Sandy was sitting at her desk nervously tugging at her hair as the essay she was assigned three days ago was due in an hour. She struggled to find inspiration and tried aerobic exercises to spark her creativity, but nothing worked. With only 40 minutes left, she was worried she would fail as a writer and college student. In a last attempt, she began writing by recounting how she was sitting at her desk worrying about the essay.

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Narrative
Composing My First College Essay
by Sandy Klem
Sandy was sitting at her desk, nervously tugging at her frizzy hair and
worrying about the essay she should have written for her English class. Three
days ago she was given the assignment, and now the paper is due in just one hour.
She uncaped her Bic, carefully printed her name at the top of the page, and then
squeezed her eyes shut as she waited for inspiration.
Writing about summer vacations, embarrassing moments, and the adventures
of a quarter had never been one of her favorite pastimes. She would rather be
outside missing a bus (it would be less frustrating) or catching a cold (it would be
more enjoyable). Still, after burning hamburger patties all summer to pay for her
tuition, she was not about to throw in the towel (or even her broken laptop) in this,
the second week of the term.
Perhaps, she thought, a few aerobic exercises would send the creative juices
shooting up to her skull. Switching on her iPod and the external speakers, she
began to gyrate across the room. Her souvenir spoons rattled on the dresser,
posters unhinged themselves from the wall, and empty bottles shimmy off the
book shelf and crashed to the floor. Still, she received no inspiration, just threated
and cursed from a few late-sleepers down the hall.
Sandy squelched the music and trudged back to her desk. The blank sheet of
paper stared at her, almost snickering it seemed. She retaliated by defacing it with
looped and squiggled and curlicued that puncture the paper. That accomplished,
she glanced at the clock radio: forty minutes to go.
Taking a fresh sheet of paper, she wrote her name--once, twice, twenty times.
Then she crumpled it into a ball and tossed it at the glowering clock. She missed.
Her future flashed before her eyes: she would be a failed writer, a college dropout.
Eventually she would become one of those bag ladies who sleep in doorways and
drank Sterno and argued with themselves on buses. Then her life would be an
endless summer vacation of cold, rainy weather. Her life would be one long
embarrassing moment. Without a quarter to her name, she would never enjoy a
single adventure.
Sandy picked up her well-nibbled pen, and now, with determination and
enthusiasm, she began to write quickly. "Sandy is sitting at her desk," she wrote,
"nervously tugging at her frizzy hair and worrying about the essay she should
have written for her English class. . . ."
ORIENTATION
COMPLICATION
RESOLUTION
specific
partisipant
action verb
linking word
third person
past tense present tense

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ANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE
Generic Structure:
1. Orientation
The opening paragraph where the characters of the story are introduced.
2. Complication
the problems of the story developed/ arised.
3. Resolution
the problems of the story resolved.
Language Feature:
1. Specific; often individual participants with defined identities
2. Action verb (material processes), non action verb (verbal and mental
processes)
3. past tense (simple past tense, past future, past perfect)
4. linking word to do with time
5. dialog often included, during which the tense may change to the present or
future
6. written in the third person