4. Characterize & Describe - Narrative 2

Lesson Set D: Write to Characterize & Describe

Lesson 16: Guidelines for Revision

You are continuing to work towards a new version of your first draft Personal Narrative paper, now as Narrative Draft 2, which is the revision draft. Lesson Sets B and C helped you to reduce needless words and to turn weak verbs into action. You spent some time applying those revisions to your paper. The result should have been a slightly shorter paper. Now you will be adding new things to your story that will add flavor and color and interest to your account.

Revision: To revise is to "see again," to look at your draft with "new eyes." The best way to learn to write is to write and re-write and re-write again.

This lesson is an overview of revision. You will apply these guidelines during Lab 4: Write Narrative 2. Consider carefully the concept of revision, however, before you add dialogue and sensory details. Then, when you are ready to do Lab 4, you will have these revision papers in hand to guide your work.

• E-Docs: 1. Revising Drafts, a webpage from The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2. Guidelines for Revision, and 3. Narrative Transition Words.

Enroll in the course to access all the important documents.

Narrative Transition Words

• Task: Print out the webpage, Revising Drafts, along with the two PDF documents just above, read through them, and add them to your Notebook. You will apply these principles through the next several lessons, but especially in Lab 4. Make a special note of the document Narrative Transition Words. Look for any of these in your Narrative Paper. Think about adding more in order to make the transitions of your story clear to your reader.

Lesson 17: Dialogue

Dialogue is an important part of action. Any narrative containing dialogue is more interesting than the same thing without. Direct dialogue also makes any character more personal and real to the reader.

• E-Docs: 1. Using Dialogue Effectively, a webpage by Dr. Kristi Siegel of Mount Mary College, and 2. Dialogue, by Tameri Guide for Writers.


• Task: You will add dialogue to your Narrative Paper in Lab 4. Print out and study carefully the E-Docs listed above. Then, study the dialogue in any book you have to know how dialogue is punctuated and paragraphed. Jot down on scratch paper different things the characters in your own narrative said. Select things that show the personality of the person speaking.

Lesson 19: Description & Imagery

Part of the work you will do on your Narrative 2 Draft is to add description of the setting(s) where your event took place, the places and the objects in them. You will see the terms "imagery" and "sensory details" used interchangeably, they mean basically the same thing, that is, words that allow the reader to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.

• E-Docs: 1. Sensory Details Chart, provided by © Holt, Rinehart and Winston, also, spend time perusing the following page: 2. Sensory Language (printing it is difficult). Then, from The Writing Conservatory, 3. Sensory Detail Chart, 4. Describing Settings, and 5. Vocabulary of the Senses, a document from the Garden Gove Unified School District.

Vocabulary of the Senses

• Task: Print out the E-Docs, read through them, and add them to your Notebook.

• Task: Write a list of each separate scene in which your narrative takes place. Some narratives take place entirely within one scene, others may move from one place to another. Then, for each scene, develop a description of that place in note form. Include descriptive words that could be used to show the full range of senses. Use the Sensory Detail Chart in E-Docs to assist you. Use a variety of sensory details that will convey a sense of the place and time of your story.

If you have a copy of Banish Boring Words (which you should have), you will find wonderful lists of words for sensory details and for the character description in the next lesson. Make good use of this book.
 

Lesson 18: Characterization

The part of Narrative that interests readers the most is real, living, fully developed human beings in the story line who face life's difficulties and come through them, winning in some way that affirms our common humanity. Your most important task as a writer is to make the characters in your narrative fully visible to your reader as three-dimensional people. Three dimensional means (1) their place and movement in the narrative PLUS (2) their view to the eye of an observor, that is, their outward description, and (3) their personality or inner character.

The Pre-Writing charts you used for Narrative 1 include a character page which you could print again and develop more fully for Narrative 2.

• E-Docs: 1. Writer's Digest: 11 Secrets to Writing an Effective Character Description, 2. Ink and Quills: The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Character Description (a very useful site with a chart you can download to help with your own narrative), and 3. Adding Character Description, from The Writing Conservatory.

Adding Character Description shows you exactly how to convey to your reader the essence of the people involved in your narrative.

From Mark Twain His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. There warn’t no color in his face, where his face showed… As for his clothes – just rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on t’other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor – an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.

• Task: Read through the website pages linked in the E-Docs. The "free worksheets" on Ink and Quill are for larger stories than your small narrative and are more than you need, but you can gain useful ideas from them. Add any print-outs, including Adding Character Description, to your notebook.


• Task: Write a list of each person or animal (or any other that would fit the category of "character") found in your narrative. Beneath each name, develop a full description of the character in note form - actions and movement in the narrative, outward appearance and mannerisms, and inner personality. Include descriptive words in your notes drawn from the various lists you have, including from Banish Boring Words.

Lesson 20: Figurative Language

Figurative writing includes such things as metaphors, personification, hyperbole, and other literary devices writers use to make their writing more colorful and descriptive.

• Task: Use the following webpages to learn how to use figurative language: Figurative Language and What Is Figurative Language. For your Narrative Paper, let's focus on similes, metaphors, and personification. You will add these in Lab 4. However, spend time going through the pages and exercises found here to learn all you can. Feel free to make use of any further figurative language in your narrative beyond what is required. However, never overdo the use of figurative language; a little goes a long way.

Lab 4: Write Narrative 2

• E-Doc: Narrative 2 Rubric w/ Explanations. Download and print it out. This document includes a blank rubric that your own editor can use to mark your writing.

Narrative 2 Rubrics

Note: As you work on your Narrative 2, do not think that you are writing a different paper. This is the same story you wrote in Narrative 1. You are simply revising with some effective improvements. Your final version of Narrative 2 must be more than 2 Pages double spaced, but no more than 4 pages at the very most. Somewhere under 3 pages is best. 

For this Lab will need your Narrative 1 Draft that you have been working on. You will need all the charts you have filled out and the notes you have taken for revising and reducing, for choosing better action verbs, for adding dialogue and description, for including sensory details, or imagery. Also, you should have your lists of good words to choose when writing.

Have the Narrative 2 Rubric in front of you, study it carefully so that you will know exactly how your Narrative 2 Draft will be marked.

• Write: Write Narrative 2. This is a process. Follow the Guidelines for Revision and go through your draft over and over. Check your draft against each point in the Rubric before you count it finished.

• Send: When you are finished, email your Narrative 2 to your editor as an attachment titled “Narrative 2."


• HOWEVER - ask your editor to mark as well all of your mistakes in grammar, puncutation, word usage, etc. These marks are NOT for any points in the Narrative 2 assignment. Rather, you will use them as you continue working towards Narrative 3. 

Note: If your Narrative 2 is satisfactory, your editor will mark it, add comments to the blank Rubric, and return it to you ready for Narrative 3.