Narrative- Reflection

            We were introduced to Narration through short pieces that we studied in class, such as "The Ashen Guy: Lower Broadway, September 11, 2001" by Thomas Beller.  Through this story especially, I noticed useful techniques throughout that I was able to use in my own narrative paper.  Some of these techniques are dialogue, conflict, theme, and point of view. 

            I didn’t have a personal story about 9/11, and I thought that it would be really difficult to come up with a fictional story about someone’s experience, but after researching the event more and using “The Ashen Guy” narrative for references, I began to come up with a story line.

            I think that a strength of my paper is the organization.  I began the narrative by introducing the two main characters separately and then having them meet without knowing each other.  I then split up each character’s story, and ended by explaining how their paths had crossed and how that had saved both of their lives.

            After the self-evaluation of my paper, I realized that I could definitely improve on my word choice.  Even though I had some strong verbs in my paper already, for example: the smoke was “pouring” out, and the golden pin was “sparkling,” there were many places where I used “said” or “told.”  I went through and tried to change all of these weaker verbs to help strengthen my paper.  Some of the words I changed were from “said” to “exclaimed,” from “told them” to “reported to them,” and also from “said” to “replied.”  Even though my first draft didn’t have these strong verbs, I thought that I brought the narration alive through specific nouns such as World Trade, Bank of America, Starbucks, Broadway, and Windows on the World.

            Another strategy that the self-evaluation process helped me to use more of was dialogue.  I found a place at the end of my piece where dialogue would have helped to clarify what the main character was thinking.  It really added to the intensity of the situation and made it more believable.

            Another area of my first draft that needed improvement was my title.  This was the first paper that I wrote in Ms. Basko’s class, and I didn’t know that we needed a title other than “9/11 Narrative.”  After reading through the list of title that other members of my class had used for one of our other papers, I realized how creative a title could be and how just a few well-written words can draw a reader into a paper and really catch their attention.  Based on the theme of my narrative, I decided to re-title my paper “Fate Before the Fall.”

            After changing a couple of other aspects about my paper, like taking out contractions, replacing parenthesis with commas, and writing out the numbers ten and twenty, my final draft became a much stronger narrative.  The self-evaluation helped to pinpoint the spots that needed work and also helped me to identify important strategies that I could use for not only this paper, but also in the future.