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Writing a Narrative Essay What is a Narrative Essay? A narrative essay is one in which you tell a story from your point of view or personal experience, providing specific and sensory details to get readers involved and understand your point. Why do we call it narrative? Because you use a particular way of telling your story and explaining its events, known as “narrative. Narrative turns a story into information and influences the way how readers will perceive it. In other words, narrative builds your story. So, your narrative essay is a type of paper, where you tell a story using a particular format and all elements of storytelling. Purpose of Narrative Essays Narrative essays are about telling stories to your readers. It’s their fundamental purpose. You, the writer, tell about the personal experience but also make a point for readers to understand why you tell about it and why your story is important to share. In a narrative essay, you simply guide a reader and allow them to draw own conclusions. You don’t criticize anything and don’t try to persuade them with arguments or prove them anything. That’s exactly what makes a narrative essay different from other academic papers. Why write personal narrative essays? Doing so, you learn to voice your opinion, views, and beliefs to the world. You learn to express and share thoughts consistently and intriguingly so people would get involved and inspired by your story.
It’s all about storytelling: And such writing assignments as narrative essays help you learn how to tell stories so that others would listen to you. Your narrative, if written right, is the best way to share views and make others see the world through your eyes. It’s the best way to make them listen, broaden the mind, and be more creative about own experience and lives. Characteristics of Narrative Essays Informal, written in the 1st person. (You are a storyteller here.) With a purpose to inform, not argue. Describes a person, a scene, or an event in details and chronological order. Tells about the actual experience. Includes the elements of a story but follows the structure of an essay. The Structure of a Narrative Essay 1 – Elements Every narrative should have five elements to become a story: plot , setting , character , conflict , and theme. Sounds difficult at first glance, but what if look closer? Plot: it’s the events happening in your essay (story). For example, you write about how you learned swimming and describe what you did/how it influenced your mood and swimming skills. Setting: it’s when and where the events happen; in other words, it’s location and time. For example, you learned swimming in the pool of your local school, in the winter of 2013. Character: it’s a protagonist who drives a plot of your story. Also, there can be supporting characters. Thus, you are the protagonist of your essay about swimming, and the supporting characters are your friends May and Jerry who went to the pool with you. In classical storytelling, a character is a hero who has to set off on a journey and deal with all antagonists and conflicts to come back home with a reward or wisdom. Conflict: it’s a problem the character resolves, a moment of tension he needs to win through. In our example, the conflict was the challenge for you to swim with legs and arms together. In literature, a conflict is defined as a hero’s struggle with opposing force. These forces are three: other characters (enemies), outside forces (society, nature, technology, fate), and a hero himself (his internal conflict). In your narrative essay, feel free to use any of those three conflict types. Theme: it’s the moral of a story. What have you learned? What do you want the readers to understand? Back to the example with the essay about swimming: you’ve learned to swim; you want to encourage readers to learn new things, be brave and not afraid of challenges. To combine all the five elements into a strong narrative essay, make sure you follow the format known as the narrative arc. It’s five phases your plot should get through to become a story. 2 – Format In short, a narrative arc is the sequence of the events in your story.
Narrative Essay Structure 4 – Language More often than not, narrative essays are about personal experience and thoughts. So you need to express them with a big voice for readers to believe your story. In writing, it refers to language patterns and sentence structures, as well as your tone and ability to “draw” images with words so readers could imagine themselves in the described situation. How to do that? Use descriptive language: consider synonyms, don’t repeat one and the same word in every sentence; add modifiers (adjective and adverbs) to describe the events but know when enough is enough. Use power words: avoid passive voice and weak adverbs. Often, a stronger noun or verb can express your thought better than vague modifiers Use sensory words: they are powerful modifiers that help readers smell, see, hear, feel, or taste the events of your narrative essay. Best described by Henneke Duistermaat, these words work like magic for your writing Mix simple and complex, long and short sentences in your narrative essay for better rhythm. It influences readability, and it will be easier for the audience to follow your thoughts and get emotionally involved in your story. Stay consistent: follow the narrative arc of your story, and don’t tell anything that didn’t happen.
Do’s and Don’ts of Your Narrative Essay To make this long guide easier for you to grasp, here is the short list of do’s and don’ts to remember when writing your narrative essay. DO’S: Start with some provoking info to hook readers: a question, a definition, a quote, a fact, etc. Write from the 1st person. (A 3rd person is okay, too.) State a point: what do you want to say by your essay? Try to evoke all five senses in your essay: what you saw, heard, felt, smelled, etc. Follow the format: include all components of a good story to your narrative essay. Make sure your story has a conflict. Describe events in chronological order. Use clear and descriptive language: power words, transition words, short sentences. DON’TS: Avoid slang, too formal language, and arguments like in persuasive essays. Avoid second-person narrative. Don’t tell, show. And make a point. Avoid writing about each and every movement of your character in the essay: specify key points that drive the plot..
