Personal Conflict Narrative

In this personal conflict narrative Matt, a college student with a love for music, reflects on his past experiences trying to make it in the music business. He tells the reader the story of when he finally gave up on his dream of making music for a living. A year after Matt and his band, Good Morning Richard, had come out of the basement and started playing in actual venues, he had a fight with one of the club promoters about the number of tickets that needed to be sold for his band to play. He realized then that all of the clubs that they had been playing at really had only one thing in mind, and it wasn’t their success. He decided it would be almost impossible to make it in the music business, and stopped booking shows. His biggest conflict was accepting the fact that he had to give up on his dreams.  

I thought that the first draft of Matts personal conflict narrative definitely had potential, but it was a little confusing. I found that I had to read it a second time before I could really understand the story. I didn’t really understand the concept of the tickets or how many tickets the band was expected to sell. I could also tell that Matt was upset about the whole situation, but I felt that he could have done a better job of showing that to the reader. Even though his paper could have used some improvements, I could tell that he actually cared about what he was writing about and that made it more enjoyable. 

The second draft was a big improvement from the first. It was much more detailed, very clear, and easier to understand Matt’s conflict. He also expanded on other people in his story, such as the club promoter, which gave the reader a fuller understanding of the kind of person who Matt was having problems with. It was easier to understand Matt’s feelings in the second draft as well. He expressed how he feels now about what had happened, as well as how he felt at that time. You could tell by reading his second draft that he had taken time to reflect on what had happened and that he had grown from his experience.

By reading Matt’s paper, I started to get ideas on how I could improve my own personal conflict narrative. I realized how important it actually is to write clearly and in detail so that the reader knows what is going on.