Recall, retell, and analyze a significant experience in your life. Carefully choose a sequence of events that 1) supports a specific thesis and 2) helps you fulfill your rhetorical purpose regarding a specific audience.
Invention
Keep in mind as you brainstorm/draft:
--Scope: You cannot explain your entire high school experience or history as a baseball player in one brief essay. Choose one particular memory as a starting point.
--You will want to be especially strategic in deciding which features of the experience (which details, characters, settings, and dialogue) you want to emphasize and which ones you should ignore if you are to achieve your desired purpose.
--You may want to conduct some naturalistic research (e.g., interviewing a friend or family member about a specific memory, observing a particular environment, etc.). This research will allow you to understand a moment from someone else’s perspective or look more closely at a space or behavior.
--You should have a purpose in mind as you write your own memoir: to argue a point, to create a mood (maybe entertain), to instruct, inform, explain, or to provide cultural or philosophical commentary, blame, praise, and so forth.
--Your memoir should be tailored for a specific audience—think about who could learn something from your experience.
Expectations
A successful personal narrative will:
1. Focus on a significant experience;
2. Use ample sensory details;
3. Include dialogue that reveals information about your characters;
4. Employ transitions that will help your reader follow your narrative and/or logic;
5. Showcase a personal narrative voice (e.g., use a variety of sentence patterns and lengths, don’t sound like you come from the bureau of statistics, and so on); and
6. Provide reflection and analysis in order to help your audience understand the significance of the experience.
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