In her article “Life Stories” Julie Beck argues that the stories of our lives are what create our personalities. She says that when we think about our lives people think about it as a narrative. These stories that we make are what create our personality according to her. She brings up that doing this is neither positive nor negative because when we think of our life as a narrative, we want there to be a good ending. This is something that is not always going to happen in life. No matter what happens one day you will never know what happens the next. The most important part of all of your life stories is what you are able to take from them and learn. In her narrative story Alyssa Ehrenfried talks about how the incarceration of her dad played a large impact on her life and personality. “It definitely impacted my personality not having him around,” is what she says. The impact however was not bad and instead helped make her into a better person who makes good choices in life. The large moments in life like this example are some of the biggest things that form us into the people that we become when we turn into teenagers and adults. If you look at things more negatively than you probably will be affected in a different way than someone with a more positive look on life.
Great! You’re off to a good start. Here are a few suggestions to help this already strong paragraph get even stronger.
1) Try to articulate the main idea that you want your paragraph to argue. Try to articulate this main point using one sentence. For example, “As we live out the events in our lives, our outlook can play a large role in how we interpret these events and incorporate them into the story of our lives.” After you have a sentence, place it at the top of your paragraph. This is your new topic sentence (or claim sentence).
2) Try to replace your Beck summary with a quote that captures what you’re trying to say–for example, the quote where Beck likens story to personality.