Personal Narrative Characteristics

After reading your personal narrative drafts, I want to review how writers choose to develop topics that are valuable or meaningful.  In other words, consider a story’s potential and why to tell that particular story.  

To do this, answer these questions:

• 

  Make sure you have all
  these characteristics
  in your personal narrative

  Which generating ideas do I have the most to say about?
• What mattered the most to me?
• Which story creates vivid images?

Let me show you how I did this with my drafts.

Which generating ideas do I have the most to say about?

• Playing basketball with Teresa - shirt/embarrassing moment
• Frank - my first love
• Richard - gingerbread houses

What mattered the most to me? Or why does this story matter?

• Frank
• Basketball - shirt/embarrassing moment

What did I learn/How did I grow from this experience? Which creates vivid images?

• Basketball - shirt/embarrassing moment

Now, I am ready to write my draft of my small moment about playing basketball with Teresa and loosing my shirt. Oh, how embarrassing!