Personal narratives
Personal narratives are a form of writing that recount and analyze personal life experiences, often aiming to reveal individual or universal truths. Primarily classified as creative nonfiction, these essays offer true accounts while employing various literary devices, such as point of view, imagery, and thematic elements, to evoke emotional responses and maintain reader engagement. Typically structured around a specific event, personal narratives may not follow the chronological order of occurrences; authors often rearrange events to enhance dramatic impact. A hallmark of personal narratives is the blend of storytelling with personal reflection, frequently presented in the first-person perspective, allowing readers to connect intimately with the author’s emotions and insights.
These narratives can serve multiple purposes, including educating, persuading, or simply sharing personal experiences with an audience. They are commonly assigned in educational settings, ranging from elementary school projects about summer vacations to college-level literacy narratives that require critical reflection on past reading and writing experiences. Additionally, personal narratives may incorporate research, enriching the storytelling with factual context, as seen in works like Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Ultimately, personal narratives offer a powerful means for authors to derive meaning from their experiences and foster connections with readers across diverse backgrounds.
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Personal narratives
Personal narratives are essays that relate and examine life experiences. Authors compose personal narratives to make their particular experiences public and often to convey an individual or universal truth about life. Personal narratives are often considered to be creative nonfiction, as they are mostly true accounts of events. Authors typically employ creative strategies when composing these essays to achieve a certain impact on an audience. Literary devices implemented can include point of view, voice, plot, imagery, characterization, and thematic development. These devices help authors appeal to the emotions of the reader and create a sense of tension or suspense within the narrative.
Overview
Personal narratives are often structured around a specific event. Authors usually describe this event in vivid detail, using imagery and “in-scene” writing to bring a reader into their story. It is not necessary to write the story in the order of its actual occurrence; authors of personal narratives may instead choose to shape the story’s plot in a way that increases dramatic effect. In some cases, authors may embellish or exaggerate their experiences in order to appeal to the emotions and interests of readers. Personal narratives often balance the recounting of an event with reflection on the author’s feelings concerning the event. They are often told in the first-person point of view and can implement both past and present tenses.
Writing a personal narrative is a way for an author to share his or her personal life with an audience and create meaning from these real-life experiences through the process of writing. In addition, authors may compose personal narratives with the objective of influencing an audience emotionally as well as persuading or educating them about a significant, shared aspect of life. The emotional and cognitive effects of a personal narrative on an audience are often heightened by the author’s skillful weaving of themes and subtle repetition of imagery. An author may also choose to augment the emotional effect of a personal narrative by using a unique narrative voice characterized by dialect features such as cadence, diction, and syntax.
In education, personal narratives are common writing assignments given to students. For example, as elementary school students are learning how to write in complete sentences, they may be assigned to write a personal narrative that gives an account of their summer vacation. High school students are frequently asked to write more sophisticated personal narratives that consciously employ literary devices. At the college level, freshman composition students are often given the task of writing a literacy narrative (a genre within the personal narrative) that asks them to reflect on their prior reading and writing experiences. Literacy narratives require students to use techniques of narrative as well as reflective critical-thinking skills. The college-admission essay is also a kind of personal narrative, used to illustrate applicants’ worldly wisdom gleaned through individual experiences.
A personal narrative may also include research, as in cases where an author blends personal experience with documented fact. For example, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2007) by Michael Pollan combines personal narrative with both informal and formal research to educate readers about food-production practices. Book-length personal narratives are often classified as memoirs.
Bibliography
Gelb, Alan. Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps: Crafting a Winning Personal Statement. 2nd ed. Berkeley: Ten Speed-Crown, 2013. Print.
Gornick, Vivian. The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative. New York: Farrar, 2001. Print.
Gutkind, Lee, and Hattie Fletcher, eds. True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine. Pittsburgh: In Fact, 2014. Print.
Lopate, Phillip, ed. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. 1994. New York: Anchor, 1997. Print.
Maines, Mary Jo, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett. Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2008. Print.
Nash, Robert J., and DeMethra LaSha Bradley. Me-Search and Re-Search: A Guide for Writing Scholarly Personal Narrative Manuscripts. Charlotte: Information Age, 2011. Print.
Smagorinsky, Peter, et al. Teaching Students to Write Personal Narratives. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2012. Print.
“Writing a Literacy Narrative.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing. Norton, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2014.