Introduction to the book project
In this project what we did was write a personal narrative about anything that has happened to us in our life that stands out. Good or bad, happy or sad, funny or scary. What I chose to write about was the time where I convinced my friends that our elementary school was haunted and ended up taking holy water from my church to "bless the school".
Project Launch
The day this project was launched, all the students walked into the class rooms surprised by the open wall. We were sat in theater style and told to write as if we had just finished our first day of internships during junior year. We were sat there for a while writing when things turned hectic, Ms. Soler launched her shoe and Dr. P was running around in neon in work out gear. Then, we were asked to write about what just happened in class. It was later on announced that we would be walking over the shopping center where the Vons is to be observing and interviewing people. I observed this older looking man with white hair and a green jacket. He had a cart that was filled to the brim, I noticed taco seasoning, ramen noodles, and bananas. He looked like he wasn't having the best day, due to his noticeable frown. These silly little exercises would help us write our personal narratives in the near future.
Base Line Essay
For our "baseline essay" we were told to write a narrative about an event in our life that was important to us in any way. The purpose of this was to warm us up for our final drafts. What I decided to write about was, the day my dream of dancing in a Disneyland parade came true. I knew from the start that narrative is a very descriptive piece of writing, which I feel I did well in my baseline essay. I do wish that I would have included the downs that happened during the story and not only the up. Adding the more sad parts, I feel would have helped the reader connect.
How I Won the Right to the Streets of Memphis
We read a short story called "How I won the Right to the Streets of Memphis" which was about a kid who's mom was making him go get groceries, but the kid kept on getting beat up. The kid didn't want to keep getting beat up so he told his mother he didn't want to go outside for groceries anymore. The mother handed him a stick and more money and forced him to go get groceries. The boys made an attempt to beat up the kid but he ended up defending himself and hitting the boys with the stick.
In class we were split off into little small groups so that we could make a scene using the piece of writing. The purpose of this was to see how writing makes you picture things. My group got the scene where the mother hands him the stick and tells him not to come back unless he gets the groceries. To complete these scenes we just wore costumes that would resemble the characters and used props to enhance the dialogue.
In class we were split off into little small groups so that we could make a scene using the piece of writing. The purpose of this was to see how writing makes you picture things. My group got the scene where the mother hands him the stick and tells him not to come back unless he gets the groceries. To complete these scenes we just wore costumes that would resemble the characters and used props to enhance the dialogue.
My initial story ideas
My initial story ideas seemed to be a lot of stories that were really short but really funny. I had written down things like the time my brother burnt my stuffed penguin on accident and how I broke my ring fingers ( at different times) which are stories that are very important to me, but way too short for a good narrative piece to be written about them. I am really glad I chose the topic I wrote about because it was a funny story, many people could enjoy it, and it was long enough to write a good piece.
Hero's journey
I used the hero's journey as a reference on what the order of my narrative should be. It helped me get my story straight and organized. I don't think its a necessary step but it is really interesting to see and could help you get organized.
Shell description
Let me tell you we described shells a lot, A LOT. It was helpful with our descriptions in our narrative pieces. all the descriptions we used for our shells we applied to our narratives.
Final draft
My final draft took a while to complete, I got stuck a couple of times but I think that in the end I got a really great piece of writing. At the start I was having trouble with the Introduction I didn't know what would be a good hook to interest the reader. When I finally sorted that out, the body of the story came to me a lot more naturally and It was done very well, very quickly. The conclusion was s struggle I didn't know what to say to close off the story with out leaving it choppy. Believe it or not it took me about 3 days to find conclusion that I liked. I am actually very proud of what I wrote and hope to write more like this in the future.
Exhibition
Exhibition for this project was small, we had a few middle schoolers show up and I hope they enjoyed themselves. For me personally a golden moment was when one of the 7th graders turned around and told one of their friends that my piece was really good. This was golden because I've always been really insecure about people not liking my writing. It was great to know from a person outside of my class room that my piece was good.