Steps to create a narrative essay
Everyone likes telling stories on various topics, yes, sometimes they are not true but they engage people, they make them listen to you. Each story is a kind of a narrative essay. So, it`s important to know some tricks to create worth narrative stories and become a real master. You will get loads of such tasks in any educational establishment.
We have prepared for you some useful tips, which will help you write good narrative essays.
How to choose a topic?
- You can select a story that illustrates some idea. There are two main components in narrative essays: a story itself and its analysis. Your essay should be about some concept or event, idea and the story should clearly show it. This kind of assignment is used to check your creativity level, develop your critical thinking and ability to prove some ideas with the appropriate stories. Usually, you don`t need to use any outside recourses, you can use events from your own experience.
- Make sure your story matches the prompt. Very often teachers give you the prompt, which you have to follow. So, be attentive to write an appropriate story.
- Make your story clear. It`s better to choose a story, which is easy to retell, as you`re not writing a novel. Your essay should be clear and concise. Broad topics are not very good for narrative essays, so choose a specific day or event to tell about. Moreover, pay attention to the number of characters you introduce. Make the list of them smaller, as there`s little chance for readers to remember all the names, and this can distract them from the main idea.
- Use as many details as possible. If you want your essay to be good, then use specific details, smells and so on. This will give your essay liveness and evoke interest. You can even make up something to give your essay freshness.
Creating a draft of a story
- Make the outline. It`s better to start your work on an essay writing with a plan, you should point out the main ideas not to forget something important. Moreover, the sequence also matters. Think where your story starts, this will also help to omit some unnecessary details. Just list the main parts of your story, this will make you more organized and specific.
- Share your own point of view only. Narrative essays are almost always written from the first person singular, so you will use āIā through the entire assignment. If you use dialogues or discuss something in the past tense, use āIā. It may be difficult but this influences the overall image of your story. Moreover, such assignments are usually written in past tenses.
- Give a description of important characters. If there were some people with you, who influenced the story, who played an important role, then you are to tell about them as well. Moreover, you can even mention the details if they are essential.
- Look for an antagonist. Very often the readers expect to see antagonist in a story. There`s always a protagonist, who`s the main character, who struggles to achieve something or to prove some ideas, but there always arises a person, who doesn`t let the things go smoothly. Still, antagonists are not always bad and you don`t necessarily need to include them into your story.
- Describe the setting. It`s also important to describe the place and conditions where the story takes place. Provide your readers with some special details of that location.
- Use unique details. Details matter much. You can find them everywhere, even in the oldest office. The may not describe something but show some things from specific angles. Your aim is to show not to tell in this assignment.
The essay revision
- Check whether the topic of your assignment is covered with your story. Include your thesis statement in the beginning of an essay to give your readers a hint of what your point of view is.
- Use scenes and summaries. You describe scenes to give the background information and after that you can make some conclusions.
- Check the format, use the dialogues in an appropriate way.
- Revise your assignment. Read your story from the beginning till the end for several times. Check any kinds of mistakes, grammar and structure. If needed, ask your friends for help.