Telling a story

For some reasons, telling a story is not easy for many people. They tend to have nothing about what they want to say, how they construct the story smoothly and why they have to do that.

On Wednesday, we’ll have an in-class narrative essay that some of you might have not written before. First of all, I would say that it is not too hard for you to write, but you have to make sure that your essay is not wordy, not messy, and not out of topic. Second, I’ll share with you some tips that I gained from learning writing narrative essay last semester.

How can we do that?

• Outlining: For me, it is the most important step of writing process to organize your ideas, select which ideas are appropriate to put in the essay and which ideas are not necessary. Don’t forger to include your thesis.
• Learn and practice using useful phrases used in narrative essay (Blackboard and your textbook are the wonderful resources, don’t hesitate to take advantage of them). Use these phrases as much as you can. It’s worthy.
• Pre-writing: This type of writing is help you to brainstorm and have an overview about your essay. It can be messy. You can create charts, diagram, free writing, etc. to help you easily imagine what you are going to write and make the writing process more smoothly.
• Start to write: Don’t panic! You have time to write your essay, and you can even use your textbook. Professor and I will stay around to assist you if you have any problems. Just stay focused on your essay.

Regarding the topic, if you don’t have any ideas about it, try to create something. Please focus on the key words. They will help you to understand the topic and guide you to go on the right way.

Please re-read about narrative essay unit in your textbook. It is well-explained and clearly demonstrated with examples and the student’s model essay.

List of elements always needed for a narrative essay:

• Thesis: A clear statement introducing the topic and covering the whole main idea you want to share in your story.
• Characters: It is boring if the story doesn’t have any names of people. Descriptive words are needed to describe and can evoke some emotions/feelings from the readers.
• Climax: A story never be bland if it has a climax. The climax will help the readers remember your essay.
• Dialogue: The story will be more demonstrative if it includes some conversations. However, you cannot use dialogue too many times.

These are my tips that I gained from last semester. They may not be enough, but I hope they will be helpful for you. Try your best on the essay on Wednesday. Good luck!

Ammie.