Short Essay #1

Narrative Writing with Dialogue

“The next best thing most like living one’s life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.”—Benjamin Franklin

Guidelines:  For this assignment, narrate a short scene.  Use the descriptive writing skills practiced in the Character Sketch, but you’ll need more than one character so that you might let them talk.  Rather than “telling” what a character is thinking or saying, use dialogue. 
Describe the people, their surroundings, and  the background to bring the scene to life.

• You can use the Character Sketch as a jumping off point for this short essay, but you need to add significantly to it: add layers to the sketch.
• Let your characters talk—their speech should be authentic.  What terms or phrases are unique to this person? How will you capture someone’s speech on paper (contractions, run-on sentences, nonsense spellings, etc.)?
• Do not assume the reader knows what anything looks like, smells like, or feels like (so use your descriptive writing skills to paint a picture).
• The text of the essay should be more than a full page long, in MLA format.
• Due next class; have a hard copy and an electronic copy.
• Be prepared to read your work aloud.