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Norton Ch 6: Literacy Narratives
A narrative can be over any significant event.
A literacy narrative is the writer’s remembrance of learning to read or write or to value one or the other.
Key features:
Well told story with a situation needing resolved = TENSION
Vivid detail: vivid mental images = think television or movie. The reader can see it, feel it, smell it, taste it.
Significance: why this scene, this story matters, to the writer and to the reader: what do you take away?
Guide to Writing:
Topic: focus on a single event: first time you met your true love, some event that profoundly changed your life,
whether good or bad.
Make a list of possible topics, do prewriting activities on those that are most appealing and see where you really get
caught up: do that topic.
Purpose: why this topic, why this essay? How do these choices shape the project?
Audience: who are you writing it for? Yourself? The instructor? Family or friends? A wider audience?
Stance: what’s your attitude towards your topic? Nostalgic? Regretful? Happy? Angry? Bitter?
Generate your ideas: did you do some prewriting activities when you were singling out your topic?
Use these to generate additional ideas about the topic.
Describe the setting.
Describe the participants.
Dialogue? Not necessarily necessary, but maybe, if it feels right.
What happened? Got the place. Got the people. Now tell what happened.
Why does this matter? Why was it important? What’s the lesson?
If it doesn’t resonate, doesn’t have some tension to it, then it has no purpose. We NEED purpose.
Thought you were through didn’t you? All that work, filled some pages. And it’s not even the first draft? Huh?
Outline the event. Play with how you want to tell the story.
Straight chronological order?
Ending first, then backtrack?
Start in the middle?
SO MANY WAYS to tell a story.
First Draft:
Once you’ve got an outline, a clear plan, ducks in a row, NOW you write the first draft.
Maybe you draft the beginning and the ending FIRST, then go back and fill in the middle.
When you write, you are thinking about your reader, not yourself.
Title Last:
Got to have a catchy, interesting title.
You can have interim titles, working titles for yourself, but when you’re done and ready to give it to the reader, it
needs a title that evokes the reader’s interest, draws him in.
Fixing it up pretty:
Still ain’t done. Get somebody to read it, find out where it doesn’t flow, and go back and fix it.
Read it aloud. If you hitch up in the reading, you need to smooth the words out.
Then, fix the grammar leaks.
Narration as a strategy:
Narration, done well, can support most kinds of writing. We like stories, so we use them to convince people our ideas
are right.
Three main things about narration as a strategy: put them in clear sequence, include pertinent details, and make sure
it is appropriate to the material at hand.