Write a non-fiction rough draft story about an event in your life (tennis tournament, basketball tournament, etc.).
Here are some ideas for personal story:
- An important announcement your friend, sibling, or parent made that changed your life
- The moment you learned a critical lesson about yourself, people, emotions, school, and so on
- Something you did that required courage; at first you were full of doubts, but you overcame them
- A game or sporting event that was a close win or loss for you or your team
- An argument or other confrontation that you had with another person, and its results
Write about your …see above to choose……… using a simple plot. Your true story should try to achieve some kind of purpose, such as moving the reader emotionally. Your assignment should also have a narrow enough focus that you can tell the entire story in under 1,000 words but more than 600 words.
Your story should include the following elements:
- An exposition, rising action, a climax, and a conclusion
- Careful pacing that guides the reader from one event to the next
- Transitions to signal shifts in time, mood, and topic
Ask yourself these questions as you revise:
- Does my exposition give the reader enough information to understand what’s going on? Do I make it clear who all the people in the story are? Do I describe the setting vividly? Do I provide enough background?
- Does my rising action increase the tension? Am I sure that all the tension builds toward a climax?
- Does the climax solve the central problem in the story in a satisfying way?
- Do the falling action and conclusion show what happens after the climax? Do they avoid bringing in any new conflicts?
- Does my pacing fit the action of the scene? Do my transitions signal changes in pacing?