PERSONAL NARRATIVE LEAD IDEAS How do I begin

PERSONAL NARRATIVE LEAD IDEAS How do I begin? ?

LEAD IDEAS Make a startling, unexpected statement. Example: Who would have thought that I already would have spent a night in jail by the time I was twelve years old?

LEAD IDEAS Use dialogue. Example: “Can you please tell me what room Julie Peters is in? ” I asked eagerly. “Yes, dear, she is in 413. Straight down the hall on the left, ” the woman at the nurse’s station replied. When I arrived at the door, family members were standing outside. “Am I too late? ” I asked hesitantly.

LEAD IDEAS Use exaggeration or hyperbole. Example: (from The Watsons Go to Birmingham) It was one of those super-duper-cold Saturdays. One of those days that when you breathed out your breath kind of hung frozen in the air like a hunk of smoke and you could walk along and look exactly like a train blowing out big, fat, white puffs of smoke. It was so cold that if you were stupid enough to go outside your eyes would automatically blink a thousand times all by themselves, probably so the juice inside of them wouldn’t freeze up. It was so cold that if you spit, the slob would be an ice cube before it hit the ground. It was about a zillion degrees below zero.

LEAD IDEAS Describe the setting Example: (from Holes) There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. There once was a very large lake here, the largest in Texas. That was over a hundred years ago. Now it is just a dry flat wasteland. There used to be a town of Green Lake as well. The town shriveled and dried up along with the lake, and the people who lived there. During the summer the daytime temperature hovers around ninety-five degrees in the shade – if you can find any shade. There’s not much shade in a big dry lake.

LEAD IDEAS Start with a question Example: Have you ever wondered how you would survive if you found yourself alone in the wilderness?

LEAD IDEAS Start with a quirky statement Example: (from Freak the Mighty) “I never had a brain until Freak came long and let me borrow his for a while, and that’s the truth, the whole truth. The unvanquished truth, is how Freak would say it…”

LEAD IDEAS Flashback Example: Jody and I have always had one of those “love/hate” relationships. It all started way back on the first day of kindergarten…

LEAD IDEAS Foreshadow Example: The sky was dark and ominous. There was the slow, rolling rumble of thunder in the distance. Huge drops of rain were starting to hammer on my head. As I ran to the house, I started getting a very bad feeling….

LEAD IDEAS Build suspense Example: (from Bud, Not Buddy) Here we go again. We were all standing in the line waiting for breakfast when one of the caseworkers came in and tap-tapped down the line. Uh-oh, this meant bad news, either they’d found a foster home for somebody was about to get paddled. All the kids watched the woman as she moved along the line, her highheeled shoes sounding like little firecrackers going off on the wooden floor.

LEAD IDEAS NOW YOU TRY!!