Establishing Voice in the Personal Narrative

Name: Connar Kelley

Subject: English

Grade Level: 12

Common Core Standard:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.3.D
Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid
picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.
Focus: As the class has just picked a topic for their writing of a personal narrative, they
will learn the importance of using their own voice to compose their personal narrative.
Objectives:
The students will be able to:
Identify the use of voice in personal narratives
Show emotion through sensory language rather than simple adjectives
Convey a voice in a piece of narrative writing
Materials:
Gone Girl- Use of Voice in a Narrative Worksheet (see below)
Emotional Voice Cards
Activities and Procedures:
1. Introduce the activity as being important in terms of using voice in the personal
narratives.
2. Pass out the examples of positive and negative uses of voice. Read aloud the two
passages to emphasize voice.
3. Have the students collectively make a list about what a strong voice does for the
narrative.
a. It shows the writer's personality
b. It sounds different from everyone else's
c. It contains feelings and emotions
d. The words come to life
e. It comes from the heart
4. Emphasize the idea that words can be used to capture strong emotion.
5. Pass out one Emotional Voice Card to each student. Make sure they dont show
anyone what emotion they receive.
6. Have students write a short paragraph in which they reveal their assigned emotion
without the word on their card or a synonym of that emotion word. This should
take 10 minutes.
7. At the end of the ten minutes, have students share their paragraph with a group of
3 or 4 students. The rest of the group members must try and guess what emotion
is being portrayed in the paragraph.
8. Return as a whole class and have students share their paragraphs and try to guess
the emotion being presented.
9. Have students go back to their rough drafts and find and highlight different
emotions they are trying to suggest they felt. Have them use the same process as

before and restructure their rough draft to emphasize this emotion. This should
take nearly a half hour of more depending on how mush redrafting is needed.
10. Ask students to share with a partner the before and after of implementing their
voice in the given section of their paper.
Evaluation and Assessment: By discussing the voice-filled paragraphs as a class, we
can evaluate if the students understand the concept of using voice to convey emotion. The
final evaluation of this will be assessed in how they implement their voice in the personal
narratives.

Gone Girl- Use of Voice in a Narrative

Gillian Flynns Use of Voice:
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe theyre fooled because so many
women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I
used to see men friends, coworkers, strangers giddy over these awful pretender
women, and Id want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman,
you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward
men whod like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them.
And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: Theyre not even pretending to be the
woman they want to be, theyre pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh,
and if youre not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesnt want the
Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version maybe hes a vegetarian, so Cool Girl
loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe hes a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a
tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics.
Ms. Kelleys Use of Voice:
I was offended when people called me a Cool Girl because I feel that this type of
girl does not exist. Girls that think they are Cool Girls are really just trying to be someone
that they think men would like.
Reflective Questions:
What type of emotion is the narrator feeling in Gillian Flynns version?

What is lost by Ms. Kelleys version?

What does a strong narrative voice do for a narrative?

Emotional Voice Card Words

1. Acceptance
2. Affection
3. Aggression
4. Ambivalence
5. Apathy
6. Anxiety
7. Boredom
8. Compassion
9. Confusion
10. Contempt
11. Depression
12. Doubt
13. Envy
14. Embarrassment
15. Euphoria
16. Forgiveness
17. Frustration
18. Gratitude
19. Grief
20. Guilt
21. Hatred
22. Hope
23. Horror
24. Hostility
25. Homesickness
26. Hunger
27. Hysteria
28. Interest
29. Loneliness
30. Love
31. Paranoia
32. Pity
33. Pleasure
34. Pride
35. Rage
36. Regret
37. Remorse
38. Shame
39. Suffering
40. Sympathy