of the leader. Many mornings when I am worried or depressed, I have to give myself what is almost a pep talk, because I am not going before that ball club without being able to exude assurance. I must be the first believer, because there is no way you can hoodwink the players. The greatest accomplishment is not never in failing, but in rising again after you fall. Never pray for victory, pray for the will of God. Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures. You never lose. But sometimes the clock runs out on you
