Narrative Essays

Jan PerrySouthwest High SchoolEnglish Language Arts

Characteristics• The narration appears in the first-person point of

view.• It tells a factual story of the writer’s experiences.• It employs elements of the short story. Dialogue

appears occasionally. Good description, which tantalizes the senses, helps the reader identify with the writer’s experiences.

• It follows a chronological order.

Characteristics• The writer shows and does not tell about the

festive activities. For instance, the reader is not told that the dishes were tasty but sees the dishes and can imagine the taste. The writer does not tell the reader he is full, only that his stomach screams.

• The paragraphs change when the topics change or, in the case of dialogue, when the speakers change.

Characteristics• The paragraphs do not include topic

sentences, nor does the paper include a thesis sentence.

• A theme, however, does emerge, particularly in the final paragraph in which the writer shares his thoughts about the festive occasion.

DimplesD = DialogueI = ImageryM = MetaphorP = PersonificationL = Literary Device from Professor BookE = Exaggeration S = Simile

Dialogue• provide information about action and setting• show the personalities and voices of

characters or real people• advance the plot or story

Dialogue Guidelines• Use slang, idioms, and other varieties of language to

make fictional dialogue sound like real conversation.• Italicize foreign words. Define words in next sentence in

context.• Use speakers’ tags—such as he whined and she answered

—or stage directions to show who is speaking and how the words sound. Tags are not needed when it is clear who is speaking.

• Put quotation marks around a character’s exact words. Place commas and end marks inside quotation marks.

• Begin a new paragraph each time the speaker changes.

Imagery• When you write, use sensory words to help

you describe details that appeal to the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

Sight Sound Touch Tasteand Smell

enchantingdrabtoweringganglingleanscrawny

lamentsmashbleatbabbletrumpetwhisper

sleekchillysludgyclammydanksodden

brinysaccharineredolentacidicfruitypiquant

Metaphorsa figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.

From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Metaphor ExampleDreams by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreamsFor when dreams go

Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

Personification1. The act of personifying. 2. A person or thing typifying a certain quality or idea; an

embodiment or exemplification: "He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative" (Ralph Ellison).

3. A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form, as in Hunger sat shivering on the road or Flowers danced about the lawn. Also called prosopopeia.

4. Artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person.

Personification Example

The Sky is LowEmily Dickinson

The sky is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day How some one treated him; Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem.

Literary DeviceHow To Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster – 27 chapters! Take your pick of a literary device or technique

ExaggerationHyperbole:A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.

SimileA figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in "How like the winter hath my absence been" or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life" (Shakespeare).