Building Your Portfolio

Writer’s Workshop 

Narrative Writing: Autobiographical Incident 

If you wrote down everything that ever happened to you, how many books would your autobiography fill? Of course, some events are more memorable than others. “My mother woke me at 6 A.M. and I got ready to go to school” isn’t nearly so interesting as “The earthquake hit at 4:36 A.M. and I heard screams as I found myself falling through the air.” 

Writing that tells about an incident in your life is a special kind of narrative writing called an autobiographical incident. 

ASSIGNMENT 

Write about an incident from your life that is vivid to you—perhaps something that taught you an important lesson or that made you feel something deeply. 

AIM 

To express yourself; to inform. 

AUDIENCE 

Your friends or younger readers or readers of a magazine for teenagers. (You choose.) 

Prewriting 

1. Find a Topic 

Narrow your focus to a single incident that happened in a short time—maybe just a few minutes or several hours or a day. Look through any past assignments that were autobiographical in nature for ideas. Or, brainstorm some lists—“Six Memories of Food,” “Three Horrible Vacations,” “Four School Experiences,” “Three Things I Wish I Could Do Again.” Write a sentence or two about several incidents. Ask yourself which incident gives you most to write about. 


2. Jog Your Memory 

Once you find a topic, replay the incident in your memory and take notes. 

    • Context: Who was there? How old was I? Where did the incident happen? 

    • Sensory details: What sights, smells, sounds, tastes can I recall? 

    • Dialogue/monologue: Who said what? 

    • Events: Exactly what happened? (List the events in the order they occurred.) What was the most exciting or tense moment? 

    • Significance: What did I think or feel about the incident at the time? What do I think or feel about it now? 

Here is how a professional writer in this collection uses specific images to help us see the people and places in her writing: 

One summer morning, after I had swept the dirt yard of leaves, spearmint-gum wrappers, and Vienna-sausage labels, I raked the yellow-red dirt and made half-moons carefully, so that the design stood out clearly and masklike. I put the rake behind the Store and came through the back of the house to find Grandmother on the front porch in her big, wide white apron. The apron was so stiff by virtue of the starch that it could have stood alone. 

—Maya Angelou, “When I Lay My Burden Down” 

Strategies for Elaboration 

Show, Don’t Tell When you elaborate on an autobiographical incident, you want to help the reader imagine your experience. To do this, use words and images—descriptions of people, places, and events—that appeal to the senses. Don’t just write, “We ate by the bay, and Mom sang.” Tell how the food tasted. How did the air smell? How did Mom’s voice sound? 

3. Map Your Story 

Like other narratives, an autobiographical incident has characters, a series of related events usually told in chronological order, and a setting. 

To plan your story, try using a story map to outline the details of an incident.

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