Narrative Essay: All You Need to Know

Writing narrative essays requires you to ensure that a fixed set of points are covered. The main point of the essay needs to be mentioned in the opening sentence, and the body of the essay should be as descriptive as possible to tell who the characters are and what the setting and location are.

A narrative essay example has a set of important features that you cannot ignore. You should base it on your experience and communicate a clear idea or lesson. In addition, it should have a topic and an outline so that your readers clearly know what you have written about. Making a friend or a relative to read the narrative essay example is one of the best ways to get firsthand knowledge about what is missing and what needs to be added.

Students would mostly shun the idea of writing personal experiences in academic papers. This happens especially because they don’t find it comfortable to write personal experiences and mix them with academics. However, there is an easy way to deal with this perplexing situation. You can describe a particular event of your life, without the need for choosing any dramatic event. It can further be made easier by first creating a personal narrative essay outline.

How To Write A Narrative Paper?

How would you write a great narrative to grab the attention of your readers? A good example of a narrative essay is to describe a personal experience that can give a lesson to your audience. It should be as descriptive as possible and you must take the readers directly to action without wasting time and attention on lengthy introductions. Create the precise setting of the experience and create a good example of a narrative essay that would keep them glued.

Good narrative essay examples should be based upon ideas and revolve around your personal experiences for the best effect on readers. The experiences should be some special moments, events, or incidents in your life. Another important feature of good narrative essay examples is that they would have a central point around which the entire story would be based. Since every individual can have an incident or a thought in life that inspires or is different, it would make it easier to write a narrative essay.

When writing a literary critical analysis of any story or poem, you must ask a set of questions to understand the work better. This would require you to deeply understand everything, starting from the title to the single words or phrases that are not familiar. And then you must read the work again to create your literary critical analysis. The second time, you should be able to answer questions like writing the theme in a single sentence and summarizing the work in a single paragraph.

How To Make A Good Narrative Essay?

There are some elements that make a successful narrative essay. This includes maintaining a chronological order, stating the main point in the opening sentence, and using words and a writing style to make the essay as vivid as possible to the reader. Conflict and sequence should be used properly to gradually build the climax. You can write the narrative essay from the first-person’s point, but a third-person’s perspective can also be used.

When you want to know how to write a narrative essay, it is important to determine the topic and discuss it with your peers and teachers. A brainstorming session can help generate the best ideas. Once you write the narrative, it is important to read and re-read it, and make edits for grammatical and technical mistakes. Also ask another person to read it and suggest grammatical changes.

Important Parts

There are different parts of a good narrative essay example. It includes: introduction, starting information, an anecdote, a short dialogue, and a summary. An attention grabber, or a HOOK, is to be used in the introduction so as to grab the attention of your readers. The dialogue section should contain no more than a couple dialogue exchanges between the speakers. And, this should be followed by elaboration.

A narrative essay follows the example of a story. Usually, it is a copy of your personal experience and needs to have some essential elements. The steps leading to the composition of a narrative essay include creating the topic, the structure, the draft, and providing as much detail as possible. You can add touches of dialogues or funny anecdotes to keep the readers interested.

A narrative writing needs to have many features. This includes creating a structure, enabling the readers to see and feel, rather than telling them, the story. Use the right tense and an overall tone. There are many factors to be considered when considering the choice of these elements.

A narrative essay would usually be written from the first-person perspective. And, it should have a topic and content that should arouse emotional strings in the reader. Just like stories, it must have a plot, description of the characters, and the location, building to the climax and then a conclusion. The topic chosen must mean a lot to the writer and must be interesting for the readers.

There are many different personal experiences that can become the focus or topic of a narrative essay. However, sometimes it can become difficult to choose the one that is ideal or, at times, something may not come to your mind. In such a situation, you can take the help of prompts like a childhood experience, a failure or a major achievement, a realization, a deed, or a changing moment to bring to your mind an incident that you can make the topic.

How To Choose A Topic For Your Essay?

Most of the time, the reason you want to write a personal narrative essay is not clear. It is only after you have recounted and recorded all the points related to a specific event or experience that you are able to find the reason and the meaning. It would then give you a lesson that came along with that experience.

After you have written the essay, then rewritten it and made edits, you would be able to create a beautiful piece of work. It would then display what the significance of the event was and how it affected your life. When choosing narrative essay topics, you would always find it difficult where to start from. However, there are hundreds of events and experiences from your life that you can elaborate on. You can write about a moment when you met someone unexpectedly. You can write about a funny thing that took place at a wedding or at a funeral. You can also choose narrative essay topics about a day from your job or college.

When writing a personal narrative essay, the most difficult thing can be the start. But, if you start with words like “I did,” “I was,” "I cried," or something similar, it can act as a kickstart to begin your writing work. The choice of the topic can be anything ranging from a life-changing event to the most trivial things. Once you write the word "I," it would automatically empower you to start the story. And, that is what you would do after you have written these first few words. Let it be as raw as possible, but your focus should be to bring that experience out on paper. You shouldn’t worry about the unfocused nature of the flow of thoughts. This is usually known as free-wheeling writing, and after you have wrote the entire story, it is time to give it the shape of the personal narrative essay where it would say exactly what you wanted to say in the first place.