A study examined the effect of reading ability on 60 seventh-grade students' narrative writing quality, use of descriptive and evaluative t-units, use of storytelling linguistic cues, degree of revision, and between draft self-assessing inferences about intentions, problems in fulfilling intentions, and predicted revisions. Subjects wrote two autobiographical incident essays with a 6-week interval. For each task, the subjects began with prewriting activities involving selecting and exploring an event, then completed a first draft. On the third day of the assignment, they divided their drafts into thirds and completed a guided self-assessing form asking them to infer intentions, problems in fulfilling those intentions, and predicted revisions for each of the three sections. Next, they revised the draft. All drafts and self-assessing forms were read and rated by three trained evaluators. Results indicated that reading ability had an effect on the quality of personal incident writing, ability to infer intentions, use of descriptive t-units, and use of "tellability" cues. (FL)