Genre Research
From this source I learned that in writing it is important to have a plan about what tense you are planning to use. For my genre of writing, it was important to use first person, but it is challenging to decide how to use past tense or how much past tense to use. You need to figure out if you want to write in the present, and if you do you should try to improve clarity by just pretending to be in the moment the whole time. It becomes convoluted if the whole thing is like a historical record and makes it seem slow and detached. To prevent that, you could do an introduction in past tense or provide conflict and foreshadowing and then switch to present tense. When looking back in time, it is important to use clear time references and then go into present tense and is important to use strong verbs (i.e. shoved not opened) to indicate you are in the present and ground the reader. It is faster paced and helps to tell the story as it happened without awkwardness to tell it in first person. This also allows running dialogue, you can make it entertaining, and show lots of emotion and conflict to tell the story and present it in an urgent way.
Before this research I didn’t know that tense mattered so much. I plan on using this to maybe include a brief introduction in past tense and then quickly slip into present tense to engage the reader. I also like the idea of using strong verbs to clarify what was happening and how I felt.
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https://search-proquest-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/209416931?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=14667
This source discussed organization of a personal narrative/memoir. It described how it is important to identify the memoir theme early which will provide a stronger structure and better prepare the readers for the main conflict. There should be an overriding theme and if there isn’t one in mind it will show itself as you begin to write. It says that the first section should introduce the main characters, establish the story’s emotion, show the setting, create suspense, and move into the main conflict (internal and external). The first scene should just have this and let other details be revealed later. There should be dialogue, action, and emotion to convey the story and a section should not end with a narrative. The theme should connect through the sections and you can leave readers on a cliff hanger or question.
I plan on using this to format my personal narrative, specifically the introduction. After my peer review, it was clear the I was lacking an introduction that would establish the setting, characters, and what was going on so I will be adding one with all of these components before the final draft is turned in. For both of these sources the primary message I got was to show not tell.