How to write a narrative essay
March 4th, 2010As children, we’ve all heard stories. Do you remember how avidly you listened, sometimes with your mouth open, when someone was narrating a story? You were eager to know what happened next and what the conclusion was. Well, a narrative essay is no different. Ideally, it should just be as gripping as a story and should make the reader want to read it right until the end.
The narrative essay, as the name itself indicates is a narration of an event or an occurrence that happened to you the writer, or to someone else. It can be based on your experiences or on the experiences of a friend, colleague or someone you know. Often, students are worried about the challenges involved in writing this essay because it means that your narration should be so spellbinding that the evaluator’s interest is held right until the end. Another common reason for apprehension among students is the message that they need to communicate towards the end, or the conclusion of the essay. If you are worried about this, then you should certainly check out some essay samples, so that you’re prepared in advance. You will also be able to avail essay writing help from our website. Common topics for a narrative essay would be a major success or failure in life and how you or someone else went about facing it, a childhood event that had an impact for life, an incident that caused a major transformation in your attitude, or an occurrence that helped you realize someone’s worth, etc.
While writing a narrative essay, keep in mind that you can use tools such as a flashback to make the narration more engrossing. Usually, it is written chronologically, but if you think your essay needs a different style and not a flashback or a transition, that is perfectly fine too. Try to recollect the experience as much as you can and spend some time drafting the memories to first create an outline of the narrative. Then, elaborate on your outline. Remember that even the most trivial and unimportant fact can be of interest to the reader and may actually have a role in keeping up the reader’s attention. Because the incident happened to you or to someone you know, you may want to exclude certain details thinking that they are not so significant. But, bear in mind that your reader does not have the context you have and this may cause confusion. Therefore, try to include as many details as possible. However, there is a delicate balance between including superfluous details and relevant ones. Be careful not to overdo it so much that the focus of the essay is diverted!
Strong descriptive words and phrases are of great importance in a narrative essay. Also, because of the story telling style of the essay, the characterization, plot and climax hold a lot of significance. If you’ve been training on research paper writing or term paper writing, you may need to practice writing the narrative style more often because all these require different approaches.
