write a three page essay with the instructions given below:

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At every stage of our lives, we’re able to look back and identify experiences that shape our lives. This essay assignment offers a chance to think back to one of those experiences and explore its significance by writing about it. Specifically, you will write about an incident that happened to you and changed you in some significant way. You may or may not have understood the change until much later. In your essay, you will reflect on the change as well as the experience itself. You will “mine the past to shed light on the present” (Purdue University Online Writing Lab).

The question you’ll answer is, “How has this experience changed me?”
You’re answering the question for yourself. Of course, your instructor and classmates will also read it.
The goals are (1) to decide on a single experience you want to write about (maybe by trying out two or three to see which one is most interesting to you), (2) to remember as much about that experience as you can, and (3) to think about what significant change this experience caused and then to describe/narratie that change in writing

Purpose and Learning Objectives

This creative nonfiction assignment blends memoir and personal essay writing techniques. You will use the essay to draw your readers into your unique life and experience. Additionally, your self-exploration and search for understanding will invite your readers to search out meaning in their own lives. Recall what you learned in the introduction to creative nonfiction, “As readers and writers we should be able to see a connection between our own and another person’s story. The role of the ‘I’…is that of someone inviting us into his or her world, vision, and experiences” (1). As you narrate your story, you will use vivid imagery, tension/conflict, and dialogue. For example, you will use concrete, sensory details to “hook” and engage your readers.

Minimum Requirements

  • 750 – 1,000 words (approx. 3-4 pages)
  • A focused topic. Because of the brevity of this essay, you must limit your narrative to the essentials. For example, if you’re describing a crime, you don’t have the space to share all of the details of the crime: the police visit, the neighbor’s sympathy, etc. Choose your focus carefully, and use your small group as a resource. Ask your peers to comment on the scope of your essay. Is it too broad?
  • A topic that includes tension. Tension always undergirds a good story. For example, your essay might include a conflict between competing forces like trust vs. betrayal.
  • An interesting and informative title
  • An opening sentence that creates “information hunger” or solicits interest
  • MLA format (with in-text citations and a works cited page if you use secondary sources)
  • An introductory paragraph that includes a thesis toward the end of this first paragraph. The thesis includes your angle/stance on the topic.
  • At least three body or developmental paragraphs. Each developmental paragraph should contain a topic sentence and should develop the thesis in some way.
  • Vivid supporting details that communicate meaning with “showing” facts. Use sensory details; for example, what did you smell, hear, or feel? Avoid vagueness. Show. Don’t tell.
  • The inclusion of dialogue that is punctuated correctly. Remember to change paragraphs each time the speaker changes.
  • The use of a unique and engaging writing voice that suits your personality and your story.
  • A concluding paragraph that reinforces the change that occurred within you. The conclusion should provide a memorable end to the essay. Avoid introducing a new topic in your conclusion.

Grading and Rubric

I will use the list of minimum requirements to grade your essay. Additionally, as always, any final draft of a course essay should show reasonable attention to writing clarity. Use correct grammar and mechanics.

Tips for writing about personal experience:

  1. Avoid deeply personal or traumatic experiences, no matter how strong the pull to write about them. If you have experiences that are still emotionally strong, consider keeping a journal or other form of private writing to help you process and understand them more fully. Avoid choosing experiences which happened too recently for you to have processed them.
  2. Avoid travelogues or stringing together multiple experiences or events. All our experiences are linked and woven together in many ways. This reality makes it challenging to single out a primary event for focus. Nevertheless, as a writer, you will need to sort through the fabric that connects your focus event so that the reader is allowed to stay focused on the main event.
  3. Use the descriptive writing strategies you learned in this lesson. Effective narratives come to life through concrete, sensory details. Don’t TELL the reader about your experience; SHOW the experience by putting the reader into the event with sensory details. Free-writing will be a useful pre-writing strategy to help you identify and uncover fresh and relevant sensory details.
  4. Use pre-writing to recreate and re-experience the event. Write through it as completely as possible. Even though you will use the first person pronoun (“I”), try to imagine the experience as if you were observing it in your mind’s eye. This will help you re-see it and re-create it with sensory details for the reader who has never experienced the event.
  5. Use dialogue and other “story” techniques so that the reader can have a greater sense of character. While you are not writing a short story or fiction, personal narrative share with stories a sense of people (characters) doing things (plot). Try not to invent details, but as you write through the experience, think of it as a story.
  6. As you work through your pre-writings and early drafts, be open to discovering your purpose or point for the essay. Often if not most of the time, we have to complete a personal experience narrative in order to discover what meaning or point we want to make in relating our past experience. This is very normal, so take advantage of this process. Allow yourself to write freely through the experience in your initial writings. As you begin to shape the narrative, you can determine your point: how the experience changed you. Once you discover what your precise purpose will be, you will have a guide for shaping and revising your essay.
  7. Your point or purpose in writing does not have to be a great moral lesson or Truth. Allow your focus and purpose to grow from what you learned about yourself from the experience, no matter how small or personal that understanding might be. Life is built in little steps and starts. Not all experiences lead to grand “ah ha” moments. Our best memories and moments usually result in quiet understandings.
  8. Keep your focus narrow. The essay will only be about 3-4 pages in length. Choose a small experience that you can relive in detail. Don’t go for the “big moment” that would require too much background and detail.
  9. You have a variety of organizational patterns available to you. For example, you can organize your body paragraphs by time (what happened in chronological order, reverse chronological order [the ending of the memory comes first], or as a flashback [the essay begins in the present and then moves to the past]). You can organize by space: a story about each different room in a house, for example. You can organize other ways: a list of meanings a thing had for you, with a “mini story” about each one, for instance. The options are many. Use what works in the context of your topic and essay.