What is a Narrative Essay

Publication Date: 23 Oct 2017
Author: Ben Parker

Sometimes students confuse a narrative essay with an expository essay. That happens frequently enough. The one thing you should understand about it is that if your task is to write about your life experience closely related to the class topic, it means – you are about to write a narrative essay.

While completing such writing assignment, you will learn how to articulate your own experience, discover something new. You will also have an opportunity to tell the story of your life to other students, examiners and professors. Actually, it is never boring to write something about yourself. You can always make your writing interesting by using a joke or something else to make a paper you offer effective and amusing. It would be great for you to look through some other narrative essay samples to have general views and ideas how it everything should look like.

Just like any other type of paper, narrative essay has the main characteristics and features of its own. However, it is very important here not to mix up a narrative essay with a narrative report. These two sound similar, but are still different in many ways.

• The narrative essay is similar a little bit to a short story. In fact, both of them use the same bound text devices.
• All things and events in the story are presented in order and sequence.
• This essay is aimed to show writer`s personal view and ideas.
• All the events described in the essay shouldn’t be just told for entertaining. All of them should render some meaningful conclusion, details that provoke readers to think. The events should maybe motivate sometimes or give a useful lesson, providing some moral issues, this or that question etc.
• The narrative story is usually written in the first person.

Let`s look at the structure of the narrative story:

• Introduction is the first part, where you should state a thesis in one or two sentences, giving a slight picture of the chosen topic. Tell what you are going to write about, when it all happened etc. Well, it can remind you of a biographical narrative essay.
• Body paragraph should contain information that is strongly connected with the thesis statement. Describe all the characters, who are involved in this or that event, tell exactly who they are and what they did. Here you should also provide your readers with the story setting to facilitate their understanding of a story as a whole. Finish your essay with the end of presented event.
• The last part is conclusion, where you should tell on the reasons of choosing that topic. Tell what have you learnt from it. In fact, your narrative essay should be a good example of something. It should convey some useful information, smart and effective message to the audience, what is helpful and instructive in some ways.

Check these typical errors, which may occur while completing a narrative essay:

• Bad choice of the described situation, which is not related to the topic, given by professor.
• Dwelling on boring event with the lack of some interesting moments, lessons and conclusion.
• Putting too much unnecessary information. It is better to avoid it, as the reader can simply lose the interest.
• Shifting various things and moments too rapidly.