Narrative Essay Examples and Key Elements. In a narrative essay, you tell a story, often about a personal experience, but you also make a point. So, the purpose is not only to tell an entertaining tale, but also to expound on the importance of the experience. In the narrative essay examples below, see if you can pull out the moral or theme Casey At The Bat. By Ernest Lawrence Thayer. in Famous Narrative Poems. The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day; The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play, And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same, A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of A narrative essay is a form of storytelling where you have to provide sensory details of your personal experience. However, when writing a narrative essay, you will have to follow a set pattern and the guidelines closely.. Besides learning these basics, skimming through examples is also a
Editors' Picks: The 20 Best Narratively Stories
General Education. A narrative essay is one of the most intimidating assignments you can be handed at any level of your education.
Where you've previously written argumentative essays that make a point or analytic essays that dissect best narrative writing examples, a narrative essay asks you to write what is effectively a story. Like the stories you're used to reading, a narrative essay is generally but not always chronological, following a clear throughline from beginning to end, best narrative writing examples.
Even if the story jumps around in time, all the details will come back to one specific theme, demonstrated through your choice in motifs. Unlike many creative stories, however, your narrative essay should be based in fact. Another big difference between narrative essays and creative fiction—as well as other kinds of best narrative writing examples that narrative essays are based on motifs.
A motif is a dominant idea or theme, one that you establish before writing the essay. For example, say you want to write a narrative essay about how your first day in high school helped you establish your identity. All of those ideas feed back into the central motif of establishing your identity. The important thing to remember is that while a narrative essay is typically told chronologically and intended to read like a story, it is not purely for entertainment value. A narrative essay delivers its theme by deliberately weaving the motifs through the events, scenes, and details.
While a narrative essay may be entertaining, its primary purpose is to tell a complete story based on a central meaning. Unlike other essay forms, it is totally okay—even expected—to use first-person narration in narrative essays.
Generally speaking, your narrative essay should be in first-person perspective. Narrative essays also share some features with analytical essays, in which you derive meaning from a book, film, or other media. In an analytical essay, you examine narrative, whereas in a narrative essay you create narrative. The structure of a narrative essay is also a bit different than other essays. To return to the example of an essay discussing your first day of high school and how it impacted the shaping of your identity, it would be weird to put the events out of order, even if not knowing what to do after lunch feels like a stronger idea than choosing where to sit, best narrative writing examples.
One of the best ways to learn how to write a narrative essay is to look at a great narrative essay sample. to get my credentials. I imagine credentials to be a small white card in the band of a fedora. My real interest in credentials is getting into rides and shows for free. I never did go to the state fair, though—I pretty much topped out at the county fair level. Throughout this essay, David Foster Wallace recounts his experience as press at the Illinois State Fair.
Wallace is literally telling the audience exactly what happened, complete with dates and timestamps for when each event occurred. All of these details feed back into the throughline of East Coast thinking that Wallace introduces in the first paragraph. The East Coast existential treat is escape from confines and stimuli—quiet, rustic vistas that hold still, turn inward, turn away. Not so in the rural Midwest. Something in a Midwesterner sort of actuatesdeep down, at a public event….
The real spectacle that draws us here is us. The reason this works so well is that Wallace has carefully chosen his examples, outlined his motif and themes in the first paragraph, and eventually circled back to the original motif with a clearer understanding of his original point.
When outlining your own narrative essay, try to do the same. Start with a theme, build upon it with examples, and return to it in the end with an even deeper understanding of the original issue. After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed best narrative writing examples so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed.
Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, best narrative writing examples, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me.
It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer best narrative writing examples himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach best narrative writing examples death.
I laid the pencil down again. In this essay, Virginia Woolf explains her encounter with a dying moth. In the title, best narrative writing examples, Woolf tells us this essay is about death. However, she mentions that it is mid-September and best narrative writing examples the fields were being plowed. In this short essay, she chronicles the experience of watching a moth seemingly embody life, then die. Woolf begins by setting up the transitional fall season, often associated with best narrative writing examples coming to an end, and raises the ideas of pleasure, vitality, and pity.
At one point, Woolf tries to help the dying moth, but reconsiders, as it would interfere with the natural order of the world, best narrative writing examples. Woolf is able to explore complicated ideas in a short essay by being deliberate about what details she includes, just as you can be in your own essays. On the twenty-ninth of July, inmy father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, best narrative writing examples all our energies were concentrated in waiting best narrative writing examples these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century.
On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass. However, you can see the motifs quite clearly: death, fatherhood, struggle, and race. By introducing those motifs in the first paragraph, the reader understands that everything discussed in the essay will come back to those core ideas. When he talks about his encounters with best narrative writing examples and best narrative writing examples, he is talking, in part, about his father.
Because his father was a hard, uncompromising man, Baldwin struggles to reconcile the knowledge that his father was right about many things with his desire to not let that hardness consume him, best narrative writing examples, as well.
This fight begins, however, in the heart and it had now been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.
Here, Baldwin ties together the themes and motifs into one clear statement: that he must continue to fight and recognize injustice, especially racial injustice, just as his father did. But unlike his father, he must do it beginning with himself—he must not let himself be closed off to the world as his father was.
And yet, he still wishes he had his father for guidance, even as he establishes that he hopes to be a different man than his father.
In this essay, best narrative writing examples, Baldwin loads the front of the essay with his motifs, and, through his narrative, weaves them together into a theme. In the end, he comes to a conclusion that connects all of those things together and leaves the reader with a lasting impression of completion—though the elements may have been initially disparate, in the end everything makes sense. You can replicate this tactic of introducing seemingly unattached ideas and weaving them together in your own essays.
By introducing those motifs, developing them throughout, best narrative writing examples, and bringing them together in the end, you can demonstrate to your reader how all of them are related.
Here are a few tips to keep your narrative essay feeling strong and fresh. Motifs are the foundation of a narrative essay. What are you trying to say?
How can you say that using specific symbols or events? Those are your motifs. Try to avoid cliches, as these will feel tired to your readers. Instead of roses to symbolize love, best narrative writing examples, try succulents, best narrative writing examples. Keep your language and motifs fresh and your essay will be even stronger! Not so in a narrative essay—in this case, you want to make use of your own perspective. Sometimes a different perspective can make your point even stronger, best narrative writing examples.
If you want someone to identify with your point of view, it may be tempting to choose a second-person perspective. If you want a little bit of distance, third-person perspective may be okay. But be careful—too much distance and your reader may feel like the narrative lacks truth. It keeps you, the writer, close to the narrative, reminding the reader that it really happened. Your essay should be true. Rarely in life do we experience anything with a clear, concrete meaning the way somebody in a best narrative writing examples might.
Also, nobody expects you to perfectly recall details that may have happened years ago. You may have to reconstruct dialog from your memory and your imagination. Dialog is a powerful tool. Because a narrative essay is a story, you can use sensory details to make your writing more interesting. These details can tie into your overall motifs and further your point.
Woolf describes in great detail what she sees while watching the moth, giving us the sense that we, too, are watching the moth.
All these descriptions anchor us not only in the story, best narrative writing examples, but in the motifs and best narrative writing examples as well.
One of the tools of a writer is making the reader feel as you felt, and sensory details help you achieve that. Looking to brush up on your essay-writing capabilities before the ACT? This guide to ACT Best narrative writing examples will walk you through some of the best strategies and practice questions to get you prepared! Part of practicing for the ACT is ensuring your word choice and diction are on point. Check out this guide to some of the most common errors on the ACT English section to be sure that you're not making these common mistakes!
A solid understanding of English principles will help you make an effective point in a narrative essay, and you can get that understanding through taking a rigorous assortment of high school English classes! Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis.
She has spent several years tutoring K students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education. Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.
How To Write a Perfect Narrative Essay - Strategy For Writing introduction and conclusion
, time: 4:16Easy Narrative Essay Examples and Writing Tips
Narrative Essay Examples and Key Elements. In a narrative essay, you tell a story, often about a personal experience, but you also make a point. So, the purpose is not only to tell an entertaining tale, but also to expound on the importance of the experience. In the narrative essay examples below, see if you can pull out the moral or theme Jul 08, · “This is the ultimate example of a reported memoir. The writer recounted passed-down family tales, but also did the legwork of backing them up with research.” – Lilly. 5. Nick Brown Smelled Bull. By Vinnie RotondaroAuthor: Narratively A narrative essay is a form of storytelling where you have to provide sensory details of your personal experience. However, when writing a narrative essay, you will have to follow a set pattern and the guidelines closely.. Besides learning these basics, skimming through examples is also a
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