244

Another way to engage your reader is through your use of details and description. If the main goal of a narrative is to communicate an experience to a reader, then a writer needs to do everything in his or her power to convey the specific details that will clearly describe the characters, settings, and feelings you had. Remember that your audience is unfamiliar with the people, places, and objects in the story. You may know everything about your grandma: what she looks like and acts like, and what her house smells like, but your reader does not. You have to bring these details to life through your description.

Look at this excerpt from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Identify the details that Maya Angelou uses, especially words and phrases that communicate the feeling of being right there at her graduation as the white men address the crowd of African Americans:

The man’s dead words fell like bricks around the auditorium and too many settled in my belly. Constrained by hard-learned manners I couldn’t look behind me, but to my left and right the proud graduating class of 1940 had dropped their heads. Every girl in my row had found something new to do with her handkerchief. Some folded the tiny squares into love knots, some into triangles, but most were wadding them, then pressing them flat on their yellow laps.

On the dais, the ancient tragedy was being replayed. Professor Parsons sat, a sculptor’s reject, rigid. His large, heavy body seemed devoid of will or willingness, and his eyes said he was no longer with us. The other teachers examined the flag (which was draped stage right) or their notes, or the windows which opened on our now-famous playing diamond. (pars. 37–38)

245