How to Write a Narrative Essay – Tips and Examples

Narrative Essay Writing is one in which you tell a story from your personal experience, using specific and sensory details to elicit reader involvement and comprehension. Narrative essays are typically written from the first-person point of view, covering the subject close to the author’s heart. Everything in these articles needs to follow a predetermined chronology and have a distinct beginning, middle, and end. In a Narrative essay, you convey a message while also telling a tale, frequently about a personal event. 

It is s one of the most commonly assigned forms of academic writing. They are often assigned to composition classes in high school or university. A good narrative essay stands up to a meaningful statement that goes beyond a mere listing of events and details. Therefore, the narrative essay serves two purposes: to entertain the audience and to highlight the significance of the experience.

What is a Narrative Essay?

A narrative essay is a type of academic writing in which the writer attempts to tell a story. Your goal as an author is to create the right atmosphere and a lifelike experience for your readers. This experience can be real, personal, and living from your own life (for example, telling the story of your first big success), or it can be imagined (for example, telling the story of how your life would have been if you had been born into different circumstances).

Narrative writing employs a plethora of vivid details, descriptive techniques, and so on to accomplish this and create the desired atmosphere.

Purpose of Narrative Writing

There is one fundamental question you should ask yourself if you want to know how to start a narrative essay: what is my purpose? The key purpose is sharing your story using all the elements such as beginning, middle, and ending, as well as plot, characters, setting, and climax. Your audience will be more emotionally engaged if you tell your story. Considering the appropriate style and approach to perfectly communicate your idea with your readers should be your main priority. 

Types of Narrative Writing:

Based on the writing, there are two types of narrative writing; Descriptive essay and autobiographical. While on the other hand, if it is of narrative style; these are Fictional, Non-Fictional, and Quest.

Descriptive essay

The main goal of descriptive narrative writing is to use details to describe an experience, situation, or memory. The writer’s goal is to evoke the different senses of the readers and paint a clear picture of an event to the reader by appealing to the five senses: touch, sight, taste, taste, and hearing. Writing a descriptive essay is all about writing your ideas to life.

Autobiographical

Everyone is familiar with the term autobiography. In this, you have to write the things you have seen and experienced throughout your life in the form of a story. Making the story accurate and true with the use of creative writing techniques, such as expressive language, engages readers and helps them become emotionally invested in the story. 

Fictional

Fiction, in simple terms, means describing imaginary events and people. Fiction is an imaginary narrative essay writing based on the writer’s thoughts, ideas, and feelings and presented as a series of many events. It can be presented in the form of a novel, folktale, short story, or play, among others. 

Non-fictional

Nonfictional narrative writing is based on true events, facts, and information. These are more of a personal narrative essay type of thing. Non-fiction examples include biographies with journals and diaries.

Quest (Poetry)

Quest, also called poetry can be both fictional and non-fictional because it represents emotions and feeling described with rhythm and sonnets.

Characteristics of a Narrative essay writing

Basic features that define this kind of essay: 

• It is informal as it is written in the first-person perspective.
• It’s written as informative not argumentative or to teach.
• It describes a person, scene, or moment in detail.
• Written as a story but in a structure of an essay.

What should be the length of a narrative essay?

This is the most common question that comes to the mind of a writer when they are writing their essay. Well actually, it all depends on the mind of the writer. In general, it should be five pages long. 

Narrative writing essays should be kept as short as possible while still telling an engaging story and adhering to the established format. If you write your essay with the right structure, you can succeed at this.

How to Choose a topic for a Narrative Essay?

Generally, when you are asked to write a narrative essay, you have the liberty to choose the topic and sometimes it is given to you. When you are assigned a topic, you have to look out for specific prompts. For example, An episode from your school life, A story of losing a friend, etc.

When you are choosing your topic make sure you are choosing a topic that you remember well because providing all the details is important. Always keep in mind that encounters with unexpected obstacles, twists, and turns make for much more compelling essays and reveal more about your character and outlook on life. Since you cannot show the story in pictures, you have to create one inside the heads of readers with your words.  These are some examples of open-minded prompts; Helping a stranger, The time you lost something valuable, etc.

Here are some Trending Narrative writing essay topics:

As we are a popular academic writing service provider in the UK, our professional narrative essay writers have written more than 10,000 narrative essays on various essay topics. As we observed that a few topics are commonly asked by university or college students for narrative essay writing. Here are some of those topics mentioned below:

• A time when you overcame a fear
• A time when love was not enough
• How my life changed since Covid-19
• What do you want to achieve in the future?
• The pros and cons of technology
• The happiest moment of your life
• First day at college or school

Structure and Elements of a Narrative Essay

Narrative essay outline includes writing concisely and from a clear point of view, as well as using clear and crisp language with frequent use of descriptive words and phrases. To create your outline, you have to consider these three essential parts:

Introduction

In the introduction part, you have to discuss all the points you are going to discuss in the essay. These should be effective enough to make the readers interested in reading the full essay.

Main body

The main body should include all of the story’s details, such as background, characters, thoughts, and more, as well as share facts and guide readers through the plot. You have to mention each new point in separate paragraphs that are sequential as well as transitional. Detailed and vivid descriptions help your readers picture the events better. Dialogues also help to present the story more effectively, as they bring the story to life and support the atmosphere.

Conclusion

The conclusion is the final part of the essay. Depending on your story, the ending can be sad or happy. This is where you should restate key details and ideas mentioned in the body. Your main motive while writing the conclusion should be leaving your readers something to think about.

Elements of a Narrative Essay Writing:

To write your narrative essay as a perfect story, it should consist of these 5 elements: Plot, setting, character, theme, and conflict.  

Plot- It is the set of events in your narrative writing. For example, if you are writing about the story of how you learned basketball then describe what you did and what inspired you to play basketball.

Setting- It is about the time and location of the series that happened. For example, You started playing basketball in high school in 2016.

Character- Character is a crucial element as it drives the whole plot of the story. The protagonist of your story can also have supporting characters. Like, Coach Williams trained you to polish your dribbling skills. 

In a good story essay, you have to start with the journey of the protagonist from the start and all the things he experienced throughout and became a hero in everyone’s eyes. 

Conflict- It’s the moment of depression or worries that the character has to overcome to achieve the desired goal. Thus, how did you play in the tournament when you had a leg injury?

In fictional narrative writing, the conflict is written as the hero’s struggle to win over the other characters like enemies, society, or sometimes even his internal conflict. 

Theme- It comes in the final part of the narrative essay writing as a moral about what the readers have learned from your story. It’s about what you want them to understand. Looking back on our example, You want to inspire people to face the challenges and take the opportunities that come their way.

Tips to ace your Narrative Essay:

In narrative writing, you should remember that you are sharing emotional details with your readers. Here are some tips to write a good essay:

1. Build interest right from the start-  Beginning your essay with an interesting quote, fact, or definition will help in grabbing the attention of readers. Keep your language clear and simple for better understanding.
2. Use First-person perspective- This is the first rule of writing a narrative essay writing as it describes real events and happenings of the writer’s life. You can also write in the third-person perspective but only if it is necessary. 
3. Avoid overusing details-  Your essay should be in vivid detail. However, details should be used sparingly. Excessive detail in describing your every movement in the story can have a negative impact on your essay. Keep it personal, and important roles in your story will undoubtedly pique the interest of your readers.
4. Keep your essay clear-  Complex words and syntactic words are a hindrance to clarity. Instead, use the same slang and idioms you would use in a speech. Avoiding overly clinical language and passive construction can greatly improve your essay and engage readers.
5. Use dynamic words- Your words need to be vibrant and colorful. Use words that are unique and easy to understand to make the readers feel the same feelings that you felt.
6. Write a good narrative- A good narrative writing essay should have strong characters, a good structure and details, and an emotional and captivating story.
7. Have a good plot- The plot is generally told in consecutive order, and the story always serves a purpose. It is written with emotive language and detailed descriptions that draw the reader into your essay. All of these details are related to the writer’s main point in some way.

Add conflict-  Add some conflict to your story to make it more interesting. Conflict always has an impact on the readers. It could be like the hero fighting with the enemy to achieve victory or having difficulty etc.

Here are some examples of great Narrative Essay Writing:

This is an example of how a little boy conquers his fear of falling from his bicycle. This essay projects the importance of the people we have in our lives and how they help us to overcome our fears. 

This narrative essay is about a girl who is a total failure in her studies. To make her parents proud, she studies hard and gets distinctive marks in all her subjects. This story gives the message that if you believe in yourself then anything is possible. It is written so well that the readers also get to experience the happiness the girl feels.

This brilliantly written essay is about a boy and his first day in college. This piece of narrative writing is a perfect example of sharing your personal experience in your essay. It portrays the things the writer experiences on his first day of college, exactly opposite of his expectations.

Archlite is one of the well-known Assignment & Essay writing service providers in the UK that has been working day in and day out for university students. If you are tired of writing lengthy assignments or complex essays all alone, then you must seek the support of our professional academic writers. So far, we have assisted students living in Edinburgh, London, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, etc. You can approach us via phone call, live chat, and email ID. What are you waiting for? Get in touch with us today for a better tomorrow.