David Stein
ENC 2135
14 July 2019
Reflection on Narrative
When choosing a topic, I had to pick one that I was greatly familiarized with. This led me to Vacation Bible School. I knew that this would be a perfect match because of the fact that I had many enjoyable memories that had been engraved into my head. Now, having these memories and relaying them into a narrative story certainly contained its fair share of hurdles. Determining what to mention and what not to mention was tough. Also learning how to write with dialogue in a story compared to an essay was also tricky. Breaking that habit that had been drilled into my head since elementary school is a strange feeling. It’s as though I’m going against my AP literature and AP language lessons in a way. Nevertheless, adapting to the situation was not too bad; of course this was after my conference with Mat.
Now that the habit between narratives and essays had been broken it was time to relay the memories and stories from my head onto the paper. In this first draft, I highlighted key parts of each day. I continued like this until the end which showed my final outlook on VBS. As Mat said, this was a great essay, however a lesser narrative. This meant that I had work to do.
To start, I needed to take the stories I described and actually discuss the events that took place though conversations with the kids; this means the inclusion of dialogue. I would also need to lower the events covered to create a more in depth story. Trying to convey too much in the story would become overwhelming. Also, I had to narrow down specific events and go into detail about what transpired. In doing this I would be creating a much better personal narrative.
Following the guidance of Mat and gaining better knowledge of narratives I was able to produce a much more detailed and comprehensive paper. Trying to change the way I write from an essay format to a personal story was not easy, definitely took some critiquing, and some extra work however it will make the final draft that much better.
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