Exploring purpose and topic

topic

You don’t need to search for a topic when writing a narrative on your own. You know what aspects of your life you want to share on Facebook or in a journal. You also understand your audiences well enough to fit your stories to people likely to read them.

But you face tougher choices when asked to write a narrative for school. Typically, such an assignment invites you to describe an event that has shaped or changed you. Or perhaps an instructor wants a story that explores a dimension of your personality or reveals something about the communities you belong to. When no topic ideas suggest themselves, consider the following strategies.

Brainstorm, freewrite, build lists, and use memory prompts. To find a story worth recounting, pick up a yearbook, scroll through photographs, or browse your social media sites. Talk with others about their choices of subjects and share ideas on a class Web site.

Choose a manageable subject. You might be tempted to focus on life-changing events so dramatic that they can seem clichéd: deaths, graduations, car wrecks, winning hits, or first love. But for such topics to work, you have to make them fresh for readers who’ve probably undergone similar experiences — or seen the movie. If you can find that novel perspective (maybe a satiric or ironic one), take the risk. (get an idea)

Alternatively, try narrating a slice of life rather than the whole side of beef — your toast at a wedding rather than the three-hour reception, a single encounter on a road trip rather than the entire cross-country adventure, or just the scariest part of your encounter with Superstorm Sandy. Most big adventures contain within them dozens of more manageable tales.