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Anna Kluender

WR 13300

Narrative Reflection

Professor McLaughlin

6 Feb 2017

From the moment we were assigned this prompt, I had a feeling deep in my gut that the

story I chosea narrative of the time I was assaulted on the Parisian metrowas perfect. I

didnt even need to free write; the words flowed from my pen smoothly during the freewriting

time in class. Im very guilty of writing a first draft and calling it perfect, so despite being pretty

satisfied with my initial narrative, but I knew it needed work. During the first workshop in class,

I asked my peers to give me advice on character development and dialogue, making my tension

clearly align with the theme of the course, and length. I asked not only my classmates to help

workshop my draft, but also an English major friend. I valued their opinion, but I felt that due to

the nature of my topic, I wasnt receiving helpful or honest feedback.

After that first workshop, I added in dialogue on the train and shortened the dinner scene

quite a bit. I still wasnt fully happy with my draft and knew it was a bit long, so I asked to meet

with Dr. McLaughlin (mostly because I knew she would have no qualms tearing my paper apart).

In our meeting, we discussed placing a bigger focus on the climax of the story, the moment on

the train. We also spoke about adding ambiguity at the end; Im often guilty of wrapping

everything up in a nice pretty bow, but life doesnt always work out that way. Sitting in her

office, I thought deeply about how Id felt that night for the first time in about a year and a half.

We marked my draft up and down and I left with a lot of work to do, but a clear sense of what

the paper needed.

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The problem came when I was ready to record. Id spent several hours editing and adding

inner thoughts, monologue, and dark thoughts creeping in, but that put the assignment at six

and a half minutes. After a frantic email and some more advice from Dr. McLaughlin, I combed

through the essay looking for excessive or convoluted sentences and really focused on the

economy of words. I feel that by editing the sentences and including more short, choppy lines, I

more fully expressed the turmoil and stress going through my characters mind. The essay

currently stands a little over 5 minutes (about 5:15), but I feel that it is very cohesive and that

each word adds to the sense of understanding as a whole. By taking much more out, I feel that

the setup of the event, the assault itself, and the internal conflict that followed would be

downplayed.

The hardest part of this assignment for me by far was the length. Once I realized what I

wanted to focus on, though, it became easier to trim out unnecessary information. By putting the

focus on the thoughts running through my characters head after the assault, I could afford to

take out a lot of the details in the beginning. It took a lot of revision, but ultimately I feel that my

essay does the event justice.

When working on the delivery, I tried to focus on the moments that stuck out to me when

I went through the assault and immediately after. I then placed emphasis on those words and

sentences when recording the draft. I was really happy with how the recording highlighted the

anger and frustration I felt on top of the Arc de Triomphe. I also enjoyed playing with different

ways to deliver lines and pauses and the different effects they had on the listener. This

assignment took a lot more work, revision, and thought than I expected, but after multiple

attempts at reworking parts, I feel that my final essay well-communicates the event and the

influence that it had on how I remember my trip to France.

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