5 Characteristic features

A clearly identified event: What happened? Who was involved?
My AP Lit class at the end of the year had to write an author research paper. We had to go to UW and copy pictures of the books so that we can use the research that people have already made about our author. My whole class had their own author and we had to write our own papers on different authors, it was a 10 page paper. 

A clearly described setting:When and where did it happen?
The day before spring break we got to go on a field/study trip to the University of Washington. We went to copy pages out of books that were research about our particular author. We had the spring break and until the end of the school year to write our paper. We were given laptops a few days at the school to write the essay and we only could on certain days, the rest of the essay had to get done on our own time. I did it at home mostly, not really much anywhere else. 

Vivid, descriptive details:What makes the story come alive?
My author was Toni Morrison, an African American author who mainly focused on the ways African Americans were treated back in the day, like being used as slaves and treated so unfairly. I went into the UW Library, it was the second time i had been there but the first time i only went into this little building to go see a guy perform comedy in sign language for my ASL 2 class. The library was huge and it was really confusing to find the right books and sources we needed to find. We got our books and went through them to find the pages from the books that will be most useful. We copied the books onto our flash drives and took them back home with us. We then use the research to help us write everything we can about our authors, why they write like they do, when and where they were born and just study their writing techniques.

A consistent point of view: Who's telling the story?
I am telling the story, the story is about the paper I wrote so I am telling it, so it will be in first person. 

A clear point: Why does the story matter?
This story matters because it was the biggest paper I had to write. It required us students to go to UW to get research on a particular author and we had to write a 10 page essay on that one author. It took awhile to do and was a huge part of our grade and it was for an AP class.