Understanding Autobiographical
Writing
 Story about an important person / event
 Go beyond the ordinary
 Examples:
 Complicated relationships (person)
 Complex emotions (revelation) i.e., finding or losing
faith in something or someone – perhaps God
 Cultural or societal lessons (gender, racial, or religious)
Autobiography
 Significance
 Conflict (resolved or not) Protagonist vs. Antagonist
 Meaning? Why is this significant to your life?
 Public Exposure (Be comfortable with the topic)
 Is it too recent?
 Is it too traumatic?
Organization (chronological?)
 The traditional short story has the following parts:
 Exposition (background info, setting, etc.)
 Rising action(protagonist vs. antagonist),
 Climax (highest tension),
 Falling action (right after the climax, and
 Resolution (dénouement) – character wins, loses, or
accepts situation.
 Note: autobiographical stories end with a reflective
paragraph (why significant?/ what was learned?)
Sensory Details and Figurative Language
 Use all of your sense (sight, smell, etc.)
•&
 Metaphor, simile, and personification
 Goals:
 self discovery and insight (human condition)
Red Flags
 Too recent: significance not known
 Too traumatic (self-disclosure issues)
 Cliché (general rite of passage – prom, first kiss, etc.)
Autobiographical Strategies
 Visual Descriptions
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Naming (use specific names for people, places, and things)
Detailing (color, shape, size, and texture)
Comparing (simile or metaphor)
Examples:
 He drove the car
 Ted drove the Mustang on Highway Six.
 Speedy Ted raced the red Mustang down tattered Highway
Six.
 Like a flash of lightening, Ted raced the red Mustang down
tatter Highway Six.
Conveying the autobiographical significance
 Telling
How you felt at the time of the event
 How you feel now (upon reflection looking back)
 Showing
 Details - setting, characters, etc.
 Actions / plot
 The combination creates a dominant impression
(positive or negative/ happy or sad/etc.)
 In Gray’s essay “Father” her details, action, and
dialogue suggest anger, disgust, and pity (ambivalence
/ mixed feelings)
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Narrative Cueing
 Verb tense markers (past, present, or future) /
Autobiographical = past
 We swam in the ocean = past
 After lunch we swam in the ocean I had seen on the way to
the hotel. (already completed in the past, “had”)
 I jumped into the water. I had been waiting for the perfect
wave. (past perfect progressive, “had been waiting,”
signifies an ongoing past event interrupted by another past
event)
 Mom made us get out and took us back to the hotel, but
she said we would swim again after lunch. (predicts future
action)
 Temporal transitions (time markers)
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Examples: when, just after, before, still, no longer, one afternoon,
for a week, after a few days, etc.
Framing
 Echoes something from the beginning in the ending: a
setting, a feeling, a quote (thought), or an action
 Example: Perhaps your story starts with your mother
holding your hand at the beach and ends with you
holding your daughter’s hand (the essay “Calling Home”
starts and ends with a car ride)
Conversation
 Dialogue – quoting: “Yes, I can swim!” (use a new
paragraph for each new or changed speaker)
 Summarizing – gives the gist of what was said: I told
them I could swim.
Anecdotes vs. Recurring Events
Anecdote – brief story of a one time event
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“One afternoon . . .”
“Once when I was thirteen . . .” (locates event to a
point in time)
Flashback: takes reader into the past (a different point
in the past)
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relates story to an earlier event for clarity
If your autobiographical essay is focused upon a significant
person, you will use various anecdotes and / or flashbacks to
convey the person’s importance
Recurring Events – things that happened more than once
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Every Sunday we would go to Perkins after church.
Spending Sunday with Dad meant football and pizza
rather than conversation and bonding (suggests that
the author spent more than one specific Sunday with
Dad, and the days were similar).