Personal Narrative

Day 3 - Dialogue, Pacing, Description

Narrative TechniquesNarrative technique provide deeper meaning for the reader and help the reader to use imagination to visualize situations. They are used to develop experiences, events, or characters.

Today we will focus on:

Dialogue

Pacing

Description

Dialogue - Goal

Learning Target - I can use dialogue in a story to help develop the characters.

Success Criteria - I will prove this by using the story of Jack & Jill and write dialogue that shows a part of the characters personality that is not apart of the original story.

Essential Question (1 of 3)

What is the purpose of dialogue in a story? How do you correctly punctuate dialogue?

DialogueDialogue is most easily defined as a “conversation of two or more people.” However, dialogue can also exist in scenes when a character is alone and talking to himself, or if only one of the characters present is speaking.

Helpful hint for success: Never include all of the dialogue.  Only include the dialogue that helps you tell your story or make your point.

Example:

Bob asks, “Jim, what are you doing here?”

Jim replied, “I’ve come to steal your pig.”

What dialogue is NOT:

Dialogue is NOT an unrelated conversation between characters.

Dialogue is NOT pointless.

Dialogue

Dialogue

What dialogue IS:

Dialogue IS meant to move the story forward.

Dialogue IS meant to develop characters.

Dialogue IS meant to develop the events.

How to correctly punctuate dialogue:

Jim replied, “I’ve come to steal your pig.”

Dialogue

Jack & Jill Activity

Jack and Jill went up a hill

to fetch a pail of water;

Jack fell down and broke his crown

and Jill came tumbling after.

With your elbow partner, do the Jack & Jill Dialogue Assignment

Jack & Jill Activity

Pacing - Goal

Learning Target - I can identify the effect of fast and slow pacing in writing.

Success Criteria - I will prove this by using both fast and slow pacing in my writing.

Essential Question (2 of 3)

What is the purpose of fast-paced writing? What is the purpose of slow-paced writing?

Pacing

Pacing - the movement of your story. Pacing techniques moves the reader quickly or slowly through specific sections of text.

Fast - Shorter sentences. Exclamation points.

Slow - Longer sentences. Elaborate details.

Pacing - Fast

Click. Click. Va-rooom! The car started. Down the road he went. 60. 70. 80 miles per hour! Jim wanted out. He wanted out bad. His judgment was being clouded by the thought of freedom. Zoom! Good-bye house. Good-bye job. Good-bye old life of Jim.

Pacing - Slow

It was a beautiful winter day outside. Snowflakes floated to the ground making a thin layer of hope for Jim’s daughters. Hope that school would be cancelled, or at the very least delayed. Jim enjoyed his cup of coffee and read the morning paper. “Yes,” he said aloud, “a beautiful day.”

It is a requirement that your personal narrative have both types of pacing. Looking at your rough draft from yesterday, take the next couple of minutes to identify a place that you can use fast pacing (label FP) and a place that you can use slow pacing (label SP).

Pacing - Your turn!

Description - Goal

Learning Target - I understand what it takes to write an effective setting description.

Success Criteria - I will prove this by using the five senses to write a setting description for my personal narrative.

Essential Question (3 of 3)

What does it take to write an effective setting description?

I notice that when it’s going badly, I will, for instance, take out Charlotte’s Web. I will read the barn scene - a description. And what I say to you is, “This is the way words are supposed to go together. This is the way you set up a scene.” I think it’s inspiration, and I think you learn from it.”

- Patricia MacLachlan (author of Sarah, Plain and Tall)

Your job

•Listen to the following example.

•You are required to have a description that includes some or all the 5 senses in your personal narrative.

Description5 Senses:

Taste

Touch

Sight

Sound

Smell

Description - Charlotte’s Web

The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell - as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world. It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope. And whenever

the cat was given a fish-head to eat, the barn would smell of fish. But mostly it smelled of hay, for there was always hay being pitched down to the cows and horses and the sheep.

The barn was pleasantly warm in winter when the animals spent most of their time indoors, and it was pleasantly cool in summer when the big door stood wide open to the breeze. The barn had stalls on the main floor for the work horses, tie-ups on the main floor for the cows, a sheepfold down below for the sheep, a pig pen down

below for Wilbur, and it was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitch forks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps. It was the kind of barn that swallows like to build their nests in. It was the kind of barn that children like to play in.

Your turn!

Step 1) Think of the setting in your “one” personal narrative experience. Close your eyes, picture the setting.

Step 2) In your Writing Notebook, draw your setting (to the best of your ability - don’t worry about the art)

Step 3) - Add description to your rough draft!