How to Write a Narrative Essay | Format, Steps and Types of Narrative Essay

How to Write a Narrative Essay: What Is A Narrative Essay? A narrative essay is a version of an essay that tells a story. The writer should write the essay with proper inclusion of plots, characters, time and place, and climax.

Narration can be about someone's personal experience or any other form of experience. The narrative essay should always have a central theme around which the writer is supposed to write. The writer will have to choose the plot structure in which he is going to write.

The writer can present the essay in a linear plot format, foreshadow format, flashback format and to and fro plot format. The main theme contains an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and at last the conclusion. The writer has to present his essay in a certain way so that it gets interesting for the readers to read.

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The writers generally present the narrative essays in the first person if he is sharing his own experience. They can also write the essay in the third person but it depends on the topic and the writer that helps them to write. The writer should have a clear state of mind when he starts writing a narrative essay. If the writer intends to take breaks between his writings, then he should always have his concepts clear before he resumes writing.

Every writer should have their own strategies before he begins to write. He should jot down all the points of the topic before he starts writing so that he does not have to interrupt his work if he gets stuck anywhere. The writer gets a clear idea about his essay when he jots down all the points he needs to write. He can omit the points he thinks are not important for the essay.

Types Of Narrative Essay

There are several types of narrative essays. They are autobiography, biography, fable, fantasy, legend, myth, novel, novella and many more.

• Autobiography: In an autobiography, the writer narrates his own life experiences in a narrative style. In the case of autobiography, the writer does not have to collect the correct facts before writing as he is writing about his own life. He has to arrange the points of the essay before writing.
• Biography: In a biography, the writer writes about someone else's life. The subjects of writing biographies can be another writer, an actor, a singer or he can simply be someone whom only the writer knows. Before writing a biography, the writer should collect proper information about the person he is or going to write about. The writer generally writes the biography on influential people.
• Fable: Fables are narratives that have a moral at the end of the story. The writer usually writes this type of narrative including animal characters, for example, the fable of the rabbit and the tortoise. It is the work of the writer to write the fable essay in such a manner that this not only intrigues the children but also the adults.
• Fantasy: In a fantasy, neither the characters of the story nor the plot is real. The plot or the characters are based on the writer's imagination. There are many people who prefer to read fantasies as most people love imagining things that do not happen in the real-life and expect those fantasies to get real. Many people prefer reading fantasies and imagining things rather than reading or focusing on real facts.
• Legend: In a legendary plot, the writer has to write the story of a particular place or a person who had left a huge impact on the people during his time. He can be a saint or a prince, a king or someone who has the ability or the power to do something that is beyond the knowledge of ordinary people.
• Myth: Myth or mythology is a text where the writers put down stories or events from ancient times. The facts that the writer includes in that myth may be true or may not be true. In most cases, the writer happens to base on imagination. The mythological essays include superficial characters like Gods, demigods, demons and superficial human beings. Sometimes if the writer presents the myth in a long poetry form then it becomes an epic.
• Novel: Novels are also fictional short stories that the writer presents, where the writer represents some imaginary characters belonging to an imaginary place. Novel essays are short narrative writing that is fictional to some extent or in some cases real.
• Novella: A novella is a shorter form of a novel in the usual narrative form. The literary experts present the word count of the novella in between 17,000 to 40,000 words. The novella is an Italian word that means "new".  A novel and a novella do not have many facts to differentiate with each other. They are different on the basis of the word count of the content.

Steps Of Writing A Narrative Essay

• Step 1 – Arranging The Points Of The Topic: Usually in narrative essays, the writer writes about his personal experiences. As the writer does not need any information from other sources, the research on the topic is not needed. The writer here only needs to arrange the points in the correct order to make the essay look presentable. This is one of the most important parts that has to be done before writing the essay.
• Step 2 – Exploring The Topic: This step is for the writers who are writing about other stories instead of writing their personal experiences. The writer should explore the topic that he is going to write.
• Step 3 – Writing The Essay: In this step, the writer has to start writing the essay after he has arranged the required points. This step solely depends on the skill of the writer. He should select the proper format of the plot on the basis of which he has to write the essay.
• Step 4 – Forming The Introduction: After beginning the writing of the essay, the writer has to write a proper introduction of the essay to introduce the writer with the basis of the topic and the reason for choosing this topic. The main motive here is to talk about the topic of the essay.
• Step 5 – Writing The Body: The body is the main part of the essay where the writer discusses the actual topic of the essay. This portion is the most important part and the writer should have the proper facts to write it in detail. The body of the essay contains all the vital information of the topic on which the writer is writing the essay.
• Step 6 – Framing The Conclusion: After the writer has written the body of the essay, he has to write the conclusion. The purpose of writing the conclusion is to end the essay. The main work of the conclusion is to summarize the whole idea of the essay into a short paragraph. The writer should not end the conclusion of the essay in an abrupt manner, instead, he should end the essay smoothly so that the readers appreciate the essay.

Format Of Narrative Essay

The writer should have a clear concept about the essay that he is writing.

• Characters: As the writers present the narrative essays by sharing their personal experiences, the writer should chalk out the character's list first. It is not necessary that the writer will have to start his essay by introducing the characters in the beginning but the list of the characters will help in framing the outline of the plot. The characters are the main components of an essay. The characters are the ones that help the writers to form a plot for the essay.
• Setting: The writer has to present the background of the story and provide the readers with the location and time of the situation of the essay. The writer has to give a clear idea to the readers so that they understand the concept clearly.
• Plot: The writer has to form a basis of the essay he is going to write so that it is easier for him to form the essay and make it presentable. The writers also refer the plot to be the skeleton of the story or the essay. The plot decides the direction or the formation of the story.
• Crisis: In every narration, there is a crisis. The crisis is a situation where the main characters get into a problem. The crisis is caused due to many reasons by the actions of the characters or the situation that leads the actors to react in a certain way.
• Climax: The situation where all the characters come together in a narrative essay or a story is known as climax. In some stories, the crisis situation leads to the climax.
• Resolution: Resolution is the stage where the characters or their situations solve the crisis. A narrative essay ends with the resolution of the crisis.

FAQ's On Narrative Essay

Question 1.
How many words does a narrative essay contain?

Answer:
A narrative essay contains words up to 1000. Narrative essays have different word limits for different stages. A high school student should write a narrative essay with the word limit of 300 to 1000 words and an undergraduate should write narrative essays up to 1500 to 5000 words.

Question 2.
What are the possible topics that can be written in a narrative essay?

Answer:
The writer generally presents narrative essays that share their own experiences. The writer can write about topics like the first day of school, summer vacations,  any frightening experience, any adventurous experience, a memorable person in the writer's life, adventurous experience and many more.

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