The Darkest Day in my Young Life

Assignment Content
Submit your 1,000-word final draft of the narrative essay in Word. Remember to DOUBLE-SPACE and follow the standard format: Name, date, and course in upper-left-hand corner followed by a title centered on the page. The document MUST BE in WORD or I cannot grade it.
personal narrative about an event in your life that will be engaging to your audience (your classmates and me) and that will convey the significance of the event. Tell your story vividly and dramatically. The drafting process entails a polished first draft, and after I review it and return it to you, you can then submit a final draft.
Topics: The possibilities are endless. The event does not have to be highly dramatic to be told dramatically. It does not have to be earth-shattering to be interesting or significant. It just has to be told well, and it needs to convey a sense of why the event is important to you. What makes for a well-told story? In this case, it fulfills the criteria listed below.
Criteria:
1) A well-told story. This is usually accomplished through elements like suspense, humor, and dialogue. Tell a STORY, not a SERMON.
2) CONFLICT.
3) A vivid presentation of places and people. Help us, your audience, relive your story through vivid description that draws upon the five senses. But you have to be selective and figure out which details are important to get across your meaning. In this essay, it is more important to SHOW than to TELL what happened.
4) An indication of the event’s significance in a THESIS (the MAIN POINT). This is often the hardest part of the assignment. After reading the essay, your audience should understand WHY the story was worth telling in the first place. You may not even know yourself until after you begin writing about it. The story must somehow be bigger than its topic. For example, a story about a writer’s parents’ divorce might become an essay about loss or disappointment. It’s through the larger picture that your audience can relate to what you are describing even though they may never have experienced the same thing themselves.
5) Awareness of the complexities and ambiguities in life. Keep it real.
The worst way, however, to convey the significance of the event to your audience is to TELL them what the meaning is, as noted in #3 above. We will understand the significance of your story when you help us RELIVE the moment through seeing and feeling what you saw and felt. Help us see the movie of the event through attention to detail.
This means that the story needs to be FOCUSED. Don’t tell us your life story. Pick a SINGLE EVENT, a MOMENT in time, and get it moving in the first paragraph. The very first sentence should start the story; do not open with a general introduction.
Additional criteria: These are the criteria described in the syllabus and that apply to all of the essay assignments this semester: 1) a clear central idea, 2) development, 3) organization, 4) an awareness of audience, 5) and mechanics.