Telling Your Life Story
Telling your story, or writing the personal narrative may be one of the easiest assignments you will have this semester. The personal narrative, or more simply put, the story is a type of writing with which everyone is familiar. We have read countless stories in books. We have heard fairytales, fables and myths, which are always in the form of a story. We have seen stories in almost every film we have ever watched, and as a result, we all know how to tell a story. We all can relate to stories as well. A story is probably the simplest and most universal from of writing that exists.
To tell a story is really simple. You have a main character or a person who is at the center of the story, and the character or person then encounters some kind of problem or conflict. Over the course of a story the conflict escalates higher and higher and higher until it finally gets resolved. Once the conflict gets resolved, for better or worse, the story is over. This is the basic story structure.
You all will be writing stories about some major (or minor) life event. The nature of life is such that, at some point in time in your life, you are going to encounter some major event that is going to profoundly change you, or the course of your life, for better or for worse (and some times both.) Whichever way that it goes, you are going to have to deal with it.
If you’ve already experienced a major life-changing event, here’s your chance to write and reflect upon it, and grow from the experience. If you have yet to experience some major life event, then you can practice by writing about a minor life event. Whatever event you choose to write about, here’s your chance to reflect on the life experience and grow from it. You can choose from these potential topics:
- Falling in Love or Falling in Like – write about someone who came into your life and had a major impact on you. It could be a significant other, or it could be a good friend, a relative, a teacher. Use concrete events to explain why you believe your life has been enriched by this person.
- Experiencing the Death of a Loved One (not pets) – write about someone who was close to you who died, what kind of questions their death raised in your mind and how you managed your grief after the death.
- Overcoming Adversity – write about some difficulty you had to overcome in your life. Difficulties come in many shapes and forms like: trying to obtain something that you need, overcoming an illness, having to stand up to someone or something that is oppressing you in some way, or doing something very difficult (at least for you) like passing a certain class or running a marathon.
- Overcoming or Attempting to Overcome a Fear – We all have fears. What better way to deal with our fears than to write about them? Writing about our fears is a way to confront them; and confronting fears is healthy. Often, when we confront our fears we find that what we fear is so much less frightening that we originally thought. It is very liberating, to face a fear.
- Identity – Write about an experience that you believe made you you, or clarified some critical piece of your identity. Identity often is related to adversity, because it is typically under pressure, and when facing difficulties that we find out who we really are, and what we are made of.
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou cans’t not be false to any man”
Who wrote this?
What does it mean?
Regardless of what you ultimately choose to write about, I don’t want you to take this writing lightly. Thinking and writing about your life is a way to better get to know yourself. Self-knowledge, is the most powerful knowledge anyone can ever obtain, even though, many times, it’s not easy to obtain. By gaining in depth knowledge about your self, by analyzing the experiences, and especially the most difficult experiences of your life, you can totally transform your life for the better. I’ve read many stories by my students over the years, and the ones who tackle the really hard topics like death and overcoming fears or adversity, really gain a lot from this assignment.
Often these stories are very sad to read and hard and painful to write, but I admire my students who have the courage to tackle the painful topics. I believe that writing about the death of a loved one helps the grieving and healing process, which is sometimes are really long process. Some of the best stories I have ever read are those about confronting your fears. Here is a letter from one of my students who wrote one of the best stories I have ever read about fear.
I just wanted to take the time to say how much my life has changed during this semester and to thank you for being apart of that, directly or indirectly. Your class has taught me so much more than I would have expected to receive from an English class. You made my first college course exciting and fun but also challenging.
After writing my story on fear, I sat down and reread it. I decided to stop being afraid and made a move. So on April 12th, I met my father for the first time, something I never thought I could do. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life, and I believe that your class was a big part of my motivation, so again thank you.
I think that the stories that we write about adversity, fear, death identity and even love (especially if it ends in heartbreak), are the hardest stories that we will ever write, but they are the stories that tell us the most about ourselves and allow us to grow and heal in ways that are amazing. I am all about using the power of writing to transform your life, as I have been using the power of writing to transform my life for the past ten years. My book has transformed my life over and over and over again, and that’s because in this book, I tell several very difficult, hard and painful stories from my life. But, in telling these stories, to myself and other people, I have grown tremendously; and it is my hope that in writing your own story, you too will grow tremendously.
At any rate here is my sample story, on overcoming adversity (although it touches on almost all of the topics above, in some way.) It is actually taken from the first chapter of my book, The Way Through:
When I was thirteen years old something terrible happened to me.
It was a brand new school year, and I was at a brand new school. A prep school, in fact. I’d gotten a scholarship. It was a big to do, and I was supposed to be preparing for this new world, making a good impression and meeting all of the challenges that lay ahead of me. But I really couldn’t focus on any of that, because Jonah, my father, had other plans. I was awakened by the thunderous sound of his voice:
“You stupid, fucking, worthless, pathetic, bitch! I hate you! Raymond whore! Oh call your daddy, like you always do! You stupid, simple idiot bitch!”
I was tired, fucking exhausted actually, because these psychotic rampages of Jonah were nothing new. They happened at least once a year, beginning in September, reaching an insanely violent crescendo around Christmas time. During these times, my mom would take me and my three younger siblings to hide among various relatives. Sometimes we hid at my grandparents’ house. Sometimes we hid at an uncle or an aunt’s house. The important thing, however, was to hide, because when my father was like this, there was just no knowing what he would do to us. As much as he seemed to hate my mother, it was clear that he would kill her, if he could get his hands on her…and when he did get his hands on her…well that was the worst.
I’d said my goodbyes to both of my parents many times over because it seemed inevitable to me that, one day he would kill her. Then he’d be so afraid of the consequences, he’d kill himself. I was tired of waiting for all of that to happen. My anxiety about all of this was killing me. I just wanted it to all be over already, however it was going to end.
I was thinking: Stand up to him Saundra, say something! Stand up to him, damn it! But she would not do it. She never did. Him standing over her, bullying her, beating the crap out of her, I imagined that that was how it would always be. I scanned my room. In red magic marker my father had written messages to me on the walls:
Die, die, die in the 13th year you fucking devil demon bitch. I will slice your throat open. I will slaughter you like the lamb. Red blood, little, big lamb. Your jugular vain will bleed and your blood will spill three levels high! E=MC2 x 3cc =4 Ф/35, 89 Ϡ + H2O and Carbon and Hydrogen and ŷ 76 beyond ʒЭ7 and Ў Щ but not …. REMEMBER! The blood of the lamb runs red, red, red, red redrum, murder…
On and on and on…every inch of my four bedroom walls was covered with symbols, pentagrams, formulas, poetry, prose and profanity. I was so furious with my mother about this, I almost wanted him to kill her. I could not understand why she allowed him to act this way? To treat us like this? She wasn’t crazy like he was, so what was her excuse? He was a psychotic, ranting, raving lunatic but she never did a damn thing about it. She ignored it. For this, I hated her deeply, almost as much as I hated Jonah. I got out of bed and looked into their bedroom. She was cowering underneath him, shivering and crying. I wondered where my little sister Star was. I prayed to God that she was too terrified to move. She usually was. Star was only eight; my brother Zeus was six and my youngest brother Raymond was three. I always tried to protect them because I knew how terrifying it was to be so small and to be caught up in the middle of this craziness. But this time I could not protect them. I had been caught off guard by Jonah, because I had to sleep. Everyone had to sleep, except Jonah.
“Jonah please, please, I just want to leave. Just let me go-”
“NO!”
My mom was terrified of Jonah. As much as I hated to admit it, this was understandable, because when Jonah was like this, he was completely terrifying. In all of my thirteen years of living, I had never stood up to Jonah. When he was on one of these psychotic homicidal rampages, he didn’t eat or sleep. He never tired. He just kept getting crazier and crazier. Really the only thing left to do was run!
But I was tired of running, exhausted actually. I could not do it anymore. And so, it was time for me to take the stand I’d been preparing for all my life. I was as big as I was probably ever going to get. Bigger than Saundra and almost as tall as Jonah. I refused to continue living like this, running, hiding crawling, cowering. So I grabbed my heavy brass floor lamp, ripped the cord out of the socket, walked to the threshold of my bedroom door, feeling woozy from all of the adrenaline rushing to my head. I tried to speak, but my heart was beating wildly against my chest, and my throat was parched. I grabbed the lamp tighter and swallowed some spit. Today was as good a day as any to die.
“Leave her alone!”
Jonah turned and looked to me, with that crazy, wild-eyed look. Even so, I refused to back down, so I said,
“I hate you! You are crazy, crazy, crazy! ”
And even though he was crazy, Jonah knew. In that instant he knew, things between me and him would never be the same. He also knew that I was nothing like Saundra. I meant every word. I was done with being afraid. Jonah charged at me full force, like a bull going up against a matador, yelling, cursing. I did not care. I stood my ground, thinking: I will stand right here and die, before I take any more shit from you.
“I’ll kill you Jonah! I swear to God I will!”
And I meant it. I would have killed him, if I could. Either he was going to die or I was. I really didn’t care who. As Jonah descended upon me, I realized that he was much stronger than I’d anticipated. He was, after all, a man, a totally manic, wild, crazy, man. He lunged for the lamp and snatched it out of my hands. The he taunted me:
“Oh, so you think you’re a bad bitch! Hathaway Brown Bitch! You think that you can kill me? Ha! Well, how about I kill you! Are you ready to die? Are you ready for me to bash your fucking head in?”
Bitch? Bitch! He had called me a bitch! My own father had called me a bitch! A Hathaway Brown bitch no less! Maybe I should have been fazed by his death threats, but they didn’t faze me anymore. He was always telling me I was going to die if I didn’t do whatever he wanted me to do. But this bitch thing, now that was something new. Jonah had never called me a bitch before. He was poking me with the lamp and backing me into a corner. My brain struggled to find a solution and so it was whizzing, clicking, searching for options, quick, quick, quick, because in this desperate moment I realized that even though I had thought I was ready to die, I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want to be bludgeoned to death, while being called a bitch by a mad man who was incidentally was my father. Next, something absolutely miraculous happened. Saundra came out of nowhere, with a strength and conviction that I’d never seen before!
“Put the lamp down Jonah! You will not hurt my child! I won’t let you.”
I was so completely and utterly shocked that I wasn’t even watching Jonah anymore. I was watching my mother, which was like watching Lazarus rise from the dead. Jonah was also stunned. He turned around and said,
“So you want to die, too?”
No one could believe what happened next. My mother, who had spent her entire adult life running from Jonah, finally said,
“Jonah, the only one who will die today is you.”
He must have believed her, because he took off running and did not return for days. Intuitively, he must have known that his time was nearly at an end. The police would be arriving soon, because Star had run to the neighbor’s house, barefoot and in her pajamas, begging them to call my grandfather. She had to run to the neighbors because my father had ripped all of the phones out of the walls. It was one of the first things that he did, when he was planning one of these crazy rampages. Call my grandpa, my sister pleaded with the neighbors. Please hurry up and call my grandpa because my father’s going to kill my sister.
That day, and the many events that followed after, changed the course of my life. For one thing, for years and years after it happened, I would always carry that day with me. I would always feel like that day was every day of my life. Can you imagine how depressing my life was? It wasn’t that I thought about it every day, in fact, I rarely ever thought about that day, or my father at all. I completely repressed that day, and acted as if it had never happened, not quite realizing that this was probably the worst thing that I could do to myself. By doing this, I would ultimately drive myself crazy. I would become everything I hated and feared.
What was it about this day that made it so powerful and so devastating all at once? It was bad, but really, was it that bad? Was it really all that bad that I needed to hold on to it and allow it to destroy everything good about me? As my friend Melanie told me, (twenty years later), Lisa, some people’s daddies fuck them in the ass and leave them for dead, and even they have to get over it. I know it’s hard, but you have to. You just have to get over it.
And I knew Melanie was right. It wasn’t as if I didn’t hear this all the damn time! Just get over it. Just get over it. Just get over it. It’s time to get over it. Let it go. JUST GET OVER IT! I wanted to snarl back at the people who offered up this worthless advice: You just get over it!
Who in the hell did they think they were to tell me something like that? Had any of them lived my life? Had they even seen my fucking shoes? Never mind tried them the hell on, never mind walked in them! Why couldn’t they understand that I had been broken, on that one day? I just couldn’t get over it. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I really did, because I wasn’t so stupid that I could not see that holding on to this day was destroying me. I knew that. But what I didn’t know was how to get over it. Guess What? One day, I GOT OVER IT! And this is my story.
The Technical Aspects of Storytelling
Once you decide what you are going to write about and who you are going to write about, you need to tend to the technical aspects of your story. When planning your story you need to consider important story components such as: characterization, setting, dialogue, plot and pacing (moving from beginning, to middle, to the end).
Characterization refers to the people featured in the story. When writing fiction, you must create the characters, which is really a difficult thing to do. But, we are not writing fiction here, so you don’t have to worry about characterization. The personal narrative is a true story. It’s a story about something that occurred or has occurred in your life. Therefore, the character is you. You know yourself well enough to write about you and your experiences. Your other characters are people you know, and people you have interacted with.
In this story, you might want to let your readers know where the action is taking place. You might, then, need to provide a setting. When your major life event begins to happen, where are you? Are you at a restaurant? A mall? A parking lot? Your bedroom? What does it look like? How do you feel about the environment? Is there anything that you see in this environment that makes you happy or sad? What is it? Describe it?
Remember the descriptive writing that you did in your dream life essay. What do you see, hear, feel, smell, touch or taste in this environment. A few, well placed details will bring your audience right there, beside you, which is your goal as a writer. You want to engage your audience! You want to capture their attention.
Dialogue refers to what the characters (who are based on real people in this case) are saying. What kind of dialogue are you going to use in your story? Realistic dialogue, hopefully. I want you to capture what was actually said. In the past, students have asked me if they can use profanity in their stories. I believe, (and mind you not all English teachers are going to believe this, but I do) if there was profanity in this part of your life experience, then by all means use it. But use it sparingly, to make your point. Less is more, when it comes to things like profanity. When you use dialogue, remember that it must be enclosed in quotations. It typically is prefaced with a “he said”, or “she said” statement.
Example of Dialogue:
She said, “I ain’t goin no where with Joe!”
Next, Joe looked away sadly, knowing it was over.
(Please remember that dialogue is always in quotations and sits on its on line, separate from the rest of the prose, as shown above.)
When you write dialogue, you don’t have to worry about writing in standard English. This is the one time, when it’s okay to write exactly as you speak, or to try to capture someone else’s speech in writing. No one speaks in standard English! With dialogue, you want to try to write exactly as people speak, or however you heard what was said. Writing dialogue can be fun, but it’s not necessarily easy.
Finally, there is plot. A simple way to explain plot is simply to call it conflict. Every story has some kind of conflict at its beginning, middle and end. At the beginning of the story, you must introduce the conflict. During the middle of the story, you must raise the conflict higher and higher until you can effectively resolve the issue at the end.
Often times students will ask me, how long does the story have to be. Your story should be at least three-type written pages, but, if you feel like you have more story to tell than that, then I encourage you to write for as long as it takes. The only thing you have to do is make sure that your story presents a conflict that gets resolved before the story is over.
Personal Narrative (Your life Story) Checklist
100 Points
Formal Writing Assignment # 2: A story on your personal experience with one or more of these topics: Love (Like), Death, Fear, Overcoming Adversity or Identity
Writing Structure: A non-fiction story from your life
Length of Assignment: Three pages, typed and double-spaced) Requires an Introduction of conflict ½ page, at least 2/1/2 pages of escalation (the middle) and a resolution ½ page.
Writing Style: Narrative, other styles may be used to make a point or generate interest. For description may be used, if a vivid image will assist in making a particular point, or to establish a particular setting. Dialogue may be used if you need to capture a conversation that you had or overheard (if the dialogue moves the story forward.) Definition may be used to explain terms that are not well known or understood, cause and effect may be used to show how a past action has led to a future outcome.
Writing Sample: Ms. A’s “Just Get Over It,” and Audre Lorde’s “ The Fourth of July” (TLW, pg 208)
Number of Drafts Required: At least two
Other Requirements: Checklist must be turned in with final draft
Please Check Each Item Off Before You Turn Your Essay in:
Content 75 Points
Content deals with the structure and components of your personal narrative and how well you worked with the concepts of setting, characterization, dialogue and plot as well as how well you developed the beginning, middle, and end of the story; and finally how well you explored the topic of love, death, fear, adversity or identity.
C1 Setting – Where does the story take place and how do you describe this place or places: 5 points
C2 Characters – Who are the characters in your story, and how do you develop them (By describing them, their behaviors, by giving them dialogue): 5 Points
C3 Dialogue – What kind of dialogue will you use? (select dialogue carefully based on what needs to be said, make it realistic, write as people speak): 5 Points
C4 Plot – What is the major conflict in this story? Do you think that the conflict you selected is enough of a conflict for you to work with in telling this story?: 5 Points
C5 The Beginning: 10 points
How do you begin this story? Do you introduce a conflict, or a problem that has to be solved? Do you introduce this conflict in a detailed, descriptive manner?
C6 The Middle: 10 points
How do you keep this story going? How do you escalate the conflict? Do you provide vivid descriptions in order to escalate the conflict? Do you use any dialogue? Do you italicize important thoughts or phrases?
C7 The End: 10 points
Has the problem or conflict been resolved? (It should have been) or do you just leave the reader wondering what happened? Do you think the reader will be satisfied when he or she gets to the end of the story?
C8 Tone/Voice: 5 points
Did you tap into a voice that was your own? Did you evoke a certain emotional perspective? If so, what emotion is the predominant one throughout this piece?
C-9 Creative Language: 5 points
Did you try to use language that was interesting, creative, poetic or provocative? Did you read something like a poem or an article in a magazine you like to get your creative juices flowing?
C-10 Rewrite/Revision Process: 10 Points
Do you have at least one first draft to turn in? Did you get feedback on that draft? Did you read the draft aloud to make sure that all of the sentences are properly structured and no words are missing from the sentences?
Form: 25 Points
Form deals with grammar, sentences structure and other mechanical errors that you might make with punctuation, spelling. 1 point will be deducted from your paper for every mistake that you make on your form.
Sentence Structure:
F1- Do all of your sentences have a subject and a verb?
F2- Do you have any run-on sentences? (AWR G6, pg 210) If you are using “And” to string together two complete sentences, you have a run-on, check for all of your ands.
F3– Are you using commas correctly? Are you missing commas (AWR P1, pg 259-272) Are you misusing commas to string together two sentences?
F4-Do you have any sentences fragments? Are all of your sentences complete consisting of both a noun and a verb? (AWR G5, pg 204)
If your sentence does not have a subject and a verb it is a fragment.
Awkward Phrases:
F5-Do you have any awkward sentences, which are often caused by: using too many words in a sentence? (Wordiness) (AWR W2, pg 137)
F6– Are you using colloquial language, sexist language, offensive language, (AWR W4, pg 144-150)
F7 Did you use words incorrectly? Did you force too many words or ideas into one sentence? (AWR W1, pg 123)
Grammar and Mechanics (spelling, punctuation):
F8 Did you run a grammar/spell check? (Did you misspell words, did you leave out any words, make any mechanical and/or grammatical errors with capitalization, abbreviations or numbers (AWR M, pg 297-314)?
F9 Did you check for POV or tense shifts? (AWR S4, pg 105)
F10 Are you misusing or forgetting how to use your punctuation (semi-colon, colon, apostrophe, quotation marks.) (AWR p, pg 273-288)
ESL Issues
(F5 and F7) Are you sentences awkward?
F11 Are you using prepositions incorrectly (AWR E, pg 252)
F 12 Did you check for subject verb/agreement? (AWR W2, pg 163-210)
Remember, a point will be subtracted for every grammatical error, until you reach 25 – points. After that, I will not subtract any more points.
Final Grade/Points Total:
Critical Questions on the Narrative Style (Amber’s story on Adversity)
Questions for Everyone to Answer
- What is narration (the personal narrative, the story)? In what ways can it be easier to write than an essay?
- Who are the characters in Amber’s story?
- Where does this story take place? In what way is the setting dramatic? Does the setting capture the reader’s attention?
- What kind of dialogue does Amber use? Do you think that it is realistic dialogue? Does she use quotation marks to set off her dialogue? How does she introduce her dialogue?
- Moving on to plot, what is the major conflict in this story? How does she introduce it? How does she escalate it? How does it get resolved?
- This really isn’t one story. It is actually a story within a story. In the first story, there is a beginning, middle and an end. But what about the second story?
Assignment 8
Telling Your Life Story
Telling your story, or writing the personal narrative may be one of the easiest assignments you will have this semester. The personal narrative, or more simply put, the story is a type of writing with which everyone is familiar. We have read countless stories in books. We have heard fairytales, fables and myths, which are always in the form of a story. We have seen stories in almost every film we have ever watched, and as a result, we all know how to tell a story. We all can relate to stories as well. A story is probably the simplest and most universal from of writing that exists.
To tell a story is really simple. You have a main character or a person who is at the center of the story, and the character or person then encounters some kind of problem or conflict. Over the course of a story the conflict escalates higher and higher and higher until it finally gets resolved. Once the conflict gets resolved, for better or worse, the story is over. This is the basic story structure.
You all will be writing stories about some major (or minor) life event. The nature of life is such that, at some point in time in your life, you are going to encounter some major event that is going to profoundly change you, or the course of your life, for better or for worse (and some times both.) Whichever way that it goes, you are going to have to deal with it.
If you’ve already experienced a major life-changing event, here’s your chance to write and reflect upon it, and grow from the experience. If you have yet to experience some major life event, then you can practice by writing about a minor life event. Whatever event you choose to write about, here’s your chance to reflect on the life experience and grow from it. You can choose from these potential topics:
- Falling in Love or Falling in Like – write about someone who came into your life and had a major impact on you. It could be a significant other, or it could be a good friend, a relative, a teacher. Use concrete events to explain why you believe your life has been enriched by this person.
- Experiencing the Death of a Loved One (not pets) – write about someone who was close to you who died, what kind of questions their death raised in your mind and how you managed your grief after the death.
- Overcoming Adversity – write about some difficulty you had to overcome in your life. Difficulties come in many shapes and forms like: trying to obtain something that you need, overcoming an illness, having to stand up to someone or something that is oppressing you in some way, or doing something very difficult (at least for you) like passing a certain class or running a marathon.
- Overcoming or Attempting to Overcome a Fear – We all have fears. What better way to deal with our fears than to write about them? Writing about our fears is a way to confront them; and confronting fears is healthy. Often, when we confront our fears we find that what we fear is so much less frightening that we originally thought. It is very liberating, to face a fear.
- Identity – Write about an experience that you believe made you you, or clarified some critical piece of your identity. Identity often is related to adversity, because it is typically under pressure, and when facing difficulties that we find out who we really are, and what we are made of.
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou cans’t not be false to any man”
Who wrote this?
What does it mean?
Regardless of what you ultimately choose to write about, I don’t want you to take this writing lightly. Thinking and writing about your life is a way to better get to know yourself. Self-knowledge, is the most powerful knowledge anyone can ever obtain, even though, many times, it’s not easy to obtain. By gaining in depth knowledge about your self, by analyzing the experiences, and especially the most difficult experiences of your life, you can totally transform your life for the better. I’ve read many stories by my students over the years, and the ones who tackle the really hard topics like death and overcoming fears or adversity, really gain a lot from this assignment.
Often these stories are very sad to read and hard and painful to write, but I admire my students who have the courage to tackle the painful topics. I believe that writing about the death of a loved one helps the grieving and healing process, which is sometimes are really long process. Some of the best stories I have ever read are those about confronting your fears. Here is a letter from one of my students who wrote one of the best stories I have ever read about fear.
I just wanted to take the time to say how much my life has changed during this semester and to thank you for being apart of that, directly or indirectly. Your class has taught me so much more than I would have expected to receive from an English class. You made my first college course exciting and fun but also challenging.
After writing my story on fear, I sat down and reread it. I decided to stop being afraid and made a move. So on April 12th, I met my father for the first time, something I never thought I could do. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life, and I believe that your class was a big part of my motivation, so again thank you.
I think that the stories that we write about adversity, fear, death identity and even love (especially if it ends in heartbreak), are the hardest stories that we will ever write, but they are the stories that tell us the most about ourselves and allow us to grow and heal in ways that are amazing. I am all about using the power of writing to transform your life, as I have been using the power of writing to transform my life for the past ten years. My book has transformed my life over and over and over again, and that’s because in this book, I tell several very difficult, hard and painful stories from my life. But, in telling these stories, to myself and other people, I have grown tremendously; and it is my hope that in writing your own story, you too will grow tremendously.
At any rate here is my sample story, on overcoming adversity (although it touches on almost all of the topics above, in some way.) It is actually taken from the first chapter of my book, The Way Through:
When I was thirteen years old something terrible happened to me.
It was a brand new school year, and I was at a brand new school. A prep school, in fact. I’d gotten a scholarship. It was a big to do, and I was supposed to be preparing for this new world, making a good impression and meeting all of the challenges that lay ahead of me. But I really couldn’t focus on any of that, because Jonah, my father, had other plans. I was awakened by the thunderous sound of his voice:
“You stupid, fucking, worthless, pathetic, bitch! I hate you! Raymond whore! Oh call your daddy, like you always do! You stupid, simple idiot bitch!”
I was tired, fucking exhausted actually, because these psychotic rampages of Jonah were nothing new. They happened at least once a year, beginning in September, reaching an insanely violent crescendo around Christmas time. During these times, my mom would take me and my three younger siblings to hide among various relatives. Sometimes we hid at my grandparents’ house. Sometimes we hid at an uncle or an aunt’s house. The important thing, however, was to hide, because when my father was like this, there was just no knowing what he would do to us. As much as he seemed to hate my mother, it was clear that he would kill her, if he could get his hands on her…and when he did get his hands on her…well that was the worst.
I’d said my goodbyes to both of my parents many times over because it seemed inevitable to me that, one day he would kill her. Then he’d be so afraid of the consequences, he’d kill himself. I was tired of waiting for all of that to happen. My anxiety about all of this was killing me. I just wanted it to all be over already, however it was going to end.
I was thinking: Stand up to him Saundra, say something! Stand up to him, damn it! But she would not do it. She never did. Him standing over her, bullying her, beating the crap out of her, I imagined that that was how it would always be. I scanned my room. In red magic marker my father had written messages to me on the walls:
Die, die, die in the 13th year you fucking devil demon bitch. I will slice your throat open. I will slaughter you like the lamb. Red blood, little, big lamb. Your jugular vain will bleed and your blood will spill three levels high! E=MC2 x 3cc =4 Ф/35, 89 Ϡ + H2O and Carbon and Hydrogen and ŷ 76 beyond ʒЭ7 and Ў Щ but not …. REMEMBER! The blood of the lamb runs red, red, red, red redrum, murder…
On and on and on…every inch of my four bedroom walls was covered with symbols, pentagrams, formulas, poetry, prose and profanity. I was so furious with my mother about this, I almost wanted him to kill her. I could not understand why she allowed him to act this way? To treat us like this? She wasn’t crazy like he was, so what was her excuse? He was a psychotic, ranting, raving lunatic but she never did a damn thing about it. She ignored it. For this, I hated her deeply, almost as much as I hated Jonah. I got out of bed and looked into their bedroom. She was cowering underneath him, shivering and crying. I wondered where my little sister Star was. I prayed to God that she was too terrified to move. She usually was. Star was only eight; my brother Zeus was six and my youngest brother Raymond was three. I always tried to protect them because I knew how terrifying it was to be so small and to be caught up in the middle of this craziness. But this time I could not protect them. I had been caught off guard by Jonah, because I had to sleep. Everyone had to sleep, except Jonah.
“Jonah please, please, I just want to leave. Just let me go-”
“NO!”
My mom was terrified of Jonah. As much as I hated to admit it, this was understandable, because when Jonah was like this, he was completely terrifying. In all of my thirteen years of living, I had never stood up to Jonah. When he was on one of these psychotic homicidal rampages, he didn’t eat or sleep. He never tired. He just kept getting crazier and crazier. Really the only thing left to do was run!
But I was tired of running, exhausted actually. I could not do it anymore. And so, it was time for me to take the stand I’d been preparing for all my life. I was as big as I was probably ever going to get. Bigger than Saundra and almost as tall as Jonah. I refused to continue living like this, running, hiding crawling, cowering. So I grabbed my heavy brass floor lamp, ripped the cord out of the socket, walked to the threshold of my bedroom door, feeling woozy from all of the adrenaline rushing to my head. I tried to speak, but my heart was beating wildly against my chest, and my throat was parched. I grabbed the lamp tighter and swallowed some spit. Today was as good a day as any to die.
“Leave her alone!”
Jonah turned and looked to me, with that crazy, wild-eyed look. Even so, I refused to back down, so I said,
“I hate you! You are crazy, crazy, crazy! ”
And even though he was crazy, Jonah knew. In that instant he knew, things between me and him would never be the same. He also knew that I was nothing like Saundra. I meant every word. I was done with being afraid. Jonah charged at me full force, like a bull going up against a matador, yelling, cursing. I did not care. I stood my ground, thinking: I will stand right here and die, before I take any more shit from you.
“I’ll kill you Jonah! I swear to God I will!”
And I meant it. I would have killed him, if I could. Either he was going to die or I was. I really didn’t care who. As Jonah descended upon me, I realized that he was much stronger than I’d anticipated. He was, after all, a man, a totally manic, wild, crazy, man. He lunged for the lamp and snatched it out of my hands. The he taunted me:
“Oh, so you think you’re a bad bitch! Hathaway Brown Bitch! You think that you can kill me? Ha! Well, how about I kill you! Are you ready to die? Are you ready for me to bash your fucking head in?”
Bitch? Bitch! He had called me a bitch! My own father had called me a bitch! A Hathaway Brown bitch no less! Maybe I should have been fazed by his death threats, but they didn’t faze me anymore. He was always telling me I was going to die if I didn’t do whatever he wanted me to do. But this bitch thing, now that was something new. Jonah had never called me a bitch before. He was poking me with the lamp and backing me into a corner. My brain struggled to find a solution and so it was whizzing, clicking, searching for options, quick, quick, quick, because in this desperate moment I realized that even though I had thought I was ready to die, I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want to be bludgeoned to death, while being called a bitch by a mad man who was incidentally was my father. Next, something absolutely miraculous happened. Saundra came out of nowhere, with a strength and conviction that I’d never seen before!
“Put the lamp down Jonah! You will not hurt my child! I won’t let you.”
I was so completely and utterly shocked that I wasn’t even watching Jonah anymore. I was watching my mother, which was like watching Lazarus rise from the dead. Jonah was also stunned. He turned around and said,
“So you want to die, too?”
No one could believe what happened next. My mother, who had spent her entire adult life running from Jonah, finally said,
“Jonah, the only one who will die today is you.”
He must have believed her, because he took off running and did not return for days. Intuitively, he must have known that his time was nearly at an end. The police would be arriving soon, because Star had run to the neighbor’s house, barefoot and in her pajamas, begging them to call my grandfather. She had to run to the neighbors because my father had ripped all of the phones out of the walls. It was one of the first things that he did, when he was planning one of these crazy rampages. Call my grandpa, my sister pleaded with the neighbors. Please hurry up and call my grandpa because my father’s going to kill my sister.
That day, and the many events that followed after, changed the course of my life. For one thing, for years and years after it happened, I would always carry that day with me. I would always feel like that day was every day of my life. Can you imagine how depressing my life was? It wasn’t that I thought about it every day, in fact, I rarely ever thought about that day, or my father at all. I completely repressed that day, and acted as if it had never happened, not quite realizing that this was probably the worst thing that I could do to myself. By doing this, I would ultimately drive myself crazy. I would become everything I hated and feared.
What was it about this day that made it so powerful and so devastating all at once? It was bad, but really, was it that bad? Was it really all that bad that I needed to hold on to it and allow it to destroy everything good about me? As my friend Melanie told me, (twenty years later), Lisa, some people’s daddies fuck them in the ass and leave them for dead, and even they have to get over it. I know it’s hard, but you have to. You just have to get over it.
And I knew Melanie was right. It wasn’t as if I didn’t hear this all the damn time! Just get over it. Just get over it. Just get over it. It’s time to get over it. Let it go. JUST GET OVER IT! I wanted to snarl back at the people who offered up this worthless advice: You just get over it!
Who in the hell did they think they were to tell me something like that? Had any of them lived my life? Had they even seen my fucking shoes? Never mind tried them the hell on, never mind walked in them! Why couldn’t they understand that I had been broken, on that one day? I just couldn’t get over it. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I really did, because I wasn’t so stupid that I could not see that holding on to this day was destroying me. I knew that. But what I didn’t know was how to get over it. Guess What? One day, I GOT OVER IT! And this is my story.
The Technical Aspects of Storytelling
Once you decide what you are going to write about and who you are going to write about, you need to tend to the technical aspects of your story. When planning your story you need to consider important story components such as: characterization, setting, dialogue, plot and pacing (moving from beginning, to middle, to the end).
Characterization refers to the people featured in the story. When writing fiction, you must create the characters, which is really a difficult thing to do. But, we are not writing fiction here, so you don’t have to worry about characterization. The personal narrative is a true story. It’s a story about something that occurred or has occurred in your life. Therefore, the character is you. You know yourself well enough to write about you and your experiences. Your other characters are people you know, and people you have interacted with.
In this story, you might want to let your readers know where the action is taking place. You might, then, need to provide a setting. When your major life event begins to happen, where are you? Are you at a restaurant? A mall? A parking lot? Your bedroom? What does it look like? How do you feel about the environment? Is there anything that you see in this environment that makes you happy or sad? What is it? Describe it?
Remember the descriptive writing that you did in your dream life essay. What do you see, hear, feel, smell, touch or taste in this environment. A few, well placed details will bring your audience right there, beside you, which is your goal as a writer. You want to engage your audience! You want to capture their attention.
Dialogue refers to what the characters (who are based on real people in this case) are saying. What kind of dialogue are you going to use in your story? Realistic dialogue, hopefully. I want you to capture what was actually said. In the past, students have asked me if they can use profanity in their stories. I believe, (and mind you not all English teachers are going to believe this, but I do) if there was profanity in this part of your life experience, then by all means use it. But use it sparingly, to make your point. Less is more, when it comes to things like profanity. When you use dialogue, remember that it must be enclosed in quotations. It typically is prefaced with a “he said”, or “she said” statement.
Example of Dialogue:
She said, “I ain’t goin no where with Joe!”
Next, Joe looked away sadly, knowing it was over.
(Please remember that dialogue is always in quotations and sits on its on line, separate from the rest of the prose, as shown above.)
When you write dialogue, you don’t have to worry about writing in standard English. This is the one time, when it’s okay to write exactly as you speak, or to try to capture someone else’s speech in writing. No one speaks in standard English! With dialogue, you want to try to write exactly as people speak, or however you heard what was said. Writing dialogue can be fun, but it’s not necessarily easy.
Finally, there is plot. A simple way to explain plot is simply to call it conflict. Every story has some kind of conflict at its beginning, middle and end. At the beginning of the story, you must introduce the conflict. During the middle of the story, you must raise the conflict higher and higher until you can effectively resolve the issue at the end.
Often times students will ask me, how long does the story have to be. Your story should be at least three-type written pages, but, if you feel like you have more story to tell than that, then I encourage you to write for as long as it takes. The only thing you have to do is make sure that your story presents a conflict that gets resolved before the story is over.
Personal Narrative (Your life Story) Checklist
100 Points
Formal Writing Assignment # 2: A story on your personal experience with one or more of these topics: Love (Like), Death, Fear, Overcoming Adversity or Identity
Writing Structure: A non-fiction story from your life
Length of Assignment: Three pages, typed and double-spaced) Requires an Introduction of conflict ½ page, at least 2/1/2 pages of escalation (the middle) and a resolution ½ page.
Writing Style: Narrative, other styles may be used to make a point or generate interest. For description may be used, if a vivid image will assist in making a particular point, or to establish a particular setting. Dialogue may be used if you need to capture a conversation that you had or overheard (if the dialogue moves the story forward.) Definition may be used to explain terms that are not well known or understood, cause and effect may be used to show how a past action has led to a future outcome.
Writing Sample: Ms. A’s “Just Get Over It,” and Audre Lorde’s “ The Fourth of July” (TLW, pg 208)
Number of Drafts Required: At least two
Other Requirements: Checklist must be turned in with final draft
Please Check Each Item Off Before You Turn Your Essay in:
Content 75 Points
Content deals with the structure and components of your personal narrative and how well you worked with the concepts of setting, characterization, dialogue and plot as well as how well you developed the beginning, middle, and end of the story; and finally how well you explored the topic of love, death, fear, adversity or identity.
C1 Setting – Where does the story take place and how do you describe this place or places: 5 points
C2 Characters – Who are the characters in your story, and how do you develop them (By describing them, their behaviors, by giving them dialogue): 5 Points
C3 Dialogue – What kind of dialogue will you use? (select dialogue carefully based on what needs to be said, make it realistic, write as people speak): 5 Points
C4 Plot – What is the major conflict in this story? Do you think that the conflict you selected is enough of a conflict for you to work with in telling this story?: 5 Points
C5 The Beginning: 10 points
How do you begin this story? Do you introduce a conflict, or a problem that has to be solved? Do you introduce this conflict in a detailed, descriptive manner?
C6 The Middle: 10 points
How do you keep this story going? How do you escalate the conflict? Do you provide vivid descriptions in order to escalate the conflict? Do you use any dialogue? Do you italicize important thoughts or phrases?
C7 The End: 10 points
Has the problem or conflict been resolved? (It should have been) or do you just leave the reader wondering what happened? Do you think the reader will be satisfied when he or she gets to the end of the story?
C8 Tone/Voice: 5 points
Did you tap into a voice that was your own? Did you evoke a certain emotional perspective? If so, what emotion is the predominant one throughout this piece?
C-9 Creative Language: 5 points
Did you try to use language that was interesting, creative, poetic or provocative? Did you read something like a poem or an article in a magazine you like to get your creative juices flowing?
C-10 Rewrite/Revision Process: 10 Points
Do you have at least one first draft to turn in? Did you get feedback on that draft? Did you read the draft aloud to make sure that all of the sentences are properly structured and no words are missing from the sentences?
Form: 25 Points
Form deals with grammar, sentences structure and other mechanical errors that you might make with punctuation, spelling. 1 point will be deducted from your paper for every mistake that you make on your form.
Sentence Structure:
F1- Do all of your sentences have a subject and a verb?
F2- Do you have any run-on sentences? (AWR G6, pg 210) If you are using “And” to string together two complete sentences, you have a run-on, check for all of your ands.
F3– Are you using commas correctly? Are you missing commas (AWR P1, pg 259-272) Are you misusing commas to string together two sentences?
F4-Do you have any sentences fragments? Are all of your sentences complete consisting of both a noun and a verb? (AWR G5, pg 204)
If your sentence does not have a subject and a verb it is a fragment.
Awkward Phrases:
F5-Do you have any awkward sentences, which are often caused by: using too many words in a sentence? (Wordiness) (AWR W2, pg 137)
F6– Are you using colloquial language, sexist language, offensive language, (AWR W4, pg 144-150)
F7 Did you use words incorrectly? Did you force too many words or ideas into one sentence? (AWR W1, pg 123)
Grammar and Mechanics (spelling, punctuation):
F8 Did you run a grammar/spell check? (Did you misspell words, did you leave out any words, make any mechanical and/or grammatical errors with capitalization, abbreviations or numbers (AWR M, pg 297-314)?
F9 Did you check for POV or tense shifts? (AWR S4, pg 105)
F10 Are you misusing or forgetting how to use your punctuation (semi-colon, colon, apostrophe, quotation marks.) (AWR p, pg 273-288)
ESL Issues
(F5 and F7) Are you sentences awkward?
F11 Are you using prepositions incorrectly (AWR E, pg 252)
F 12 Did you check for subject verb/agreement? (AWR W2, pg 163-210)
Remember, a point will be subtracted for every grammatical error, until you reach 25 – points. After that, I will not subtract any more points.
Final Grade/Points Total:
Critical Questions on the Narrative Style (Amber’s story on Adversity)
Questions for Everyone to Answer
- What is narration (the personal narrative, the story)? In what ways can it be easier to write than an essay?
- Who are the characters in Amber’s story?
- Where does this story take place? In what way is the setting dramatic? Does the setting capture the reader’s attention?
- What kind of dialogue does Amber use? Do you think that it is realistic dialogue? Does she use quotation marks to set off her dialogue? How does she introduce her dialogue?
- Moving on to plot, what is the major conflict in this story? How does she introduce it? How does she escalate it? How does it get resolved?
- This really isn’t one story. It is actually a story within a story. In the first story, there is a beginning, middle and an end. But what about the second story?
Assignment 8
Telling Your Life Story
Telling your story, or writing the personal narrative may be one of the easiest assignments you will have this semester. The personal narrative, or more simply put, the story is a type of writing with which everyone is familiar. We have read countless stories in books. We have heard fairytales, fables and myths, which are always in the form of a story. We have seen stories in almost every film we have ever watched, and as a result, we all know how to tell a story. We all can relate to stories as well. A story is probably the simplest and most universal from of writing that exists.
To tell a story is really simple. You have a main character or a person who is at the center of the story, and the character or person then encounters some kind of problem or conflict. Over the course of a story the conflict escalates higher and higher and higher until it finally gets resolved. Once the conflict gets resolved, for better or worse, the story is over. This is the basic story structure.
You all will be writing stories about some major (or minor) life event. The nature of life is such that, at some point in time in your life, you are going to encounter some major event that is going to profoundly change you, or the course of your life, for better or for worse (and some times both.) Whichever way that it goes, you are going to have to deal with it.
If you’ve already experienced a major life-changing event, here’s your chance to write and reflect upon it, and grow from the experience. If you have yet to experience some major life event, then you can practice by writing about a minor life event. Whatever event you choose to write about, here’s your chance to reflect on the life experience and grow from it. You can choose from these potential topics:
- Falling in Love or Falling in Like – write about someone who came into your life and had a major impact on you. It could be a significant other, or it could be a good friend, a relative, a teacher. Use concrete events to explain why you believe your life has been enriched by this person.
- Experiencing the Death of a Loved One (not pets) – write about someone who was close to you who died, what kind of questions their death raised in your mind and how you managed your grief after the death.
- Overcoming Adversity – write about some difficulty you had to overcome in your life. Difficulties come in many shapes and forms like: trying to obtain something that you need, overcoming an illness, having to stand up to someone or something that is oppressing you in some way, or doing something very difficult (at least for you) like passing a certain class or running a marathon.
- Overcoming or Attempting to Overcome a Fear – We all have fears. What better way to deal with our fears than to write about them? Writing about our fears is a way to confront them; and confronting fears is healthy. Often, when we confront our fears we find that what we fear is so much less frightening that we originally thought. It is very liberating, to face a fear.
- Identity – Write about an experience that you believe made you you, or clarified some critical piece of your identity. Identity often is related to adversity, because it is typically under pressure, and when facing difficulties that we find out who we really are, and what we are made of.
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou cans’t not be false to any man”
Who wrote this?
What does it mean?
Regardless of what you ultimately choose to write about, I don’t want you to take this writing lightly. Thinking and writing about your life is a way to better get to know yourself. Self-knowledge, is the most powerful knowledge anyone can ever obtain, even though, many times, it’s not easy to obtain. By gaining in depth knowledge about your self, by analyzing the experiences, and especially the most difficult experiences of your life, you can totally transform your life for the better. I’ve read many stories by my students over the years, and the ones who tackle the really hard topics like death and overcoming fears or adversity, really gain a lot from this assignment.
Often these stories are very sad to read and hard and painful to write, but I admire my students who have the courage to tackle the painful topics. I believe that writing about the death of a loved one helps the grieving and healing process, which is sometimes are really long process. Some of the best stories I have ever read are those about confronting your fears. Here is a letter from one of my students who wrote one of the best stories I have ever read about fear.
I just wanted to take the time to say how much my life has changed during this semester and to thank you for being apart of that, directly or indirectly. Your class has taught me so much more than I would have expected to receive from an English class. You made my first college course exciting and fun but also challenging.
After writing my story on fear, I sat down and reread it. I decided to stop being afraid and made a move. So on April 12th, I met my father for the first time, something I never thought I could do. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life, and I believe that your class was a big part of my motivation, so again thank you.
I think that the stories that we write about adversity, fear, death identity and even love (especially if it ends in heartbreak), are the hardest stories that we will ever write, but they are the stories that tell us the most about ourselves and allow us to grow and heal in ways that are amazing. I am all about using the power of writing to transform your life, as I have been using the power of writing to transform my life for the past ten years. My book has transformed my life over and over and over again, and that’s because in this book, I tell several very difficult, hard and painful stories from my life. But, in telling these stories, to myself and other people, I have grown tremendously; and it is my hope that in writing your own story, you too will grow tremendously.
At any rate here is my sample story, on overcoming adversity (although it touches on almost all of the topics above, in some way.) It is actually taken from the first chapter of my book, The Way Through:
When I was thirteen years old something terrible happened to me.
It was a brand new school year, and I was at a brand new school. A prep school, in fact. I’d gotten a scholarship. It was a big to do, and I was supposed to be preparing for this new world, making a good impression and meeting all of the challenges that lay ahead of me. But I really couldn’t focus on any of that, because Jonah, my father, had other plans. I was awakened by the thunderous sound of his voice:
“You stupid, fucking, worthless, pathetic, bitch! I hate you! Raymond whore! Oh call your daddy, like you always do! You stupid, simple idiot bitch!”
I was tired, fucking exhausted actually, because these psychotic rampages of Jonah were nothing new. They happened at least once a year, beginning in September, reaching an insanely violent crescendo around Christmas time. During these times, my mom would take me and my three younger siblings to hide among various relatives. Sometimes we hid at my grandparents’ house. Sometimes we hid at an uncle or an aunt’s house. The important thing, however, was to hide, because when my father was like this, there was just no knowing what he would do to us. As much as he seemed to hate my mother, it was clear that he would kill her, if he could get his hands on her…and when he did get his hands on her…well that was the worst.
I’d said my goodbyes to both of my parents many times over because it seemed inevitable to me that, one day he would kill her. Then he’d be so afraid of the consequences, he’d kill himself. I was tired of waiting for all of that to happen. My anxiety about all of this was killing me. I just wanted it to all be over already, however it was going to end.
I was thinking: Stand up to him Saundra, say something! Stand up to him, damn it! But she would not do it. She never did. Him standing over her, bullying her, beating the crap out of her, I imagined that that was how it would always be. I scanned my room. In red magic marker my father had written messages to me on the walls:
Die, die, die in the 13th year you fucking devil demon bitch. I will slice your throat open. I will slaughter you like the lamb. Red blood, little, big lamb. Your jugular vain will bleed and your blood will spill three levels high! E=MC2 x 3cc =4 Ф/35, 89 Ϡ + H2O and Carbon and Hydrogen and ŷ 76 beyond ʒЭ7 and Ў Щ but not …. REMEMBER! The blood of the lamb runs red, red, red, red redrum, murder…
On and on and on…every inch of my four bedroom walls was covered with symbols, pentagrams, formulas, poetry, prose and profanity. I was so furious with my mother about this, I almost wanted him to kill her. I could not understand why she allowed him to act this way? To treat us like this? She wasn’t crazy like he was, so what was her excuse? He was a psychotic, ranting, raving lunatic but she never did a damn thing about it. She ignored it. For this, I hated her deeply, almost as much as I hated Jonah. I got out of bed and looked into their bedroom. She was cowering underneath him, shivering and crying. I wondered where my little sister Star was. I prayed to God that she was too terrified to move. She usually was. Star was only eight; my brother Zeus was six and my youngest brother Raymond was three. I always tried to protect them because I knew how terrifying it was to be so small and to be caught up in the middle of this craziness. But this time I could not protect them. I had been caught off guard by Jonah, because I had to sleep. Everyone had to sleep, except Jonah.
“Jonah please, please, I just want to leave. Just let me go-”
“NO!”
My mom was terrified of Jonah. As much as I hated to admit it, this was understandable, because when Jonah was like this, he was completely terrifying. In all of my thirteen years of living, I had never stood up to Jonah. When he was on one of these psychotic homicidal rampages, he didn’t eat or sleep. He never tired. He just kept getting crazier and crazier. Really the only thing left to do was run!
But I was tired of running, exhausted actually. I could not do it anymore. And so, it was time for me to take the stand I’d been preparing for all my life. I was as big as I was probably ever going to get. Bigger than Saundra and almost as tall as Jonah. I refused to continue living like this, running, hiding crawling, cowering. So I grabbed my heavy brass floor lamp, ripped the cord out of the socket, walked to the threshold of my bedroom door, feeling woozy from all of the adrenaline rushing to my head. I tried to speak, but my heart was beating wildly against my chest, and my throat was parched. I grabbed the lamp tighter and swallowed some spit. Today was as good a day as any to die.
“Leave her alone!”
Jonah turned and looked to me, with that crazy, wild-eyed look. Even so, I refused to back down, so I said,
“I hate you! You are crazy, crazy, crazy! ”
And even though he was crazy, Jonah knew. In that instant he knew, things between me and him would never be the same. He also knew that I was nothing like Saundra. I meant every word. I was done with being afraid. Jonah charged at me full force, like a bull going up against a matador, yelling, cursing. I did not care. I stood my ground, thinking: I will stand right here and die, before I take any more shit from you.
“I’ll kill you Jonah! I swear to God I will!”
And I meant it. I would have killed him, if I could. Either he was going to die or I was. I really didn’t care who. As Jonah descended upon me, I realized that he was much stronger than I’d anticipated. He was, after all, a man, a totally manic, wild, crazy, man. He lunged for the lamp and snatched it out of my hands. The he taunted me:
“Oh, so you think you’re a bad bitch! Hathaway Brown Bitch! You think that you can kill me? Ha! Well, how about I kill you! Are you ready to die? Are you ready for me to bash your fucking head in?”
Bitch? Bitch! He had called me a bitch! My own father had called me a bitch! A Hathaway Brown bitch no less! Maybe I should have been fazed by his death threats, but they didn’t faze me anymore. He was always telling me I was going to die if I didn’t do whatever he wanted me to do. But this bitch thing, now that was something new. Jonah had never called me a bitch before. He was poking me with the lamp and backing me into a corner. My brain struggled to find a solution and so it was whizzing, clicking, searching for options, quick, quick, quick, because in this desperate moment I realized that even though I had thought I was ready to die, I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want to be bludgeoned to death, while being called a bitch by a mad man who was incidentally was my father. Next, something absolutely miraculous happened. Saundra came out of nowhere, with a strength and conviction that I’d never seen before!
“Put the lamp down Jonah! You will not hurt my child! I won’t let you.”
I was so completely and utterly shocked that I wasn’t even watching Jonah anymore. I was watching my mother, which was like watching Lazarus rise from the dead. Jonah was also stunned. He turned around and said,
“So you want to die, too?”
No one could believe what happened next. My mother, who had spent her entire adult life running from Jonah, finally said,
“Jonah, the only one who will die today is you.”
He must have believed her, because he took off running and did not return for days. Intuitively, he must have known that his time was nearly at an end. The police would be arriving soon, because Star had run to the neighbor’s house, barefoot and in her pajamas, begging them to call my grandfather. She had to run to the neighbors because my father had ripped all of the phones out of the walls. It was one of the first things that he did, when he was planning one of these crazy rampages. Call my grandpa, my sister pleaded with the neighbors. Please hurry up and call my grandpa because my father’s going to kill my sister.
That day, and the many events that followed after, changed the course of my life. For one thing, for years and years after it happened, I would always carry that day with me. I would always feel like that day was every day of my life. Can you imagine how depressing my life was? It wasn’t that I thought about it every day, in fact, I rarely ever thought about that day, or my father at all. I completely repressed that day, and acted as if it had never happened, not quite realizing that this was probably the worst thing that I could do to myself. By doing this, I would ultimately drive myself crazy. I would become everything I hated and feared.
What was it about this day that made it so powerful and so devastating all at once? It was bad, but really, was it that bad? Was it really all that bad that I needed to hold on to it and allow it to destroy everything good about me? As my friend Melanie told me, (twenty years later), Lisa, some people’s daddies fuck them in the ass and leave them for dead, and even they have to get over it. I know it’s hard, but you have to. You just have to get over it.
And I knew Melanie was right. It wasn’t as if I didn’t hear this all the damn time! Just get over it. Just get over it. Just get over it. It’s time to get over it. Let it go. JUST GET OVER IT! I wanted to snarl back at the people who offered up this worthless advice: You just get over it!
Who in the hell did they think they were to tell me something like that? Had any of them lived my life? Had they even seen my fucking shoes? Never mind tried them the hell on, never mind walked in them! Why couldn’t they understand that I had been broken, on that one day? I just couldn’t get over it. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I really did, because I wasn’t so stupid that I could not see that holding on to this day was destroying me. I knew that. But what I didn’t know was how to get over it. Guess What? One day, I GOT OVER IT! And this is my story.
The Technical Aspects of Storytelling
Once you decide what you are going to write about and who you are going to write about, you need to tend to the technical aspects of your story. When planning your story you need to consider important story components such as: characterization, setting, dialogue, plot and pacing (moving from beginning, to middle, to the end).
Characterization refers to the people featured in the story. When writing fiction, you must create the characters, which is really a difficult thing to do. But, we are not writing fiction here, so you don’t have to worry about characterization. The personal narrative is a true story. It’s a story about something that occurred or has occurred in your life. Therefore, the character is you. You know yourself well enough to write about you and your experiences. Your other characters are people you know, and people you have interacted with.
In this story, you might want to let your readers know where the action is taking place. You might, then, need to provide a setting. When your major life event begins to happen, where are you? Are you at a restaurant? A mall? A parking lot? Your bedroom? What does it look like? How do you feel about the environment? Is there anything that you see in this environment that makes you happy or sad? What is it? Describe it?
Remember the descriptive writing that you did in your dream life essay. What do you see, hear, feel, smell, touch or taste in this environment. A few, well placed details will bring your audience right there, beside you, which is your goal as a writer. You want to engage your audience! You want to capture their attention.
Dialogue refers to what the characters (who are based on real people in this case) are saying. What kind of dialogue are you going to use in your story? Realistic dialogue, hopefully. I want you to capture what was actually said. In the past, students have asked me if they can use profanity in their stories. I believe, (and mind you not all English teachers are going to believe this, but I do) if there was profanity in this part of your life experience, then by all means use it. But use it sparingly, to make your point. Less is more, when it comes to things like profanity. When you use dialogue, remember that it must be enclosed in quotations. It typically is prefaced with a “he said”, or “she said” statement.
Example of Dialogue:
She said, “I ain’t goin no where with Joe!”
Next, Joe looked away sadly, knowing it was over.
(Please remember that dialogue is always in quotations and sits on its on line, separate from the rest of the prose, as shown above.)
When you write dialogue, you don’t have to worry about writing in standard English. This is the one time, when it’s okay to write exactly as you speak, or to try to capture someone else’s speech in writing. No one speaks in standard English! With dialogue, you want to try to write exactly as people speak, or however you heard what was said. Writing dialogue can be fun, but it’s not necessarily easy.
Finally, there is plot. A simple way to explain plot is simply to call it conflict. Every story has some kind of conflict at its beginning, middle and end. At the beginning of the story, you must introduce the conflict. During the middle of the story, you must raise the conflict higher and higher until you can effectively resolve the issue at the end.
Often times students will ask me, how long does the story have to be. Your story should be at least three-type written pages, but, if you feel like you have more story to tell than that, then I encourage you to write for as long as it takes. The only thing you have to do is make sure that your story presents a conflict that gets resolved before the story is over.
Personal Narrative (Your life Story) Checklist
100 Points
Formal Writing Assignment # 2: A story on your personal experience with one or more of these topics: Love (Like), Death, Fear, Overcoming Adversity or Identity
Writing Structure: A non-fiction story from your life
Length of Assignment: Three pages, typed and double-spaced) Requires an Introduction of conflict ½ page, at least 2/1/2 pages of escalation (the middle) and a resolution ½ page.
Writing Style: Narrative, other styles may be used to make a point or generate interest. For description may be used, if a vivid image will assist in making a particular point, or to establish a particular setting. Dialogue may be used if you need to capture a conversation that you had or overheard (if the dialogue moves the story forward.) Definition may be used to explain terms that are not well known or understood, cause and effect may be used to show how a past action has led to a future outcome.
Writing Sample: Ms. A’s “Just Get Over It,” and Audre Lorde’s “ The Fourth of July” (TLW, pg 208)
Number of Drafts Required: At least two
Other Requirements: Checklist must be turned in with final draft
Please Check Each Item Off Before You Turn Your Essay in:
Content 75 Points
Content deals with the structure and components of your personal narrative and how well you worked with the concepts of setting, characterization, dialogue and plot as well as how well you developed the beginning, middle, and end of the story; and finally how well you explored the topic of love, death, fear, adversity or identity.
C1 Setting – Where does the story take place and how do you describe this place or places: 5 points
C2 Characters – Who are the characters in your story, and how do you develop them (By describing them, their behaviors, by giving them dialogue): 5 Points
C3 Dialogue – What kind of dialogue will you use? (select dialogue carefully based on what needs to be said, make it realistic, write as people speak): 5 Points
C4 Plot – What is the major conflict in this story? Do you think that the conflict you selected is enough of a conflict for you to work with in telling this story?: 5 Points
C5 The Beginning: 10 points
How do you begin this story? Do you introduce a conflict, or a problem that has to be solved? Do you introduce this conflict in a detailed, descriptive manner?
C6 The Middle: 10 points
How do you keep this story going? How do you escalate the conflict? Do you provide vivid descriptions in order to escalate the conflict? Do you use any dialogue? Do you italicize important thoughts or phrases?
C7 The End: 10 points
Has the problem or conflict been resolved? (It should have been) or do you just leave the reader wondering what happened? Do you think the reader will be satisfied when he or she gets to the end of the story?
C8 Tone/Voice: 5 points
Did you tap into a voice that was your own? Did you evoke a certain emotional perspective? If so, what emotion is the predominant one throughout this piece?
C-9 Creative Language: 5 points
Did you try to use language that was interesting, creative, poetic or provocative? Did you read something like a poem or an article in a magazine you like to get your creative juices flowing?
C-10 Rewrite/Revision Process: 10 Points
Do you have at least one first draft to turn in? Did you get feedback on that draft? Did you read the draft aloud to make sure that all of the sentences are properly structured and no words are missing from the sentences?
Form: 25 Points
Form deals with grammar, sentences structure and other mechanical errors that you might make with punctuation, spelling. 1 point will be deducted from your paper for every mistake that you make on your form.
Sentence Structure:
F1- Do all of your sentences have a subject and a verb?
F2- Do you have any run-on sentences? (AWR G6, pg 210) If you are using “And” to string together two complete sentences, you have a run-on, check for all of your ands.
F3– Are you using commas correctly? Are you missing commas (AWR P1, pg 259-272) Are you misusing commas to string together two sentences?
F4-Do you have any sentences fragments? Are all of your sentences complete consisting of both a noun and a verb? (AWR G5, pg 204)
If your sentence does not have a subject and a verb it is a fragment.
Awkward Phrases:
F5-Do you have any awkward sentences, which are often caused by: using too many words in a sentence? (Wordiness) (AWR W2, pg 137)
F6– Are you using colloquial language, sexist language, offensive language, (AWR W4, pg 144-150)
F7 Did you use words incorrectly? Did you force too many words or ideas into one sentence? (AWR W1, pg 123)
Grammar and Mechanics (spelling, punctuation):
F8 Did you run a grammar/spell check? (Did you misspell words, did you leave out any words, make any mechanical and/or grammatical errors with capitalization, abbreviations or numbers (AWR M, pg 297-314)?
F9 Did you check for POV or tense shifts? (AWR S4, pg 105)
F10 Are you misusing or forgetting how to use your punctuation (semi-colon, colon, apostrophe, quotation marks.) (AWR p, pg 273-288)
ESL Issues
(F5 and F7) Are you sentences awkward?
F11 Are you using prepositions incorrectly (AWR E, pg 252)
F 12 Did you check for subject verb/agreement? (AWR W2, pg 163-210)
Remember, a point will be subtracted for every grammatical error, until you reach 25 – points. After that, I will not subtract any more points.
Final Grade/Points Total:
Critical Questions on the Narrative Style (Amber’s story on Adversity)
Questions for Everyone to Answer
- What is narration (the personal narrative, the story)? In what ways can it be easier to write than an essay?
- Who are the characters in Amber’s story?
- Where does this story take place? In what way is the setting dramatic? Does the setting capture the reader’s attention?
- What kind of dialogue does Amber use? Do you think that it is realistic dialogue? Does she use quotation marks to set off her dialogue? How does she introduce her dialogue?
- Moving on to plot, what is the major conflict in this story? How does she introduce it? How does she escalate it? How does it get resolved?
- This really isn’t one story. It is actually a story within a story. In the first story, there is a beginning, middle and an end. But what about the second story?
The Nova Rhetorical Style 