Writing a Narrative Essay

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There would not be many people in the world who do not like stories. Everyone likes to read or listen to a story that will teach them or tell them something they didn’t know. Stories are amazing gifts of literature to mankind.

Such is the role of a narrative essay. Stories are basically narratives, written either in the first person or the third person. What could be better than an essay that tells a story, tight? But let us first see that what actually a narrative essay is.

 

What is Narrative Essay?

A narrative essay is a write-up that tells a story, usually in a first person. A narrative essay is mainly used to describe an event, a trip, an experience, etc. Let us understand that with an example:

A description of a trip that you went on can be a narrative essay. This includes mentioning all the details of the trip from your point of view and mentioning the elements as you saw and felt. Also, it should be in a chronological order.

 

Writing a narrative essay takes great story telling skills to bind the readers to your piece. It a difficult skill to master, to be honest, but it is not impossible either. A good narrative essay makes the reader want to revisit the experience that they read about, in person.

 

What can you include in Narrative Essay writing?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what is required to write a narrative essay – the piece of writing should be a first person narration – that will suffice. Now there are a lot of topics that can be covered in this category of essays. For the sake of simplifying things, there are sub-categories made to categorize in a further and more simplified manner.

 

Let us see the two prominent categories:

 

  • Autobiographical Narrative: All the personal experiences that you pen down (or keyboard down) in first person are called autobiographical narratives. It is quite obvious that every narrative essay will be an experience, but if the experience is personal and you’re using the first person, the essay is called an autobiographical narrative. The examples include:
    • When you met a celebrity.
    • When you were stuck in a jungle when your car broke down.
    • The most memorable birthday.
    • The worst restaurant that you had visited.
  • Descriptive Narrative: A narrative that you write as a spectator is called a descriptive narrative. Here, the use of first person is not recommended; the essay is supposed to tell more about the thing that you want to tell the readers about than what you felt about the thing. The examples include:
    • A riot that you witnessed.
    • The description of the preparation of a flash mob.
    • Organisation of an event.

There is little or no difference between the two types of narrative essay writing. Except the fact that autobiographical narratives essentially have to use the first person and the descriptive narratives do not have to.

 

Structure of a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is probably the easiest one among the four major classifications of essays. Why? Because anyone can write a narrative; there is no such specific rule as in what should be there in a narrative essay or what should not. But as I was on to do my essay the previous day; I realized that there are in fact some ground elements that better be included as permanents in the structure of a narrative essay.

 

Like every other essay category, a narrative essay also has three basic parts – the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. There are elements that are specific to every essay category that should be included while writing the three parts. Let us see what they are in the case of narrative essays, and what the structure of a narrative essay should include:

 

  • The Introduction: The introduction is the key while writing a narrative essay. More than any other essay category, a narrative essay needs a good enough introduction. This is because the quality of writing is a direct factor of how good the experience will turn out to be. So you need to keep in mind the following things while writing the introduction for a narrative essay:
    • You need to make the opening sentence absolutely irresistible for the reader. If they like the opening phrase, they will have a positive feeling about the quality of the experience that you’re narrating.
    • After you have transitioned from the initial excitement to the actual introduction of the narrative that you’re writing, you need to mention the purpose of the narrative in the introductory paragraph itself. This will impress the reader on another front, and also add a curiosity so as to what is going to be there at the end of the narration.
  • The Body: The body of a narrative is where you actually tell the reader about what actually you experienced and what exactly went down. This sounds pretty exciting, but there are a few basics that you need to know to ensure that your writing is interesting and correct:
    • The events should be in a chronological order. This helps the reader to organize things in their mind properly, and arrive at the same place that you want them to.
    • Mostly the narratives are written in past tense. This is only natural because any experience that you’re describing has already happened. Doing this would make it easy for the readers to comprehend and relate.
    • Dialogues make a great addition to any narrative. Especially in the autobiographical narratives, adding dialogues would make them a lot more interesting.
  • The Conclusion: There are few points in the conclusion as well:
    • Re-state your purpose for writing the narrative. This will not let the readers get deviated from the main objective that you’re trying to accomplish.
    • Your conclusion should leave sweetness in the minds of the readers and a mild food for thought as well.

 

To wind things up

Although writing a narrative is comparatively easier than other categories of essays, if you ever need any help regarding it, you can always come up to an essay writing service and let them handle this business for you.

 

Here are some more essay guides that might help you!

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