Final: Personal Reaction to Trauma Narrative

For your first formal paper, write an essay about an event or moment in your life that will be engaging for readers and that will, at the same time, help them understand the significance of the event or moment to your current worldview. Tell your story dramatically and vividly. You may wish to discuss as act of injustice that you experienced or reflect on an experience/event that has helped form who you are today and/or how you view the world.

Audience: A peer who is intelligent and curious about human behavior

Length: 3-4 pages, Times New Roman, double-spaced

Some helpful hints—

• Limit your story to one event: do not relate an entire day, week, or series of events leading up to the main event. Just write about the event.
  • However, it is okay to give limited and appropriate background information leading up to the setting and circumstances of the event
• The event should have some significance to your insights and development as a person, a point that goes beyond the simple telling of a story and gives the audience something to work through. Think about the stories you’ve watched to inform this.
• When describing people, settings, or situations in your story, strive to show more and tell less
• Use sensory details: concrete and metaphorical
• “Use dialogue when appropriate,” .
• Avoid overly traumatic events that may still trigger you: recent breakups, death of loved ones, horrific personal tragedies.
• No grade is worth retraumatizing yourself and therefore please do not write about a incidence you haven’t been able to work through.