Writing Workshop : Narrative Essay

1. Writing Workshop : Narrative Essay ENG 101: Writing I Pages from The Writing Process by John Lannon

2. The Thesis Statement Step 1 pp. 22-27

3. Thesis Statement • Because everything you say in your essay must be logically related to your thesis, the thesis controls and directs the choices you make about the content of your essay. • As your essay develops, so should your thesis. Don’t be afraid to modify your thesis to accommodate your changing essay.

4. 3 Steps to developing a thesis • Determine a question that you are trying to answer in your essay. • Your 1-2 sentence response will create a tentative thesis. • Reword your thesis again by beginning with “What I want to say is that…” • Later, when you delete the cheesy opening, you will be left with a decent thesis statement. • Add the three main points that you want to make about your topic.

5. Sample Beginning Thesis StatementsEach sentence below identifies the topic and makes an assertion about it. • One of the most potent elements in body language is eye behavior • Americans can be divided into three groups—smokers, nonsmokers, and that expanding pack of us who have quit. • Over the past ten to fifteen years, it has become apparent that eating disorders have reached epidemic proportions among adolescents.

6. Outlining Step 2

7. Utilize the outline form • Create your topic sentences • Add supporting evidence to each paragraph • Add detail to each piece of supporting evidence • Design intro and conclusion

8. Include detail in your body paragraphs • Each detail should help create a picture for the reader. • “In the winter she sewed night after night, endlessly, begging cast-off clothing from relatives, ripping apart coats, dresses, blouses and trousers to remake them to fit her four daughters and son.”

9. Body Paragraphs Step 3 pg. 54, 97-105

10. Which type of paragraph order works best for your essay? Take a look at pp. 98-103

11. How to structure the essay • Different aspects of the experience • Results of the experience • Steps taken throughout the experience • Different lessons learned because of the experience • Examples building an understanding of the experience • Etc.

12. Detail Step 4

13. Adding vivid descriptions • It’s good to have personal examples within each paragraph to help illustrate your main point within that paragraph. • Readers want to see and hear and feel events; you present an accurate picture of each event.

14. Organization Step 5 pp. 136, 120-121

15. Maintain Clear Verb Tense • Do not use unnecessary tense shifts. • If you shift from past to present, do so intentionally and to create a specific effect. • You can organize the essay in chronological order. • You can move from general information to being more specific or least important to most important. • Space order: Ex. When describing a house, describe from outside to inside or bottom to top.

16. Transitions Step 6 pg. 106

17. Intro and Conclusion • View pp. 51-53 • Which type of introduction works best for your essay? • View pp. 54-55 • Which type of conclusion works best for your essay?

18. Types of Introductions • Anecdote: Brief narrative drawn from current events, history, or your personal experience • Analogy and Comparison: Gets readers to connect to a topic they might otherwise be unfamiliar with • Dialogue/Quotation: Must be relevant, but can illustrate a particular attitude about your topic • Facts and Statistics: this is mostly for argumentative essays • Irony or Humor: this signals to the reader that the essay is going to be entertaining and may contain some unexpected illustrations • Short Generalization: Basically background information about your topic • Startling Claim: should be factual and unsettling • Strong Proposition: mostly for persuasive essays • Rhetorical Question: effective if applied directly to the topic

19. Intros to Avoid • Apology • “I am a high school student and do not consider myself an expert on essay writing, but I’m going to try this anyway.” • Complaint • “I’d rather write about a topic of my own choice than the that is assigned, but here it goes.” • Webster’s Dictionary • “Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines perseverance as…” • Platitude:a trite, meaningless, biased, or prosaic statement, often presented as if it were significant and original. • “America is the land of opportunity, and no one knows that better than Martha Stewart.” • Reference to Title • “As you can see from my title, this essay is about why I can contribute to your university.”

20. Conclusions

21. Varying Sentence Structure and Length • Having no variety to your sentence structure makes for a boring read, even for the most interesting of topics. • Utilize the structure handout to determine what you need to do with your sentences within each paragraph.