Writing a Narrative Essay College English II

What is a Narrative Essay? When you write a narrative essay, you are telling a story. Narrative essays are told from author’s point of view, so there is feeling as well as specific and sensory details provided to get the reader involved in the elements and sequence of the story.

Purpose of a Narrative Essay A narrative essay is a story written about a personal experience.  A way to learn to articulate personal experience to inform others or describe something. Create a sense of shared history and link people together. Provide psychological healing. Provide reflection or insight.

Characteristics of the Narrative Narrative essays describe ones’ specific experiences that changed how they felt, thought, or acted.  Making Points: isn't just an entertaining story, but has a point to make, a purpose to convey.  Purpose: show your readers the importance and influence the experience has had on you.

Writing Conventions Generally written from the first person’s perspective. However, third person (he, she, or it) can also be used. Filled with concrete, sensory details to explain, support points and to create a unified, forceful dominant impression. Including a plot, a setting, characters, a climax and an ending.

A good narrative: makes a point and communicates a main idea through descriptive details. “Show” rather than “Tell.” relates events in sequence. includes detailed observations of people, places, and events. presents important changes, contrasts, or conflicts and creates tension. focuses on connection between past events, people or places and the present. Using dialogue to make the essay more alive and real.

Planning Select an incident worthy of writing about Making points/insights in that incident Dredge up details which will make the incident real for readers.

Show not to Tell Pacing the story to focus only on eventful periods and ignore inconsequential stretches. Provide details and descriptions. details include action verbs, creative adjectives, and character descriptions. use dialogue to make the essay sound more alive and real.

Example I didn’t go back to school that fall. My mother said it was because I was sick. I did have a cold the week that school opened; I had been playing in the gutters and had got my feet wet, because there were holes in my shoes… I stayed cooped up in the house, without any companionship… (We’re Poor, Floyd Dell)

Descriptive Paragraph Zoon-in: The narrator is like a video camera sweeping over the scene and pausing briefly to focus on selected characters or objects. Using adjectives to tell how things look, feel, taste, sound, or smell. (atmosphere, appearance…) The dominant impression of your description should be the heart of the person, place, or scene you are attempting to describe. Using similes and metaphors.

Adjectives Without: I, the child in the family, would soothe an adult. With: I, the child in the family, would soothe a frantic adult. Without: I saw my father sitting in a rocker, his vertebrae resting on a pillow. With: I saw my father sitting in a rocker, his painful vertebrae resting on a pillow. Without: One afternoon in march. With: One sweltering late afternoon in March.

Example--Metaphors Then the kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals, then crackling light against the dark, and the gods grinning and licking their chops in the hills.” (Thunderstorm; Once more to the Lake, E.B. White)

Simile Simile is an image based on an explicit comparison. Example: The harsh gray earth of May had been changed overnight into a dark, sticky, substance like cheap soap.

Describing people Personality– happy, satisfied, relaxed, exciting, nervous, angry, serious, sad, depressed, outgoing… Physical characteristics– big, large, tall, small, tiny, short, thin, heavy, strong, weak, brown-, black-, dark-skinned…

Describing a place Using prepositions—in front of/ in back of, behind/ on top of/ on the bottom of /next to/ above/ below/ underneath/ to the right of/ to the left of/ in the middle of/ around/ between