Sentence Strategies for Narration
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When writing about a remembered event, writers often struggle to convey the event’s significance. If you are writing about a remembered event, why not try out some of these sentence strategies to help you capture your experience in words, first for yourself and then for your readers? You will probably want to rework these sentences to make them your own, but they may give you a jumping-off point for articulating your thoughts.
To Think about Your Main Point
- When readers finish my story, they will better appreciate how [society and culture/an individual person/the human condition] .
To Explore the Significance of Your Story’s Conflict
- During this event, I found myself locked in conflict with . [Elaborate.]
- Although I struggled with [a factor outside myself], I also was . [Elaborate.]
- I kept wondering, should I or should I ? [Elaborate.]
To Explore How You Felt at the Time
- As the event started [or during or right after the event], I felt and . I hoped others would think of me as .
- I showed or expressed these feelings by .
To Explore Your Present Perspective
- My feelings since the event [have/have not] changed: . [Elaborate on how your feelings have/have not changed.]
- At the time, I had been going through , which may have affected my experience by .
- Looking back at the event now, I realize I was probably trying to , though I didn’t appreciate that fact at the time.
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To Alert Readers to What You Were Thinking or Feeling
- I felt .
- The thought of made me feel .
- The [terror/exhilaration/excitement] was .
To Make Clear Who Is Speaking and to Convey Their Attitude or Position
- He said, “.”
- She asked, “?”
- “,” he complained.
- “,” she snapped.
To Sketch Out the Backstory (Exposition) Readers Need to Understand What Happened and Why It Mattered
- In [year], while I was ing in [location], .
- John knew all about because he was [a/an] ologist, an expert on .
- In past years, I had previously .