How to Write a Winning Narrative Essay
A narrative essay takes an approach that enables you as a writer to speak about yourself, your thoughts, and personal experience. We all have interesting memories and thoughts that are worth sharing with the readers. However, sometimes people feel confused about the necessity to write about something personal and spend a lot of time preparing to write a narrative essay.
Writing a narrative essay means telling a story. Your narrative essay should be based on your point of view and give a feeling of specific and often personal details included to appeal to the audience and involve them in the sequence of the story. As a rule, a narrative essay makes a point in the first sentence, but the core idea can also appear at the end of an introduction paragraph.
A narrative essay refers to a personal experience and often has a form of a story. If you use this technique of writing, you have to be sure that all the conventions of storytelling are included. These conventions include characters, plot, setting, climax, and ending. The details like descriptions and comparisons are used to explain, embellish and support the story.
To sum up, a narrative essay:
- Is told from your own point of view and must be highly personal;
- Makes a point and supports it throughout the story;
- Is filled with numerous details to support the narrative;
- Uses all the aspects of story writing, like conflict and sequence;
- Uses dialogues.
The difficulties of narrative essay and narrative report writing
As a rule, students perceive a narrative essay as an average college paper. However, even if are assigned to compose a narrative report on a book or an article, you are not required to create a simple “book report” that simply outlines the plot. In fact, your paper should answer the question: “What happens in the book.” Still, there are so much more to be considered besides the simple retelling.
A writer should base his/her report on the main concepts, arguments, assumptions and ideas that the initial text of the book or article expresses. Thus, one should leave aside the discussion of the actual events and exclude it from the context. A writer should base his/her essay on the central ideas of the text and express his/her personal opinion about them, as well as the way these ideas appeal to the audience.
Principles to keep in mind while writing a narrative essay
- Involve the audience in a story.
Whether you are writing about your personal experience or the events described in the book, you should do your best to recreate the event for a reader than to tell about it. - Find the main point that a story supports.
If you generalize the main point, you will find an easy way to make your personal experience meaningful for the audience. - Remember that the key component of your paper is a story itself, so do your best to support the details, provide explanations where it is necessary and enhance the story.
Details of narrative essay writing
Consider the following details in writing your paper:
- Generally, students write their narrative essays using the first person (using I). However, some of them use the third person (he, she, it). It is also allowed.
- To make your narrative effective, you should rely on concrete details to cover the main point. These details serve to create a forceful, unified effect that makes an impression.
- Don’t forget about the structure. Include a plot, setting, and characters, as well as the climax and the ending of a story.