Pivotal Moments

A Meaningful Moment in My Life

The purpose of this assignment is to write a well-crafted story about a pivotal event in your life.

By pivotal event, I mean an incident (or closely related series of incidents) that resulted in a significant transition in your life, something that you would define as a coming-of-age experience. All of us have experienced moments or events that clearly changed us, or marked our transition into a new phase. You might think of these as stepping stones, or chapter markers, in your life. Your task is to take one of these pivotal events and shape your experiences into a story.

By story, I mean a literary text that loosely follows the structural conventions of initiation, problem development, crisis, climax, and realization (beginning, middle, and end). Although such organization is imposed on the chaos of experience, your task is to create a textual structure around your pivotal event in order to reveal its significance in your life. You will need to portray the events that led up to your stepping stone, and you will also need to demonstrate how this transition changed you. [Remember: show; don't tell.]

Your first task is to consider possible pivotal events (you might even want to make a list). What do you think are the most important turning points, stepping stones, and/or transitions in your life? These should be changes that you experienced within you, not merely external events (such as high school graduation). You can write about an external event, but you must use it as a catalyst to an internal change.

After considering the possibilities, you need to choose one pivotal event that you think would make the best story. You should not only consider what has the most potential for drama and resolution, but also what would lend itself best to a story's structure. You might want to eliminate what would be too complicated , or too difficult, to write about. Always choose a subject that you can control!

Your pivotal event is actually the climax of your story, but it is also your beginning, since it is the point you will begin writing about. In a free writing exercise, you might want to list quickly everything you can remember about your pivotal event--details of the actual scene, event, or moment; other people that were involved; thoughts and feelings that you had; experiences or issues that led up to the event; and the ways the event changes you.

In discovering a structure for story, you will need to work backwards from your pivotal event. If a conflict, tension, problem, crisis, issue, question, or desire was somehow resolved by your pivotal event, work backwards to the point when it (whatever it is) began to develop in your life as a concern. This point is your initiation into the story. You might simply ask yourself when was the first time you became aware of the conflict that the pivotal event resolved. Was there a series of connected incidents that incited a problem or desire the led eventually to the final pivotal event[s]?

Once you have a beginning and an end, you can focus on the movement between the two. Here selection and arrangement of material is most important. Write about only what is involved in a progressive narrative movement from the beginning to the end. Was there a person or power that stood in the way your reaching the pivotal event, and how did you get around such an obstacle[s]? How did your emotions or attitudes change along the way? Was there an unexpected event or complication that forced you into a crisis and that precipitated your pivotal event? Were there low points or high points along the way?

The climax is the moment[s] of transition when you actually experienced a change from "the old me" to "the new me." You might consider this a time of death and rebirth. Were there particular feelings, needs, perspectives, or beliefs that died or gave way to something entirely (or I suppose partially) new? Where were you, and what exactly were you doing, when the transformation took place? Did you realize that a change was taking place?

The resolution or conclusion should briefly note the consequences of the changes. Did your life change outwardly? Did you develop new ways of seeing the world? In what way were the internal changes apparent externally? How, and if, is "the new me" better than "the old me."