Exercises — Week 11: Week 11 — The Narrative Writing Task

1. Full Narrative Constructed Response: The Empty Chair

1. Read the source passage (from a short story): "Every Thursday for six years, Grandpa Felix had taken the second chair at the end of the Bladensburg barbershop, the one by the window, and told the same joke about the Washington Commanders. The week after his funeral, the chair stayed empty. Nobody sat in it. Mr. Owens swept around it twice. When Gabriel, Felix's sixteen-year-old grandson, walked in for his first haircut since the funeral, every man in the shop looked up at once, then looked away. Gabriel stood in the doorway holding his grandfather's old Commanders cap, not sure whether to sit, leave, or say something."
2. Read the prompt: Write a narrative that continues the story from Gabriel's point of view. Show what Gabriel decides to do and how the men in the barbershop respond. Use details from the passage, and include dialogue and description to develop the characters and events.
3. Plan for 8 minutes: list the decision Gabriel makes, two lines of dialogue that fit the barbershop setting, one sensory detail, and an ending in which Gabriel reflects on what happened.
4. Draft for 30 minutes in first person, keeping the characters, setting, and the empty chair consistent with the source. Slow the pacing at the moment Gabriel decides what to do.
5. Score your draft for 7 minutes with this practice rubric in the format MCAP uses. Written Expression 4: the story is fully developed, stays true to the source, uses dialogue, description, and pacing purposefully, and ends with a meaningful reflection. Written Expression 3: the story is developed and organized and uses the source, but some techniques are general. Written Expression 2: the story is partly developed, with a thin use of the source or an unclear sequence. Written Expression 1: the response is minimally developed or barely connected to the source. Written Expression 0: the response is off topic or does not tell a story. Written Conventions 3: few errors in grammar, usage, spelling, and dialogue punctuation, and none that confuse meaning. Written Conventions 2: some errors that rarely interfere with meaning. Written Conventions 1: frequent errors that sometimes interfere with meaning. Written Conventions 0: errors are so frequent that meaning is often unclear. Then fix at least three sentences.