SDSU Personal Narrative Reflections on the Human Condition Essay

Directions:
For your next project, you will be writing a personal narrative. Your personal narrative will
recount one event or experience in your life in detail. As the name implies, this kind of writing
involves narration—basically, you are telling your readers a story. To get you started on working
with this genre of writing, there are several resources available on Canvas to review. These
include a breakdown of the elements of this genre via four examples of personal narrative
writing.   
 

After you’ve read these texts, I’d like you to pick one and respond to it in a 2 page double-
spaced response, thinking about the story’s structure and some of its individual elements (feel
free to reference the “Elements of Narrative” handout). Here are some questions to consider in
your response:
 

• What do we know about the narrator? How do we know this information?
• How would you describe the central conflict of this narrative? Is there an external
conflict, or is the conflict more internal?
• Does this story follow the typical structure we usually see with storytelling
(introduction?complications?climax?conclusion), or does it follow some other
structure?
• What would you see as the overall theme of the story? What is the meaning or general
idea the writer wants you to take away from their story?
• Why do you think the writer chose to tell their story in this way? How were you as the
reader affected by their storytelling methods? Which of these tactics might you want to
emulate when you write your own narrative?