My assignment is to:
Think of an anecdote you habitually tell when you first come to know someone—a story you tell about yourself that is sad, strange, or funny. Make sure it’s the one you’ve already told everyone who knows you well, one you’ve told a thousand times.
Now put it down on paper. Try to capture—exactly—the way you tell it: the words that you stress, and the phrases that you use. It should read like a transcript of your own voice.
When you read what you’ve written, look for clues to your own personality. Pay attention to what the anecdote says about your sense of humor, your personal obsessions, your core character, and what that story means to you.
Use your distinctive narrative voice as an intimate, expressive instrument rather than an inert vehicle of information exchange.
Check the energy level of your writing.Salman Rushdie calls this the vroom-vroom factor.Is your writing alive with personality and persuasion?
What makes this a story?
What is it about the anecdote that you enjoy telling?
What is the desired effect? Are you in control of it?
Criteria for Succes:
A first person narrative needs to do more than just fill the reader in on the action. It needs to be multidimensional—illuminating a character not only through the information she gives willingly, but the accidental information she gives through preoccupation and perspective. A writer needs to create a voice that characterizes this narrator in a way she might not be able to characterize herself, at least not directly.
Have you chosen an anecdote that reveals more than a surface-level view? This assignment will work best if you are honest (with yourself and in your writing): what is it about your favorite anecdote that is manipulative? What response do you wish for when you tell it?
For this assignment I am supposed to tell a story from my point of view. In this assignment talk about my parents divorce and how I was 10 years old and my brother was 8. We were both shocked and sad. As my parents were telling us we both just looked at each other and started crying. Make that into a funny/sad story of me explaining it from my perspective. Talk about how we both looked to the positives such as more vacations, more presents for holidays, and living in two houses.