Sample+Writing+Prompt--THOMS

 ** Narrative/Vignette Prompt ** Like Esperanza in The House on Mango Street, we all have moments in our life that have come to define who we are in some way. It may have been a seemingly insignificant moment, like the chapter “Our Good Day” in THOMS when Esperanza meets Rachel and Lucy, or it may be a big event like the chapter “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark” when Esperanza comforts her father after his own father dies. For your narrative, you must pick an event in your life that you feel changed you or defined who you are. Maybe this event forced you to grow up, made you realize something about yourself, or embarrassed you in a deep and impacting way. The event may be positive or negative, big or small. Choose your event,state how it defined you, and then tell us the story.

Below is a checklist of the things you will want to include in your narrative to make it really come alive for your reader:


 * Write in the first-person point of view. It is you telling us a story about yourself.
 * Focus on only one scene or one event, similar to the vignettes in THOMS.
 * Give a detailed description of the setting (time and place) of the event.
 * Make the characters in the story come alive using adjectives and imagery to describe them.
 * Use dialogue in your story. You can use quotations and indentation to set the dialogue apart or leave the syntax out like Cisneros does in THOMS.
 * Use narrative structure to build your plot and the emotion up to the climax.
 * Write an ending that wraps up the story or shows some form of closure.
 * Keep in mind how this event changed or defined who you are while you write the story to ensure your story gives an answer to our essential question, "What makes you who you are?"