need help in essay writing.

[Ds]

Hey there!
So got my first real writing assignment this year, have to write an Narrative Essay on one of the following:
An experience in winning.
A childhood memory.
A day you will never forget.
A major mistake you made that helped you learn a lesson.
An important event that didn't go as you expected.

to be honest, I have nothing to really write about in any of those topics, I mean there is some stuff but I don't think it's appropriate for my teacher.. bless her heart if she read some of that shit lol.

I picked the topic "A major mistake I made that helped me learn a lesson". I decided to write about my drug addiction,. Seems appropriate because doing drugs at such an early age really fucked me in the long run, one of the worst mistakes i've ever made in my life!

It's been a while since i've had to write anything, so i'm having to pretty much re educate myself in essay writing. Thank god for the internet..
Anyways.. I'm stuck..
I have the topic sentence (which was chosen for me). now what do I do? I'm on paragraph 1 now, so I'm guessing that's my thesis/introduction paragraph (along with the topic sentence).
Now the thesis I have so far is :
What was I thinking? I should have just listened to what the DARE officer was trying to tell me. I knew something was different about me when Officer J. talked about the many different varieties of drugs out there. Made me really curious. It wasn't to long after that until I got a drug collection of my own.

So far that's all i have, I know that's nowhere enough for the first paragraph, would that be suitable for a introduction? because now in the other paragraphs I can talk about where my curiousness got me. I've got a lot of experience of first hand experience of what drug use can do to a family. Going from a nice house in the suburbs to the streets (literally living in back alley ways under a dumpster, and homeless shelters).
I can write a lot about that stuff.. The only problem is starting off the next paragraphs..

On paragraph 2, should I talk about where my life was at as an adloscent(sp)? I started as a child, and was still doing drugs all the way up to being an adult. So maybe I can talk about the different phases I went through battling drug addiction.

Tell me if i'm wrong but wouldn't this go into the topic sentence about making a major mistake?

The lesson I learned from taking that first drug forever ago is I shouldntve even fed the idea in my mind about doing those drugs. err u know what i'm saying. lol

I could conclude the essay about where my life is now, I go to NA meetings, I live in a halfway house, sober..(or well the teacher will read that part). So maybe if I make it into a success paragraph after talking about the rough road i took in the other paragraphs.


Also.. another question.. Starting off other body paragraphs, I will have to include a supporting detail at the beginning of each paragraph that has to somehow relate to the topic sentence right? I keep getting stumped and just sit here with a pen in my hand not writing (oh yeah the teacher wants it hand written because supposedly its better for us).

anyways, thanks for any feedback you have! and if i have any more questions about essay writing in the future i'll just post in this thread.

 

[L2R]

what kind of course is this?

Don't worry so much about structure, except your intro, body and conclusions. Each paragraph therein just focus on one point or argument. Write the intro last, since you might end up not where you intended. Maybe do a line or two in your intro to focus your one major point, then give all the guts in the body, and then make sure you don't add any more information in the conclusion. THEN you can go back to the intro and say that you took *this* journey to get *there*. Don't worry, you're supposed to spoil the ending. It's not like fiction.

Speaking of which, there is no need to be so honest with them. Make some shit up. That way, you can not worry about accuracy and it opens the document to be filled with all sorts of reasonable nonsense. It's not like they are going to verify anything.

Just don't claim you've been to the moon or some stupid shit.

 

[piebald]

yeah you will be fine..but one thing i would maybe try to clarify and build is your thesis..a thesis should be a statement..it should be a direct opinion/conclusion that you are presenting the reader and backing up with facts, details and all that other supporting stuff-so you just sorta said, i went to dare and it made me curious and i wanted to know more about drugs..thats just relaying what happened, but from that you can come up with a main point that (if you had to) you could argue and support with facts " What you have as your topic sentence could be your thesis really "Young people should NOT try or experiment with or be exposed to drugs because a, b and c will happen." .and you can back that up with some of your own experience
(btw there was nothing wrong with you i swear....i was like the dare grand champion and look at me now!)
sorry english major kicked in right there..hope that was somewhat helpful

 

[Coreo*~]

When writing a simple essay, I always refer back to the good ol five paragraph essay format. Your thesis statement should be a summary of what your essay will be about and is usually the last sentence of your first paragraph. Pick three main points that you want to talk about in your essay. Write about those three points in your introduction paragraph using three separate sentences for each point. You can expand on those points slightly in your first paragraph if you'd like. (If your essay has to be very long, you can always add a couple more main points to discuss).

Now onto the body of the essay. Your first paragraph after your introduction should be about the first main point you want to discuss. The required length of your essay will be a guide as to how in depth you need to get when discussing your three main points. Continue on to your last two main points in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of the body of your essay.

Finally, your conclusion should basically restate your main points, starting with the last point first and working backwards to your first main point. Then you just sum up your entire essay in the last few sentences, and voila! You're finished.

Just a few pointers: I find it easier to gather information about my topic by brainstorming. Whichever type of brainstorming method works best for you, go with it. Just write down any words or ideas, and later on you can expand on those ideas in your essay.

Good Luck!

 

[clifford]

For a narrative essay, you want to keep in mind that the reader has no knowledge of your events. Every little detail can add lots of understanding to you story. Now, that your writing about past drug experience you may not be able to go in to the degree of detail normally shown in narratives but understandably so.You may not want to bum the reader out (unless your going for that sort of thing). Try to open by talking about or explaining your experience right away, andconclude the essay with a paragraph explaining its significance or meaning to you. This way the reader is likely to become more engaged in the material, forming an understanding for what you are conveying.

As others said, simple essay format - intro, 3 supporting paragraphs and conclusion is fairly standard but its not going to break you if you stray from that a bitThe main point of using the narrative form of essay writing is to recreate an event. Think of all the details, you may even come up w/ some you forgot about Remember that one of your goals is to paint a picture so to speak for the reader, re create it for him / her.

hope that helps a bit, and good luck with it. I was a history major in college and wrote tons of papers, but was terrible at picking topics. After picking the topic and starting the research I would realize how difficult it would be to write, but too far along to change it. My best advice for future assignments if you have them, do pre-research on the topic your interested in and make sure there is plenty of material to use for research

 

[alasdairm]

^ when you get a job will you just pay them to come do your work for a day? every day? write a letter to your lover? read a bedtime story to your kids?



alasdair

 

[Belisarius]

All I can add is a tip I learned in college that's always been helpful: write the body of the essay first, edit it, then add the intro and conclusion last.

 

[Jerry Atrick]

I typically spend more time editing than I do actually writing.

 

[K-Dazed]

What type of course is this? Legitimate structure is needed more than likely if this is a University course, but otherwise you should be fine going with the simple 5 paragraph essay format.

Again, as others here have stated, a thesis statement is exactly that -- a statement. You're arguing for a certain side or position, and in this case, it's that drugs have caused major problems in your life, including addiction, but despite these problems, you have learned X, X, and X. (As per the question you chose - A major mistake you made that helped you learn a lesson).

Keep in mind intros generally need pre-ambles, but the biggest mistake I see people do in essays is writing shitty pre-ambles. Again, if the course doesn't matter too much, it shouldn't matter, but if you include a pre-amble in your intro (as you should) it must have something to do with your essay, and you must refer to it again in the essay (generally in the conclusion, as above someone stated is essentially a mirrior image of your intro). You could probably use a simple pre-amble, but many people use generalized statements in their pre-ambles which render them ineffective (Example: In life, people ultimately make mistakes which help them learn a lesson later on in life... too general, needs to be more specific). But as I said, it doesn't have to be a super-creative and captivating preamble if the course is lax.

Body paragraphs are easy as long as you have good support for your thesis. What lessons have you learned? How do you know you've learned these lessons? What actions have reflected your new-found knowledge etc. Generally I find body paragraphs write themselves -- again -- as long as you have good support.

To re-iterate again, conclusion is generally a mirror of your intro. Like Jerry I spend most of my time editing than actually writing (editing, and brainstorming too).

 

[ugly]

Hi Ds,

If you are struggling with the format, stop.

Start freewriting. Just let every single thought you have on the subject of your drug use spill out onto the keyboard.

Don't leave anything out. Even if you start to veer off topic, let your thoughts come down to the keyboard. All your thoughts about all drugs everywhere. However your mind goes, write every bit of it.

When you have a few pages of rambling ideas and broken threads of thought and stray sentences that are off topic, then you will have given yourself the material with which you can craft your essay.

I taught English for seven years from 8th grade to 12th grade. I'm a laid off teacher now, like a xillion others. That's really neither here nor there.

I found that many students could not write essays. I wondered how some students had even made it to the grade they were in because of their poor writing skills.

I have always kept a diary, only now we call them journals. I used to think in ink, now I think in a word document, but the action of putting down ideas is second nature to me.

I always told my students that instead of looking at the assignment as an essay, think of it as just something you personally have feelings about. Then let the feelings spill all over, making a huge mess of words and sentences with no organization at all.

I liked to encourage my students to say anything and everything.

Then comes the fun part... taking the raw material and making a pattern with it. Many students found it much easier to write essays by using the unorganized material to build, to mold, to shape, to format, their essays.

If you put the format first, you won't write a tight essay. You need more than five paragraphs to write a five paragraph essay. I used to take a bucket of kids building blocks, wood unpainted blocks of lots of different shapes. I don't even know if kids still play with building blocks. hmmmm......

Anyway, I spilled out the bucket. Then I picked up one block, and stacked it on another block, and kept stacking until I had an organized tower of some sort. There were blocks left over. I used this analogy to demonstrate how good essays are the result of deep thought and introspection followed by organization and formatting.

In this way I was able to help some students improve their writing skills and I was rewarded each year with at least a few students who continued their journals well beyond my classroom.

 

[ugly]

D's;

How did your essay go? Were you happy with it? Was your teacher?