ENG 1020:  Essay 1:  Memoir/Narrative (A Remembered Event)



Think about your own life and your own identity.  How have you come to view yourself?  What specific life experiences have shaped the person that you have come to be today?  What have been some difficult moments or sources of conflict? How have you overcome them and been changed as a result?

Your first major assignment is to write a story (creative non-fiction) about an important or significant event in your life from which you learned an important “lesson” about yourself, life, other people, or the world around you. Your purpose is to recall and then use specific examples that recreate this memory and show why it is so important to you. Avoid generalizations and conclusions about the event.  Do not summarize.  Avoid “telling” the reader what happened.  Your purpose is to “show” them the events of that day.  What you don’t want to do, for example, is something like this:   “I had a lot of fun—the event changed my life.” Be sure to focus on some main idea, point, or discovery.  What did you learn about yourself as a result of the experience? About life? About other people (human nature)?  Your place in the world? A remembering essay should clearly answer the question “So what?” or “What’s the Point?” This assignment is designed for you to remember experiences so that you can understand yourself and your world. The point is not to write fiction, but to practice drawing on your memories and to write vividly enough about them so that you and others can discover and learn. 

Using narration and description as you primary patterns of development, write an essay of 4 FULL pages up to 6  FULL pages, double-spaced.  Your remembered event and resulting “discovery” should attempt to illustrate one of the following words or phrases:  hope, wisdom, freedom, loss, misery, loneliness, addiction, desperation, greed, lust, prejudice, the high price of success or failure, the blues (musical or otherwise), or saying goodbye.  Make use of figurative language and expressions.  Define this term through the use of vivid word pictures using similes, metaphors, and analogies in relating your story. 

As you begin writing, assume that your audience is a best friend and that you hope to publish this story in a literary journal. Let your writing recreate the experience vividly enough so that your readers can see the main idea that you wish to convey. Show your readers the event so that they can picture it in their own minds. Use your senses in recreating it. Are there certain sounds, smells, and sights that you remember? Describe them to your reader so that they can hear, smell, and see the event. Use dialogue and physical details to recreate it, so that the reader feels like they are there with you, experiencing what you experienced. 

For specific techniques for you to use while writing your essay please refer to the Techniques for Observing and Remembering from your class notes . You do not have to use all of these techniques.  However, of these techniques the most important are:
•Discovering and focusing on a main idea
•Creating specific scenes set in time and space
•Using detailed observation of people, places, and events.

You should also refer to your notes on  "Showing vs. Telling".

Normally, you write this essay in the first person, using I or we throughout the narrative. Although you may write in present or past tense, be sure you maintain the tense you begin with throughout your essay.  To lend immeidacy to the event, retell it in the present tense, as if it were happening now. Finally, you may choose straightforward chronological order, or you may begin near the end and use a flashback to tell the beginning of the story (This would, however, require a very delicate handling of verb tenses). 

Format 
Your essay should have a title. It should also be typed, double spaced, with one-inch margins all around, Times New Roman Font, & 12 pt.  Refer to your handbook, Rules for Writers for questions about format. 

Please see Harmon's Hall of Fame for example student essays.

NOTE:  Keep all planning work, brainstorming, freewriting, clustering, peer critiques, reflections and versions of the essay to hand in with the final version of the essay. 

Your grade for this essay will be determined as follows: 

Total Possible Points:  40/


Final Draft, evaluated on the following criteria:

Focus (11 points): Does essay have a clear purpose? Make a discovery? 
Show why the memories are important?

Development (11 points):  Are there detailed observations of people and events? Does the writer avoid a summarization (“showing,” not “telling”)? Does the writer create specific scenes set in time and space? Note changes, contrasts, and conflicts? Reveal the narrator's yearning/desire?

Organization (11 points):  Does writer note changes between past events, people, or places and the present? Do ideas and paragraphs proceed in logical and apparent sequence or pattern? Does writer use sufficient audience cues to let the reader know what has been discussed, what is being discussed, or what will be discussed?  Does writer use attention-getting title and lead-in, paragraph hooks, transitional words and phrases?  Does writer guide the reader from beginning to end?

Style (4 points):  Is language clear direct and readable? Are sentences clear, concise, and easily read by intended audience? Is word choice appropriate for audience? Do sentences reveal and sustain appropriate voice and tone? 

Mechanics (3 points):  Are there obvious errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar? Are there patterns of error?

NO INVENTION WORK (-3 POINTS)

NO 1ST DRAFT ON DUE DATE (-3 POINTS)

NO PEER CRITIQUE (-3 POINTS)

NO PROCESS=NO GRADE 

Grading scale:

A 36-40
B 32-35
C 28-31
D 24-27
F    0-23