What is an Anecdote? An anecdote is a brief, engaging story, often real but sometimes fictionalized, used to illustrate a point or convey a lesson. It’s the narrative equivalent of a snapshot: quick, focused, and revealing something about its subject. An anecdote, when viewed as a form of evidence, serves as a unique and compelling ...
This assignment asks you to craft a story based on personal experience. This is different from literary analysis or research paper assignments which ask you to open with a thesis to continually reference and support. Stories are constructed differently. Successful stories describe events in such a way that readers get to experience the story as if they were directly observing events. Consider the following when drafting, writing, and revising:
Place your readers into a significant moment you’ve experienced. Narrow your focus from the start. Select a story out of one, tiny, narrow corner of your life and avoid expanding on all the details around the story. Do not give us an introduction that explains everything before it happens. Let the story speak for itself and trust your readers work at discovering what your story is about. Try to drop your readers into the action of your story to create immediacy.
