What Is a Narrative Essay?
A narrative essay is one that involves the author telling a story that easily connects with their personal experiences.
This is an essay that gives the author a chance to know themselves better, as it offers some insights and truths in the life of the author the readers can relate with. As the readers go through the content, they will find that these are events that give them new insights of looking at their life experiences, or reveal truths that they can relate to. Due to the fact that the narrative essay development approach is related to the personal experiences of the author and that these experiences are events that the readers have had a chance to experience, it provides human interest, draws the readers closer to the storyteller and in some of the cases, sparks some element of curiosity. As such, narrative essays bring about psychological healing, give insights, provide entertainment, and even create some sense of shared history while linking people together.
Purpose of a Narrative Essay
As stated earlier, when an author wants to tell a story, the best way they can bring it out is through the narrative essay writing skills. It is important for the reader to be able to connect with the audience at an intricate level where they give the audience a chance to reflect. The purpose of the narrative essay writing is to link people together and bring up the aspect of shared history. Different people in the audience will have had some element of memories that are associated with the events that took place in the story. As such, they all share a memory that took place at one time or the other in their lives. At the same time, they are linked by the experience that they had. The other purpose of the narrative essay is entertaining the audience. As the readers go through the events that are deliberated in the text, they are entertained. Much like reading or watching a thrilling movie, the readers are entertained by the events that take place. The other part of the narrative essay`s purpose is the psychological healing that it offers the readers. It is common for the author to write about a crisis that they went through and how it changed their lives or their perspective in live. At the same time, there are incidences that the author will write about and the way they handled them or the way that they should have handled them. Such experiences also relate to incidences that some of the readers are going through or have gone through. As such, the readers are able to gain clarity of the experiences that they had and in some of the cases gain new insights on how the situation may have played out the best. For those that have not had such experiences, they get better insight on how they may handle the situation if it happens to them. This means that the other purpose of the narrative essays is to give insights to the readers about certain aspects that are to be discussed in the narrative essay.
What Student May Write About in a Narrative Essay?
A student can write about their first encounters at the school where they are studying. These are experiences that they had getting acquainted with the various parts of the programs at the school. This is an essay that may help a student who is enrolling at the school to better understand what it is like for new students.
Conventions of a Narrative Essay
- Involve the readers: To make sure that the narrative essay gets the story to the readers in the most elaborate way, the author has to make sure that they involve the readers in the story. This is relative to the fact that, it becomes much easier for the author to recreate the story than simply tell the story.
- Make a sequence: At the same time, it helps the readers to better connect with the content and the author. At the same it is crucial that the author is able to relate the events in sequence. This makes it easier for the readers to follow the flow and better understand the story.
- Detailed events: There should be clear details of the events, places and the people to aid with understanding. For the author to better connect with the story, it should be told in his/her point of view. This is due to the fact that narrative essays tend to reflect what the author thought, saw and felt or feels.
Basic Tips on Narrative Essay Writing
- There are some tips to writing a good narrative essay, and among them is having a good outline. This acts as a guide to organizing the ideas in a manner that is easy to follow and improves the credibility of the author.
- There is also the aspect of formulating a good introduction. Ideally, the introduction bears the hook statement which gets the audience reading.
- The thesis statement is also crucial, relative to guiding the author when developing arguments in the paper.
- The body paragraphs should be in support of the thesis statement of the narrative essay.
- The conclusion on the other hand, should offer some insights on the moral of the story as the part of the reflective analysis of the events that took place.
- The essay should also have elements of clarity to make sure the audience understands the content.
- It is important that the student does not use second person narrative, as they are supposed to show that they are the ones that actually experienced the events.
- The work choice should not be too clinical, this makes the essay not too formal, but rather takes on the form of a narrative, as if conversing with the audience.
- Using too many references makes the essay seem copied. The essence of the essay is making it personal, with minimal references to other works from other writers.
- Too much information is going to spoil the element of interaction with the audience. Some details should be highlighted to help the audience form their own opinions.
More info about narrative essay writing you may find here:
Short video about narrative writing