the story of my life narrative essay

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The Story of My Life

Helen keller.

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Helen Keller's The Story of My Life . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Story of My Life: Introduction

The story of my life: plot summary, the story of my life: detailed summary & analysis, the story of my life: themes, the story of my life: quotes, the story of my life: characters, the story of my life: symbols, the story of my life: literary devices, the story of my life: theme wheel, brief biography of helen keller.

Historical Context of The Story of My Life

Other books related to the story of my life.

• Full Title: The Story of My Life
• When Written: Early 1900s
• Where Written: Cambridge, MA
• When Published: 1903
• Literary Period: Gilded Age/Progressive Era
• Genre: Memoir
• Setting: Tuscumbia, Alabama; Boston, Cambridge, and Wrentham, Massachusetts; New York City and Niagara Falls, New York
• Climax: Helen, despite the doubts of her friends and family and in the face of institutional bureaucracy, passes her entrance exams and is admitted to Radcliffe College at Harvard University
• Antagonist: Self-doubt
• Point of View: First person

Extra Credit for The Story of My Life

Highly Adaptable. The beautiful language, moving message, and intriguing characters which are all encompassed within The Story of My Life have made it one of Helen Keller’s best-known works and rich fodder for adaptation and reinvention. William Gibson adapted Helen and Anne’s story into a teleplay, The Miracle Worker , in 1957, and later rewrote the script for Broadway. In 1962, Gibson’s play was adapted into a feature film starting Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller. The film was an instant success and was nominated for five Academy Awards. Bancroft and Duke won the Oscars for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively.

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How to Write a Life Story Essay

Last Updated: April 14, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Alicia Cook . Alicia Cook is a Professional Writer based in Newark, New Jersey. With over 12 years of experience, Alicia specializes in poetry and uses her platform to advocate for families affected by addiction and to fight for breaking the stigma against addiction and mental illness. She holds a BA in English and Journalism from Georgian Court University and an MBA from Saint Peter’s University. Alicia is a bestselling poet with Andrews McMeel Publishing and her work has been featured in numerous media outlets including the NY Post, CNN, USA Today, the HuffPost, the LA Times, American Songwriter Magazine, and Bustle. She was named by Teen Vogue as one of the 10 social media poets to know and her poetry mixtape, “Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately” was a finalist in the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 104,071 times.

A life story essay involves telling the story of your life in a short, nonfiction format. It can also be called an autobiographical essay. In this essay, you will tell a factual story about some element of your life, perhaps for a college application or for a school assignment.

Preparing to Write Your Essay

• If you are writing a personal essay for a college application, it should serve to give the admissions committee a sense of who you are, beyond the basics of your application file. Your transcript, your letters of recommendation, and your resume will provide an overview of your work experience, interests, and academic record. Your essay allows you to make your application unique and individual to you, through your personal story. [2] X Research source
• The essay will also show the admissions committee how well you can write and structure an essay. Your essay should show you can create a meaningful piece of writing that interests your reader, conveys a unique message, and flows well.
• If you are writing a life story for a specific school assignment, such as in a composition course, ask your teacher about the assignment requirements.

• Include important events, such as your birth, your childhood and upbringing, and your adolescence. If family member births, deaths, marriages, and other life moments are important to your story, write those down as well.
• Focus on experiences that made a big impact on you and remain a strong memory. This may be a time where you learned an important life lesson, such as failing a test or watching someone else struggle and succeed, or where you felt an intense feeling or emotion, such as grief over someone’s death or joy over someone’s triumph.

• Have you faced a challenge in your life that you overcame, such as family struggles, health issues, a learning disability, or demanding academics?
• Do you have a story to tell about your cultural or ethnic background, or your family traditions?
• Have you dealt with failure or life obstacles?
• Do you have a unique passion or hobby?
• Have you traveled outside of your community, to another country, city, or area? What did you take away from the experience and how will you carry what you learned into a college setting?

• Remind yourself of your accomplishments by going through your resume. Think about any awards or experiences you would like spotlight in your essay. For example, explaining the story behind your Honor Roll status in high school, or how you worked hard to receive an internship in a prestigious program.
• Remember that your resume or C.V. is there to list off your accomplishments and awards, so your life story shouldn't just rehash them. Instead, use them as a jumping-off place to explain the process behind them, or what they reflect (or do not reflect) about you as a person.

• The New York Times publishes stellar examples of high school life story essays each year. You can read some of them on the NYT website. [8] X Research source

Writing Your Essay

• For example, you may look back at your time in foster care as a child or when you scored your first paying job. Consider how you handled these situations and any life lessons you learned from these lessons. Try to connect past experiences to who you are now, or who you aspire to be in the future.
• Your time in foster care, for example, may have taught you resilience, perseverance and a sense of curiosity around how other families function and live. This could then tie into your application to a Journalism program, as the experience shows you have a persistent nature and a desire to investigate other people’s stories or experiences.

• Certain life story essays have become cliche and familiar to admission committees. Avoid sports injuries stories, such as the time you injured your ankle in a game and had to find a way to persevere. You should also avoid using an overseas trip to a poor, foreign country as the basis for your self transformation. This is a familiar theme that many admission committees will consider cliche and not unique or authentic. [11] X Research source
• Other common, cliche topics to avoid include vacations, "adversity" as an undeveloped theme, or the "journey". [12] X Research source

• Try to phrase your thesis in terms of a lesson learned. For example, “Although growing up in foster care in a troubled neighborhood was challenging and difficult, it taught me that I can be more than my upbringing or my background through hard work, perseverance, and education.”
• You can also phrase your thesis in terms of lessons you have yet to learn, or seek to learn through the program you are applying for. For example, “Growing up surrounded by my mother’s traditional cooking and cultural habits that have been passed down through the generations of my family, I realized I wanted to discover and honor the traditions of other, ancient cultures with a career in archaeology.”
• Both of these thesis statements are good because they tell your readers exactly what to expect in clear detail.

• An anecdote is a very short story that carries moral or symbolic weight. It can be a poetic or powerful way to start your essay and engage your reader right away. You may want to start directly with a retelling of a key past experience or the moment you realized a life lesson.
• For example, you could start with a vivid memory, such as this from an essay that got its author into Harvard Business School: "I first considered applying to Berry College while dangling from a fifty-food Georgia pine tree, encouraging a high school classmate, literally, to make a leap of faith." [15] X Research source This opening line gives a vivid mental picture of what the author was doing at a specific, crucial moment in time and starts off the theme of "leaps of faith" that is carried through the rest of the essay.
• Another great example clearly communicates the author's emotional state from the opening moments: "Through seven-year-old eyes I watched in terror as my mother grimaced in pain." This essay, by a prospective medical school student, goes on to tell about her experience being at her brother's birth and how it shaped her desire to become an OB/GYN. The opening line sets the scene and lets you know immediately what the author was feeling during this important experience. It also resists reader expectations, since it begins with pain but ends in the joy of her brother's birth.
• Avoid using a quotation. This is an extremely cliche way to begin an essay and could put your reader off immediately. If you simply must use a quotation, avoid generic quotes like “Spread your wings and fly” or “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team’”. Choose a quotation that relates directly to your experience or the theme of your essay. This could be a quotation from a poem or piece of writing that speaks to you, moves you, or helped you during a rough time.

• Always use the first person in a personal essay. The essay should be coming from you and should tell the reader directly about your life experiences, with “I” statements.
• For example, avoid something such as “I had a hard time growing up. I was in a bad situation.” You can expand this to be more distinct, but still carry a similar tone and voice. “When I was growing up in foster care, I had difficulties connecting with my foster parents and with my new neighborhood. At the time, I thought I was in a bad situation I would never be able to be free from.”

• For example, consider this statement: "I am a good debater. I am highly motivated and have been a strong leader all through high school." This gives only the barest detail, and does not allow your reader any personal or unique information that will set you apart from the ten billion other essays she has to sift through.
• In contrast, consider this one: "My mother says I'm loud. I say you have to speak up to be heard. As president of my high school's debate team for the past three years, I have learned to show courage even when my heart is pounding in my throat. I have learned to consider the views of people different than myself, and even to argue for them when I passionately disagree. I have learned to lead teams in approaching complicated issues. And, most importantly for a formerly shy young girl, I have found my voice." This example shows personality, uses parallel structure for impact, and gives concrete detail about what the author has learned from her life experience as a debater.

• An example of a passive sentence is: “The cake was eaten by the dog.” The subject (the dog) is not in the expected subject position (first) and is not "doing" the expected action. This is confusing and can often be unclear.
• An example of an active sentence is: “The dog ate the cake.” The subject (the dog) is in the subject position (first), and is doing the expected action. This is much more clear for the reader and is a stronger sentence.

• Lead the reader INTO your story with a powerful beginning, such as an anecdote or a quote.
• Take the reader THROUGH your story with the context and key parts of your experience.
• End with the BEYOND message about how the experience has affected who you are now and who you want to be in college and after college.

Editing Your Essay

• For example, a sentence like “I struggled during my first year of college, feeling overwhelmed by new experiences and new people” is not very strong because it states the obvious and does not distinguish you are unique or singular. Most people struggle and feel overwhelmed during their first year of college. Adjust sentences like this so they appear unique to you.
• For example, consider this: “During my first year of college, I struggled with meeting deadlines and assignments. My previous home life was not very structured or strict, so I had to teach myself discipline and the value of deadlines.” This relates your struggle to something personal and explains how you learned from it.

• It can be difficult to proofread your own work, so reach out to a teacher, a mentor, a family member, or a friend and ask them to read over your essay. They can act as first readers and respond to any proofreading errors, as well as the essay as a whole.

Expert Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://education.seattlepi.com/write-thesis-statement-autobiographical-essay-1686.html
• ↑ https://study.com/learn/lesson/autobiography-essay-examples-steps.html
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201101/writing-compelling-life-story-in-500-words-or-less
• ↑ Alicia Cook. Professional Writer. Expert Interview. 11 December 2020.
• ↑ https://mycustomessay.com/blog/how-to-write-an-autobiography-essay.html
• ↑ https://www.ahwatukee.com/community_focus/article_c79b33da-09a5-11e3-95a8-001a4bcf887a.html
• ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/your-money/four-stand-out-college-essays-about-money.html
• ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY9AdFx0L4s
• ↑ https://www.medina-esc.org/Downloads/Practical%20Advice%20Writing%20College%20App%20Essay.pdf
• ↑ http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-harvard-business-school-essays-2012-11?op=1
• ↑ http://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/passive_sentences.htm

About This Article

A life story essay is an essay that tells the story of your life in a short, nonfiction format. Start by coming up with a thesis statement, which will help you structure your essay. For example, your thesis could be about the influence of your family's culture on your life or how you've grown from overcoming challenging circumstances. You can include important life events that link to your thesis, like jobs you’ve worked, friendships that have influenced you, or sports competitions you’ve won. Consider starting your essay with an anecdote that introduces your thesis. For instance, if you're writing about your family's culture, you could start by talking about the first festival you went to and how it inspired you. Finish by writing about how the experiences have affected you and who you want to be in the future. For more tips from our Education co-author, including how to edit your essay effectively, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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• How to write a narrative essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A narrative essay tells a story. In most cases, this is a story about a personal experience you had. This type of essay , along with the descriptive essay , allows you to get personal and creative, unlike most academic writing .

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Table of contents

What is a narrative essay for, choosing a topic, interactive example of a narrative essay, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about narrative essays.

When assigned a narrative essay, you might find yourself wondering: Why does my teacher want to hear this story? Topics for narrative essays can range from the important to the trivial. Usually the point is not so much the story itself, but the way you tell it.

A narrative essay is a way of testing your ability to tell a story in a clear and interesting way. You’re expected to think about where your story begins and ends, and how to convey it with eye-catching language and a satisfying pace.

These skills are quite different from those needed for formal academic writing. For instance, in a narrative essay the use of the first person (“I”) is encouraged, as is the use of figurative language, dialogue, and suspense.

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Narrative essay assignments vary widely in the amount of direction you’re given about your topic. You may be assigned quite a specific topic or choice of topics to work with.

• Write a story about your first day of school.
• Write a story about your favorite holiday destination.

You may also be given prompts that leave you a much wider choice of topic.

• Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself.
• Write about an achievement you are proud of. What did you accomplish, and how?

In these cases, you might have to think harder to decide what story you want to tell. The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to talk about a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

For example, a trip where everything went according to plan makes for a less interesting story than one where something unexpected happened that you then had to respond to. Choose an experience that might surprise the reader or teach them something.

Narrative essays in college applications

When applying for college , you might be asked to write a narrative essay that expresses something about your personal qualities.

For example, this application prompt from Common App requires you to respond with a narrative essay.

In this context, choose a story that is not only interesting but also expresses the qualities the prompt is looking for—here, resilience and the ability to learn from failure—and frame the story in a way that emphasizes these qualities.

An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

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If you’re not given much guidance on what your narrative essay should be about, consider the context and scope of the assignment. What kind of story is relevant, interesting, and possible to tell within the word count?

The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to reflect on a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

Don’t worry too much if your topic seems unoriginal. The point of a narrative essay is how you tell the story and the point you make with it, not the subject of the story itself.

Narrative essays are usually assigned as writing exercises at high school or in university composition classes. They may also form part of a university application.

When you are prompted to tell a story about your own life or experiences, a narrative essay is usually the right response.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, July 23). How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/narrative-essay/

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Narrative Essay Writing

Personal Narrative Essay

Personal Narrative Essay - Easy Guide & Examples

16 min read

Published on: Apr 18, 2020

Last updated on: Mar 24, 2024

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A personal narrative essay can be a fun way to share your life story with friends and family. However, most students have no idea how to write a personal narrative essay. 

This can be a challenge. On top of that, it's one of the most common assignments in school.

Is this something that you are also dealing with? Fortunately, you don't have to worry anymore! We are here to simplify the process for you.

This guide will walk you through the process of writing a personal narrative essay step by step. Plus, you can find plenty of examples here to help you get started and avoid common writing mistakes. 

So what are you waiting for, take a step forward to make your essay shine!

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Personal Narrative Essay Definition

What is a Personal Narrative Essay? 

A personal narrative essay is also referred to as short storytelling. It depends on the writer's type of story they want to tell the readers. This type of essay can be composed of the personal experience of the writer. 

A personal narrative essay is usually written in the first person participle. It helps to depict a clear narrative that’s focused on a specific moment.

Usually, high school students are usually assigned to write such essays. Writing these essays helps them to enhance creative writing skills. Also, they help to provide insight into a student’s personal life. 

To write a personal narrative essay, the writer specifies a plot around which the entire essay revolves. Moreover, the plot should also discuss the characters that have played some part in the story.

Sample Personal Narrative Essay (PDF)

How to Start a Personal Narrative Essay?  

The personal narrative essay requires a balance between objectivity and subjectivity. To write about an event or situation with significance, you must first identify what's important to share with the readers.

As with other types of writing - there are some guidelines you need to follow some guidelines. These are;

1. Choose the Right Topic 

A good topic can not just make your essay look good, but also it will make the writing process much easier. Since personal narrative essays are written on personal experiences and thoughts, make sure you choose your most interesting experience. 

Keep in mind that the topic you choose matches the intended audience. It is the reader who decides the scope and success of your essay.

2. Choose a Theme 

You can also choose a theme for your essay. This will help you focus on what you want to say. You can use your personal experiences to explore the theme in depth.  For example, if you choose the theme of love, you could talk about your experience of love with your sister(s).  Alternatively, you can start writing out the story and see if any ideas might relate to a bigger theme. When you are writing, pay attention to any ideas that keep coming up. See if they might be related to a bigger topic.

3. Create a Thesis Statement 

The thesis statement is the most important sentence and tells the reader what your essay will be about.  

In a personal narrative essay, the thesis statement can briefly explore the story's events. Or it can tell the reader about the moral or lesson learned through personal experience. The thesis statement can also present the main theme of the essay. 

For example, if you are writing an essay about your personal experience as a refugee. You may have a thesis statement that presents the theme of freedom.

Check out more thesis statement examples to learn how to write one!

4. Create an Outline 

Once you have your topic, it is time that you create an outline for your essay. The essay outline is an essential element of an essay. It keeps the whole composition in an organized order. 

Also, it helps the reader through the essay. With the help of an outline, a writer can provide logic for the essay. 

Personal Narrative Essay Outline

Being a student, you must know how important an outline is for an essay. It provides an organization with the whole content.

To create an outline for a personal narrative essay, you need to follow the following traditional method.

Introduction

These three major elements of a  narrative essay  are further elaborated down below.

The introduction is the most important part of essay writing. It is the first impression on the reader; by reading this part, the reader decides the quality of the essay. This part should be the most attention-grabbing part. 

It should have an attention-grabbing hook and some background information about the topic. Moreover, it should include the thesis statement, which explains the main idea of your essay.

Keep in mind that the essay introduction should always end with a transition sentence. This will make a logical connection with the rest of the essay. 

Personal Narrative Introduction Example

Body Paragraphs 

After the introduction, the body paragraphs are written. These paragraphs help you to explain the key elements of your personal narrative essay. 

In a standard personal narrative essay, there are usually three body paragraphs. These paragraphs help the writer to describe the subject of the essay in all possible aspects. 

With the help of these paragraphs, the writer describes their point of view to the readers. To support the essay, the time and place of the event happening are also mentioned. Moreover, these paragraphs have all the information about the characters. 

Keep in mind that a body starts with a topic sentence . This sentence is a kind of introductory sentence for that particular paragraph.

Another important thing you need to keep in mind is the order in which you will present the details. Make sure that you use chronological order for this purpose. 

Personal Narrative Body Example

In conclusion, you need to provide the climax of the story. 

In this section of a personal narrative essay, you should wrap up the whole story. Do it in such a way that you provide a summary of the entire essay. 

Your conclusion should be just as impactful as your introduction. End with a memorable sentence or thought that leaves the reader with a lasting impression. You can summarize the main points of your essay or reflect on the significance of the experience in your life.

Make sure that you do not add any new points in this part. It will not give the reader a sense of accomplishment and will leave them in confusion. 

Personal Narrative Conclusion Example

How to Write a Personal Narrative Essay

A personal narrative essay is considered very good when it is expressive, and the reader enjoys your personal narrative. The key to writing an amazing personal narrative is to use sensory details as much as possible.

An excellent narrative essay doesn't tell what happened. Instead, it shows what happened precisely and how you have felt at that moment.

Here is how you can write a personal narrative essay:

• Start With a Good Hook 

For any type of essay , a hook statement can be a game-changer. But, particularly for a personal narrative essay, hook sentences are very important. 

Usually, the introduction of the essay starts with this sentence. You may use a famous quotation, verse, or an interesting fact for this purpose. This sentence helps to attain the reader’s attention and persuade the reader to read the entire essay. 

• Vivid Description 

For a narrative essay, it is a must to be vivid enough to let the reader imagine the whole scene. This is why it is necessary that the writer uses as much descriptive language as possible. 

For instance, if you are writing about a visit to the beach, you can describe how the sun felt on your face. On top of that, making use of strong verbs and adjectives will also help to provide an engaging experience for readers.  

• Use Transition Words 

For any essay, be it an argumentative essay , descriptive essay , or personal narrative essay. It is very important to have some transition sentences and words. These transition words help to make a logical connection in all parts of the essay. 

In other words, the transition words help to make links between the storyline. You may use transition words like this, however, whereas, therefore, moreover, etc.

• Add Emotions 

The purpose of a personal narrative essay is to show the reader what and how you have felt. Hence don't forget to add the emotions, as you have to make the reader know about the feelings. 

Describe all of the emotions and feelings using very descriptive words. 

• Be Consistent 

Consistency is the key to writing an essay in a professional way. Make sure that you don't get distracted by any irrelevant details. 

Stay focused on one single point, and add details related to your specific idea.  Make sure that you inter-link all the events of the story in a regular manner. This will help the reader to relate all the events. Also, use first-person impressions as you are writing a personal narrative. 

You also want to show the reader that you are telling your own story. Make sure that you follow the same participle in the entire essay. 

• Prove the Significance of Your Experience 

You know that behind every event, there is a reason. Similarly, let your readers know the reason behind your essay and its significance. 

Also, mention that the story you just told was important to share. 

As it is a personal narrative, you don't have to provide evidence to prove the significance of your story. Rather, you have to convey a broader message through your story. 

• Use Dialogue

Dialogue is an excellent way to bring life to your story and make it more engaging. It can reveal the character’s personalities and add a touch of realism to the essay. 

When you use dialogue, make sure to punctuate it correctly and indicate who is speaking.

• Show, Don't Tell

When writing a personal narrative essay, avoid summarizing events and simply telling the story. Instead, use sensory details to help the reader experience the story with you. 

Describe what you saw, heard, felt, tasted, and smelled to bring the story to life.

• Reflect on the Experience

Reflection is an important part of any personal narrative essay. It is an opportunity for you to reflect on the experience you are writing about and what it means to you. Take the time to think about what you learned from the experience and how it has shaped you as a person.

Once you are done with writing your personal narrative essay. It's time that you put a little effort into making it error-free. Proofread the essay more than once and look for minor spelling mistakes and other grammatical mistakes. 

This will ensure that you have written an essay like a pro. You can do this yourself or you may ask a friend to do it for you.

To understand better how to write a personal narrative essay, take a few moments to watch the video below!

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Free Personal Narrative Essay Examples

Examples help you to understand things better; here are a few well-written  narrative essay examples . Read them thoroughly and use them as a guide to writing a good essay yourself.

Personal Narrative Essay 750 words

Personal narrative essays can be long or short. It depends on the writer how they want to elaborate things.

750 Words Personal Narrative Essay (PDF)

Personal Narrative Essay Examples for High School Students

Personal narrative essays are often assigned to high school students. If you are a high school student and looking for some good examples, you are exactly where you should be.

Best Summer Memory of My Childhood (PDF)

Near-Death Experience (PDF)

Personal Narrative Essay Examples for College Students

Being a college student, you will often get to write personal narrative essays. Here are a few examples of well-written personal narrative essays to guide college students.

Climbing a Mountain (PDF)

My First Job (PDF)

Want to get a better understanding? Dive into the wide collection of our narrative essay examples !

Personal Narrative Essay Topics

It is important to choose a good topic before you start writing. Here are some interesting  narrative essay topics  you can choose from for your essay.

• My worst childhood memory
• My favorite summer activities during vacation.
• The first time I had a serious argument with my best friend
• The first time someone broke my heart.
• Things I could tell myself.
• How I balance my family life and my professional life.
• The most important rule in life
• Teachers who inspired me in my college.
• Why I love to write a diary
• My favorite New York Times Article.
• My favorite movie.
• Personal advice for the youth of today.
• How I overcame my stage fear.
• The toughest decision I have ever made.
• What I regret most

Need some inspiration to craft your essay? Our expansive list of narrative essay topics will provide you with plenty of ideas!

Personal Narrative Essay Writing Tips

You need to follow a few things in order to start your personal narrative essay in a proper way. Those significant things are as follows:

• Think of a memorable event, an unforgettable experience, or any that you want to tell the readers.
• Plan your narrative essay. Make yourself clear on the order in which you want to mention all the details.
• Start your personal essay with a hook sentence. This will help you to grab the attention of the readers.
• Use vivid language so that the reader can imagine the whole scene in mind. Describe the actions, mood, theme, and overall plot.
• Make sure that you use descriptive language.
• Use proper sentence structure.

In conclusion,

writing a personal narrative essay can be daunting for many students.

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Life’s Stories

How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative can shape who you are—and is a fundamental part of being human.

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic , Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       

In Paul Murray’s novel Skippy Dies, there’s a point where the main character, Howard, has an existential crisis. “‘It’s just not how I expected my life would be,’” he says.

“‘What did you expect?’” a friend responds.

“Howard ponders this. ‘I suppose—this sounds stupid, but I suppose I thought there’d be more of a narrative arc .’”

But it’s not stupid at all. Though perhaps the facts of someone’s life, presented end to end, wouldn’t much resemble a narrative to the outside observer, the way people choose to tell the stories of their lives, to others and—crucially—to themselves, almost always does have a narrative arc. In telling the story of how you became who you are, and of who you’re on your way to becoming, the story itself becomes a part of who you are.

“Life stories do not simply reflect personality. They are personality, or more accurately, they are important parts of personality, along with other parts, like dispositional traits, goals, and values,” writes Dan McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, along with Erika Manczak, in a chapter for the APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology.

In the realm of narrative psychology, a person’s life story is not a Wikipedia biography of the facts and events of a life, but rather the way a person integrates those facts and events internally—picks them apart and weaves them back together to make meaning. This narrative becomes a form of identity, in which the things someone chooses to include in the story, and the way she tells it, can both reflect and shape who she is.  A life story doesn’t just say what happened, it says why it was important, what it means for who the person is, for who they’ll become, and for what happens next.

“Sometimes in cases of extreme autism, people don’t construct a narrative structure for their lives,” says Jonathan Adler, an assistant professor of psychology at Olin College of Engineering, “but the default mode of human cognition is a narrative mode.”

When people tell others about themselves, they kind of have to do it in a narrative way—that’s just how humans communicate. But when people think about their lives to themselves, is it always in a narrative way, with a plot that leads from one point to another? There’s an old adage that everyone has a book inside of them. (Christopher Hitchens once said that inside is “exactly where I think it should, in most cases, remain.” ) Is there anyone out there with a life story that’s not a story at all, but some other kind of more disjointed, avant-garde representation of their existence?

“This is an almost impossible question to address from a scientific approach,” says Monisha Pasupathi, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Utah.  Even if we are, as the writer Jonathan Gottschall put it, “storytelling animals,” what does that mean from one person to the next? Not only are there individual differences in how people think of their stories, there’s huge variation in the degree to which they engage in narrative storytelling in the first place.

“Some people write in their diaries and are very introspective, and some people are not at all,” says Kate McLean, an associate professor of psychology at Western Washington University. Journal-keeping, though a way of documenting the life story, doesn’t always make for a tightly-wound narrative. A writer I interviewed several months ago—Sarah Manguso—has kept a diary for 25 years, and still told me, “Narrative is not a mode that has ever come easily to me.”

Nevertheless, the researchers I spoke with were all convinced that even if it’s not 100 percent universal to see life as a story, it’s at least extremely common.

“I think normal, healthy adults have in common that they can all produce a life story,” Pasupathi says. “They can all put one together … In order to have relationships, we’ve all had to tell little pieces of our story. And so it’s hard to be a human being and have relationships without having some version of a life story floating around.”

But life rarely follows the logical progression that most stories—good stories—do, where the clues come together, guns left on mantles go off at the appropriate moments, the climax comes in the third act. So narrative seems like an incongruous framing method for life’s chaos, until you remember where stories came from in the first place. Ultimately, the only material we’ve ever had to make stories out of is our own imagination, and life itself.

Storytelling, then—fictional or nonfictional, realistic or embellished with dragons—is a way of making sense of the world around us.

“Life is incredibly complex, there are lots of things going on in our environment and in our lives at all times, and in order to hold onto our experience, we need to make meaning out of it,” Adler says. “The way we do that is by structuring our lives into stories.”

It’s hardly a simple undertaking. People contain multitudes, and by multitudes, I mean libraries. Someone might have an overarching narrative for her whole life, and different narratives for different realms of her life—career, romance, family, faith. She might have narratives within each realm that intersect, diverge, or contradict each other, all of them filled with the microstories of specific events. And to truly make a life story, she’ll need to do what researchers call “autobiographical reasoning” about the events—“identifying lessons learned or insights gained in life experiences, marking development or growth through sequences of scenes, and showing how specific life episodes illustrate enduring truths about the self,” McAdams and Manczak write.

“Stories don’t have to be really simple, like fairy-tale-type narratives,” McAdams says. “They can be complicated. It can be like James Joyce out there.”

If you really like James Joyce, it might be a lot like James Joyce. People take the stories that surround them—fictional tales, news articles, apocryphal family anecdotes—then identify with them and borrow from them while fashioning their own self-conceptions. It’s a Möbius strip: Stories are life, life is stories.

People aren’t writing their life stories from  birth, though. The ability to create a life narrative takes a little while to come online—the development process gives priority to things like walking, talking, and object permanence. Young children can tell stories about isolated events, with guidance, and much of adolescence is dedicated to learning “what goes in a story … and what makes a good story in the first place,” Pasupathi says. “I don’t know how much time you’ve spent around little kids, but they really don’t understand that. I have a child who can really take an hour to tell you about Minecraft .” Through friends, family, and fiction, children learn what others consider to be good storytelling—and that being able to spin a good yarn has social value.

It’s in the late teens and early years of adulthood that story construction really picks up—because by then people have developed some of the cognitive tools they need to create a coherent life story. These include causal coherence—the ability to describe how one event led to another—and thematic coherence—the ability to identify overarching values and motifs that recur throughout the story. In a study analyzing the life stories of 8-, 12-, 16-, and 20-year-olds, these kinds of coherence were found to increase with age. As the life story enters its last chapters, it may become more set in stone. In one study by McLean , older adults had more thematic coherence, and told more stories about stability, while young adults tended to tell more stories about change.

McAdams conceives of this development as the layering of three aspects of the self. Pretty much from birth, people are “actors.” They have personality traits, they interact with the world, they have roles to play—daughter, sister, the neighbor’s new baby that cries all night and keeps you up. When they get old enough to have goals, they become “agents” too—still playing their roles and interacting with the world, but making decisions with the hopes of producing desired outcomes. And the final layer is “author,” when people begin to bundle ideas about the future with experiences from the past and present to form a narrative self.

This developmental trajectory could also explain why people enjoy different types of fictional stories at different ages. “When you’re a kid, it’s mostly about plot,” McAdams says. “This happens and this happens. You’re not tuned into the idea that a character develops.” Thus, perhaps, the appeal of cartoon characters who never get older.

Recently, McAdams says, his book club read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. “I read it in high school and hated it,” he says. “All I could remember about it was that this sled hits a tree. And we read it recently in the club, and whoa, is it fabulous. A sled does hit the tree, there’s no doubt that is a big scene, but how it changes these people’s lives and the tragedy of this whole thing, it’s completely lost on 18-year-olds. Things are lost on 8-year-olds that a 40-year-old picks up, and things that an 8-year-old found compelling and interesting will just bore a 40-year-old to tears sometimes.”

And like personal taste in books or movies, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are influenced by more than just, well, ourselves. The way people recount experiences to others seems to shape the way they end up remembering those events. According to Pasupathi’s research, this happens in a couple of ways. One is that people tailor the stories they tell to their audiences and the context. (For example, I tell the story of the time I crashed my mom’s car much differently now, to friends, than the way I told it to my mom at the time. Much less crying.)

The other is that the act of telling is a rehearsal of the story, Pasupathi says. “And rehearsal strengthens connections between some pieces of information in your mind and diminishes connections between others. So the things I tell you become more accessible to me and more memorable to me. Those can be pretty lasting effects.” So when people drop the cheesy pick-up line “What’s your story?” at a bar, like a man who nicks his carotid artery while shaving, they’ve accidentally hit upon something vital.

But just as there are consequences to telling, there are consequences to not telling . If someone is afraid of how people might react to a story, and they keep it to themselves, they’ll likely miss out on the enrichment that comes with a back-and-forth conversation. A listener “may give you other things to think about, or may acknowledge that this thing you thought was really bad is actually not a big deal, so you get this richer and more elaborated memory,” Pasupathi says. If you don’t tell, “your memory for that event may be less flexible and give you less chance for growth.” This is basically the premise of talk therapy.

And all of this doesn’t even account for all the conversations you plan to have, or elaborately imagine having and never have. The path from outside to inside and back out is winding, dark, and full of switchbacks.

Once certain stories get embedded into the culture, they become master narratives—blueprints for people to follow when structuring their own stories, for better or worse. One such blueprint is your standard “go to school, graduate, get a job, get married, have kids.”

That can be a helpful script in that it gives children a sense of the arc of a life, and shows them examples of tentpole events that could happen. But the downsides of standard narratives have been well-documented—they stigmatize anyone who doesn’t follow them to a T, and provide unrealistic expectations of happiness for those who do. If this approach were a blueprint for an IKEA desk instead of a life, almost everyone trying to follow it would end up with something wobbly and misshapen, with a few leftover bolts you find under the couch, boding ill for the structural integrity of the thing you built.

“I think that’s a particularly pernicious frame for people who become parents,” Pasupathi says. “That’s a narrative where the pinnacle is to get married and have kids and then everything will be sort of flatly happy from then on.”

And these scripts evolve as culture evolves. For example, in centuries past, stories of being possessed by demons might not have been out of place, but it’s unlikely most people would describe their actions in those terms nowadays.

Other common narrative structures seen in many cultures today are redemption sequences and contamination sequences. A redemption story starts off bad and ends better—“That horrible vacation ultimately brought us closer as a family”—while a contamination story does the opposite—“The cruise was amazing until we all got food poisoning.” Having redemption themes in one’s life story is generally associated with greater well-being, while contamination themes tend to coincide with poorer mental health.

Many people have some smaller stories of each type sprinkled throughout their greater life story, though a person’s disposition, culture, and environment can influence which they gravitate to. People can also see the larger arc of their lives as redemptive or contaminated, and redemption in particular is a popular, and particularly American, narrative. “Evolving from the Puritans to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Oprah Winfrey … Americans have sought to author their lives as redemptive tales of atonement, emancipation, recovery, self-fulfillment, and upward social mobility,” McAdams writes in an overview of life-story research . “The stories speak of heroic individual protagonists—the chosen people—whose manifest destiny is to make a positive difference in a dangerous world, even when the world does not wish to be redeemed.”

The redemption story is American optimism—things will get better!—and American exceptionalism—I can make things better!—and it’s in the water, in the air, and in our heads. This is actually a good thing a lot of the time. Studies have shown that finding a positive meaning in negative events is linked to a more complex sense of self and greater life satisfaction. And even controlling for general optimism, McAdams and his colleagues found that having more redemption sequences in a life story was still associated with higher well-being.

The trouble comes when redemption isn’t possible. The redemptive American tale is one of privilege, and for those who can’t control their circumstances, and have little reason to believe things will get better, it can be an illogical and unattainable choice. There are things that happen to people that cannot be redeemed.

It can be hard to share a story when it amounts to: “This happened, and it was terrible. The end.” In research McLean did, in which she asked people who’d had near-death experiences to tell their stories to others, “the people who told these unresolved stories had really negative responses,” she says. If there wasn’t some kind of uplifting, redemptive end to the story (beyond just the fact that they survived), “The listeners did not like that.

“The redemptive story is really valued in America, because for a lot of people it’s a great way to tell stories, but for people who just can’t do that, who can’t redeem their traumas for whatever reason, they’re sort of in a double bind,” she continues. “They both have this crappy story that’s hanging on, but they also can’t tell it and get acceptance or validation from people.”

In cases like this, for people who have gone through a lot of trauma, it might be better for them not to autobiographically reason about it at all.

“The first time I ever found this association, of reasoning associated with poor mental health, I thought that I had analyzed my data incorrectly,” McLean says. But after other researchers replicated her findings, she got more confident that something was going on. She thinks that people may repress traumatic events in a way that, while not ideal, is still “healthy enough.”

“The typical idea is that you can repress something but it’s going to come back and bite you if you don’t deal with it,” she says. “But that’s still under the assumption that people have the resources to deal with it.”

In one study, McLean and her colleagues interviewed adolescents attending a high school for vulnerable students. One subject, Josie, the 17-year-old daughter of a single mother, suffered from drug and alcohol abuse, bipolar disorder, rape, and a suicide attempt. She told the researchers that her self-defining memory was that her mother had promised not to have more children and then broke that promise.

“I’m the only person that I can rely on in my life because I’ve tried to rely on other people and I either get stabbed in the back or hurt, so I really know that I can only trust myself and rely on myself,” Josie said when recounting this memory.

“That’s pretty intensive reasoning,” McLean says. “So that’s meaningful in understanding who you are, but it doesn’t really give you a positive view of who you are. It may be true in the moment, but it’s not something that propels someone towards growth.”

It’s possible to over-reason about good things in your life as well. “There’s been some experimental research that shows that when people are asked to reflect on positive experiences, it makes them feel worse, because you’re like ‘Oh, why did I marry that person?’” McLean says. “Wisdom and maturity and cognitive complexity are all things that we value, but they don’t necessarily make you happy.”

Though sometimes autobiographical reasoning can lead to dark thoughts, other times it can help people find meaning. And while you may be able to avoid reasoning about a certain event, it would be pretty hard to leave all the pages of a life story unwritten.

“I think the act of framing our lives as a narrative is neither positive nor negative, it just is,” Adler says. “That said, there are better and worse ways of doing that narrative process for our mental health.”

In his research, Adler has noticed two themes in people’s stories that tend to correlate with better well-being: agency, or feeling like you are in control of your life, and communion, or feeling like you have good relationships in your life. The connection is “a little fuzzier” with communion, Adler says—there’s a strong relationship between communion and well-being at the same moment; it’s less clear if feeling communion now predicts well-being later.

But agency sure does. It makes sense, because feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are classic symptoms of depression, that feeling in control would be good for mental health. Adler did a longitudinal study of 47 adults undergoing therapy, having them write personal narratives and complete mental-health assessments over the course of 12 therapy sessions. What he found was not only that themes of agency in participants’ stories increased over time and that mental health increased, and that the two were related, but that increased agency actually appeared in stories before people’s mental health improved.

“It’s sort of like people put out a new version of themselves and lived their way into it,” Adler says.

(There’s something about the narrative form, specifically—while expressing thoughts and feelings about negative events seems to help people’s well-being, one study found that writing them in a narrative form helped more than just listing them.)

But, he continues, “I’m not like Mr. Agency, agency at all costs. I don’t believe that. If you have Stage 4 cancer, agency may be good for you, but is it a rational choice? And I do think [redemption] is good in the long term, but in the throes of really struggling with illness, I don’t know that it actually helps people.”

But I wondered: Though agency may be good for you, does seeing yourself as a strong protagonist come at a cost to the other characters in your story? Are there implications for empathy if we see other people as bit players instead of protagonists in their own right?

“That’s actually kind of an interesting empirical idea,” Pasupathi says. “I don’t know that anybody’s looking at that.”

As Adler’s work shows, people need to see themselves as actors to a certain degree. And Pasupathi’s work shows that other people play a big role in shaping life stories. The question, perhaps, is how much people recognize that their agency is not absolute.

According to one study, highly generative people—that is, people who are caring and committed to helping future generations— often tell stories about others who helped them in the past. McAdams suggests that narcissists are probably more likely to do the opposite—“People [who] are really good at talking about themselves and pushing their own narrative, but they’re not willing to listen to yours.”

“If our stories are about us as triumphant agents going through life and overcoming, and they underplay the role of other people and the role of institutional support in helping us do those things, we are likely to be less good at recognizing how other people’s lives are constrained by institutions and other people,” Pasupathi says. “I think that has real implications for how we think about inequity in our society. The more the whole world is designed to work for you, the less you are aware that it is working for you.”

It’s a dizzying problem: People use stories to make sense of life, but how much do those stories reflect life’s realities? Even allowing for the fact that people are capable of complex Joyce-ian storytelling, biases, personality differences, or emotions can lead different people to see the same event differently. And considering how susceptible humans are to false memories, who’s to say that the plot points in someone’s life story really happened, or happened the way she thought they did, or really caused the effects she saw from them?

Pasupathi’s not convinced that it matters that much whether life stories are perfectly accurate. A lot of false-memory research has to do with eyewitness testimony , where it matters a whole lot whether a person is telling a story precisely as it happened. But for narrative-psychology researchers, “What really matters isn’t so much whether it’s true in the forensic sense, in the legal sense,” she says. “What really matters is whether people are making something meaningful and coherent out of what happened. Any creation of a narrative is a bit of a lie. And some lies have enough truth.”

Organizing the past into a narrative isn’t a way just to understand the self but also to attempt to predict the future. Which is interesting, because the storytelling device that seems most incompatible with the realities of actual life is foreshadowing. Metaphors, sure. As college literature-class discussion sections taught me, you can see anything as a metaphor if you try hard enough. Motifs, definitely. Even if you’re living your life as randomly as possible, enough things will happen that, like monkeys with typewriters, patterns will start to emerge.

But no matter how hard you try, no matter how badly you want to, there is no way to truly know the future, and the world isn’t really organizing itself to give you hints. If you’re prone to overthinking, and playing out every possible scenario in your head in advance, you can see foreshadowing in everything. The look your partner gives you means a fight is on the horizon, that compliment from your boss means you’re on track for a promotion, all the little things you’ve forgotten over the years mean you’re definitely going to get dementia when you’re old.

“Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere,” E.M. Forster once wrote. These become obvious in the keeping of a diary: “Imagine a biography that includes not just a narrative but also all the events that failed to foreshadow,” Manguso writes in Ongoingness, the book about her 25-year diary . “ Most of what the diary includes foreshadows nothing.”

So what to do, then, with all the things that don’t fit tidily? There is evidence that finding some “unity” in your narrative identity is better, psychologically, than not finding it. And it probably is easier to just drop those things as you pull patterns from the chaos, though it may take some readjusting.

But Pasupathi rejects that. “I would want to see people do a good job of not trying to leave stuff out because they can’t make it fit,” she says. “We’re not trying to make pieces of your life go away.”

And so even with the dead ends and wrong turns, people can’t stop themselves. “We try to predict the future all the time,” Pasupathi says. She speculates that the reason there’s foreshadowing in fiction in the first place is because of this human tendency. The uncertainty of the future makes people uncomfortable , and stories are a way to deal with that.

“The future is never a direct replica of the past,” Adler says. “So we need to be able to take pieces of things that have happened to us and reconfigure them into possible futures.” For example, through experience, one learns that “We need to talk” rarely foreshadows anything good. (Life has its own clichés.)

There’s been some brain research supporting this link between the past and the future, showing that the same regions of the brain are activated when people are asked to remember something and when they’re asked to imagine an event that hasn’t happened yet. On the flip side, a patient with severe amnesia also had trouble imagining the future.

Similarly, the way someone imagines his future seems to affect the way he sees his past, at the same time as his past informs what he expects for the future.

“If you’re planning to be a doctor, and you’re a 25-year-old starting medical school, and you have expectations about what the next five to 10 years are going to be like, you’ve probably construed a narrative from your past that helps you understand how you got to this point,” McAdams says. “Then, say, you get into med school and you hate it and you drop out, you probably at the same time are going to change your past. You rewrite the history.”

A life story is written in chalk, not ink, and it can be changed. “You’re both the narrator and the main character of your story,” Adler says. “That can sometimes be a revelation—‘Oh, I’m not just living out this story; I am actually in charge of this story.’”

Whether it’s with the help of therapy, in the midst of an identity crisis, when you’ve been chasing a roadrunner of foreshadowing toward a tunnel that turns out to be painted on a wall, or slowly, methodically, day by day—like with all stories, there’s power in rewriting.

“The past is always up for grabs,” McAdams says.

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Telling the Story of Yourself: 6 Steps to Writing Personal Narratives

By Jennifer Xue

Table of Contents

Why do we write personal narratives, 6 guidelines for writing personal narrative essays, inspiring personal narratives, examples of personal narrative essays, tell your story.

First off, you might be wondering: what is a personal narrative? In short, personal narratives are stories we tell about ourselves that focus on our growth, lessons learned, and reflections on our experiences.

From stories about inspirational figures we heard as children to any essay, article, or exercise where we're asked to express opinions on a situation, thing, or individual—personal narratives are everywhere.

According to Psychology Today, personal narratives allow authors to feel and release pains, while savouring moments of strength and resilience. Such emotions provide an avenue for both authors and readers to connect while supporting healing in the process.

That all sounds great. But when it comes to putting the words down on paper, we often end up with a list of experiences and no real structure to tie them together.

In this article, we'll discuss what a personal narrative essay is further, learn the 6 steps to writing one, and look at some examples of great personal narratives.

As readers, we're fascinated by memoirs, autobiographies, and long-form personal narrative articles, as they provide a glimpse into the authors' thought processes, ideas, and feelings. But you don't have to be writing your whole life story to create a personal narrative.

You might be a student writing an admissions essay , or be trying to tell your professional story in a cover letter. Regardless of your purpose, your narrative will focus on personal growth, reflections, and lessons.

Personal narratives help us connect with other people's stories due to their easy-to-digest format and because humans are empathising creatures.

We can better understand how others feel and think when we were told stories that allow us to see the world from their perspectives. The author's "I think" and "I feel" instantaneously become ours, as the brain doesn't know whether what we read is real or imaginary.

In her best-selling book Wired for Story, Lisa Cron explains that the human brain craves tales as it's hard-wired through evolution to learn what happens next. Since the brain doesn't know whether what you are reading is actual or not, we can register the moral of the story cognitively and affectively.

In academia, a narrative essay tells a story which is experiential, anecdotal, or personal. It allows the author to creatively express their thoughts, feelings, ideas, and opinions. Its length can be anywhere from a few paragraphs to hundreds of pages.

Outside of academia, personal narratives are known as a form of journalism or non-fiction works called "narrative journalism." Even highly prestigious publications like the New York Times and Time magazine have sections dedicated to personal narratives. The New Yorke is a magazine dedicated solely to this genre.

The New York Times holds personal narrative essay contests. The winners are selected because they:

had a clear narrative arc with a conflict and a main character who changed in some way. They artfully balanced the action of the story with reflection on what it meant to the writer. They took risks, like including dialogue or playing with punctuation, sentence structure and word choice to develop a strong voice. And, perhaps most important, they focused on a specific moment or theme – a conversation, a trip to the mall, a speech tournament, a hospital visit – instead of trying to sum up the writer’s life in 600 words.

In a nutshell, a personal narrative can cover any reflective and contemplative subject with a strong voice and a unique perspective, including uncommon private values. It's written in first person and the story encompasses a specific moment in time worthy of a discussion.

Writing a personal narrative essay involves both objectivity and subjectivity. You'll need to be objective enough to recognise the importance of an event or a situation to explore and write about. On the other hand, you must be subjective enough to inject private thoughts and feelings to make your point.

With personal narratives, you are both the muse and the creator – you have control over how your story is told. However, like any other type of writing, it comes with guidelines.

1. Write Your Personal Narrative as a Story

As a story, it must include an introduction, characters, plot, setting, climax, anti-climax (if any), and conclusion. Another way to approach it is by structuring it with an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should set the tone, while the body should focus on the key point(s) you want to get across. The conclusion can tell the reader what lessons you have learned from the story you've just told.

2. Give Your Personal Narrative a Clear Purpose

Your narrative essay should reflect your unique perspective on life. This is a lot harder than it sounds. You need to establish your perspective, the key things you want your reader to take away, and your tone of voice. It's a good idea to have a set purpose in mind for the narrative before you start writing.

Let's say you want to write about how you manage depression without taking any medicine. This could go in any number of ways, but isolating a purpose will help you focus your writing and choose which stories to tell. Are you advocating for a holistic approach, or do you want to describe your emotional experience for people thinking of trying it?

Having this focus will allow you to put your own unique take on what you did (and didn't do, if applicable), what changed you, and the lessons learned along the way.

3. Show, Don't Tell

It's a narration, so the narrative should show readers what happened, instead of telling them. As well as being a storyteller, the author should take part as one of the characters. Keep this in mind when writing, as the way you shape your perspective can have a big impact on how your reader sees your overarching plot. Don't slip into just explaining everything that happened because it happened to you. Show your reader with action.

You can check for instances of telling rather than showing with ProWritingAid. For example, instead of:

"You never let me do anything!" I cried disdainfully.

"You never let me do anything!" To this day, my mother swears that the glare I levelled at her as I spat those words out could have soured milk.

Using ProWritingAid will help you find these instances in your manuscript and edit them without spending hours trawling through your work yourself.

4. Use "I," But Don't Overuse It

You, the author, take ownership of the story, so the first person pronoun "I" is used throughout. However, you shouldn't overuse it, as it'd make it sound too self-centred and redundant.

ProWritingAid can also help you here – the Style Report will tell you if you've started too many sentences with "I", and show you how to introduce more variation in your writing.

5. Pay Attention to Tenses

Tense is key to understanding. Personal narratives mostly tell the story of events that happened in the past, so many authors choose to use the past tense. This helps separate out your current, narrating voice and your past self who you are narrating. If you're writing in the present tense, make sure that you keep it consistent throughout.

6. Make Your Conclusion Satisfying

Satisfy your readers by giving them an unforgettable closing scene. The body of the narration should build up the plot to climax. This doesn't have to be something incredible or shocking, just something that helps give an interesting take on your story.

The takeaways or the lessons learned should be written without lecturing. Whenever possible, continue to show rather than tell. Don't say what you learned, narrate what you do differently now. This will help the moral of your story shine through without being too preachy.

GoodReads is a great starting point for selecting read-worthy personal narrative books. Here are five of my favourites.

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen, the author of 386 books, wrote this poetic story about a daughter and her father who went owling. Instead of learning about owls, Yolen invites readers to contemplate the meaning of gentleness and hope.

Night by Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. This Holocaust memoir has a strong message that such horrific events should never be repeated.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

This classic is a must-read by young and old alike. It's a remarkable diary by a 13-year-old Jewish girl who hid inside a secret annexe of an old building during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in 1942.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

This is a personal narrative written by a brave author renowned for her clarity, passion, and honesty. Didion shares how in December 2003, she lost her husband of 40 years to a massive heart attack and dealt with the acute illness of her only daughter. She speaks about grief, memories, illness, and hope.

Educated by Tara Westover

Author Tara Westover was raised by survivalist parents. She didn't go to school until 17 years of age, which later took her to Harvard and Cambridge. It's a story about the struggle for quest for knowledge and self-reinvention.

Narrative and personal narrative journalism are gaining more popularity these days. You can find distinguished personal narratives all over the web.

Curating the best of the best of personal narratives and narrative essays from all over the web. Some are award-winning articles.

Narratively

Long-form writing to celebrate humanity through storytelling. It publishes personal narrative essays written to provoke, inspire, and reflect, touching lesser-known and overlooked subjects.

Narrative Magazine

It publishes non,fiction narratives, poetry, and fiction. Among its contributors is Frank Conroy, the author of Stop-Time , a memoir that has never been out of print since 1967.

Thought Catalog

Aimed at Generation Z, it publishes personal narrative essays on self-improvement, family, friendship, romance, and others.

Personal narratives will continue to be popular as our brains are wired for stories. We love reading about others and telling stories of ourselves, as they bring satisfaction and a better understanding of the world around us.

Personal narratives make us better humans. Enjoy telling yours!

Write like a bestselling author

Love writing? ProWritingAid will help you improve the style, strength, and clarity of your stories.

Jennifer Xue

Jennifer Xue is an award-winning e-book author with 2,500+ articles and 100+ e-books/reports published under her belt. She also taught 50+ college-level essay and paper writing classes. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Business.com, Business2Community, Addicted2Success, Good Men Project, and others. Her blog is JenniferXue.com. Follow her on Twitter @jenxuewrites].

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3 Great Narrative Essay Examples + Tips for Writing

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 meaning, a narrative essay asks you to write what is effectively a story .

But unlike a simple work of creative fiction, your narrative essay must have a clear and concrete motif —a recurring theme or idea that you’ll explore throughout. Narrative essays are less rigid, more creative in expression, and therefore pretty different from most other essays you’ll be writing.

But not to fear—in this article, we’ll be covering what a narrative essay is, how to write a good one, and also analyzing some personal narrative essay examples to show you what a great one looks like.

What Is a Narrative Essay?

At first glance, a narrative essay might sound like you’re just writing 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. 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. That doesn’t mean that every detail needs to be pure and untainted by imagination, but rather that you shouldn’t wholly invent the events of your narrative essay. There’s nothing wrong with inventing a person’s words if you can’t remember them exactly, but you shouldn’t say they said something they weren’t even close to saying.

Another big difference between narrative essays and creative fiction—as well as other kinds of essays—is that narrative essays are based on motifs. A motif is a dominant idea or theme, one that you establish before writing the essay. As you’re crafting the narrative, it’ll feed back into your motif to create a comprehensive picture of whatever that motif is.

For example, say you want to write a narrative essay about how your first day in high school helped you establish your identity. You might discuss events like trying to figure out where to sit in the cafeteria, having to describe yourself in five words as an icebreaker in your math class, or being unsure what to do during your lunch break because it’s no longer acceptable to go outside and play during lunch. 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. If you’re writing a story about yourself, it’s natural to refer to yourself within the essay. It’s also okay to use other perspectives, such as third- or even second-person, but that should only be done if it better serves your motif. Generally speaking, your narrative essay should be in first-person perspective.

Though your motif choices may feel at times like you’re making a point the way you would in an argumentative essay, a narrative essay’s goal is to tell a story, not convince the reader of anything. Your reader should be able to tell what your motif is from reading, but you don’t have to change their mind about anything. If they don’t understand the point you are making, you should consider strengthening the delivery of the events and descriptions that support your motif.

Narrative essays also share some features with analytical essays, in which you derive meaning from a book, film, or other media. But narrative essays work differently—you’re not trying to draw meaning from an existing text, but rather using an event you’ve experienced to convey meaning. 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. You’ll generally be getting your point across chronologically as opposed to grouping together specific arguments in paragraphs or sections. 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. Instead of organizing to deliver your information based on maximum impact, you’ll be telling your story as it happened, using concrete details to reinforce your theme.

3 Great Narrative Essay Examples

One of the best ways to learn how to write a narrative essay is to look at a great narrative essay sample. Let’s take a look at some truly stellar narrative essay examples and dive into what exactly makes them work so well.

A Ticket to the Fair by David Foster Wallace

Today is Press Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, and I’m supposed to be at the fairgrounds by 9:00 A.M. to get my credentials. I imagine credentials to be a small white card in the band of a fedora. I’ve never been considered press before. My real interest in credentials is getting into rides and shows for free. I’m fresh in from the East Coast, for an East Coast magazine. Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish. I think they asked me to do this because I grew up here, just a couple hours’ drive from downstate Springfield. I never did go to the state fair, though—I pretty much topped out at the county fair level. Actually, I haven’t been back to Illinois for a long time, and I can’t say I’ve missed it.

Throughout this essay, David Foster Wallace recounts his experience as press at the Illinois State Fair. But it’s clear from this opening that he’s not just reporting on the events exactly as they happened—though that’s also true— but rather making a point about how the East Coast, where he lives and works, thinks about the Midwest.

In his opening paragraph, Wallace states that outright: “Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish.”

Not every motif needs to be stated this clearly , but in an essay as long as Wallace’s, particularly since the audience for such a piece may feel similarly and forget that such a large portion of the country exists, it’s important to make that point clear.

But Wallace doesn’t just rest on introducing his motif and telling the events exactly as they occurred from there. It’s clear that he selects events that remind us of that idea of East Coast cynicism , such as when he realizes that the Help Me Grow tent is standing on top of fake grass that is killing the real grass beneath, when he realizes the hypocrisy of craving a corn dog when faced with a real, suffering pig, when he’s upset for his friend even though he’s not the one being sexually harassed, and when he witnesses another East Coast person doing something he wouldn’t dare to do.

Wallace is literally telling the audience exactly what happened, complete with dates and timestamps for when each event occurred. But he’s also choosing those events with a purpose—he doesn’t focus on details that don’t serve his motif. That’s why he discusses the experiences of people, how the smells are unappealing to him, and how all the people he meets, in cowboy hats, overalls, or “black spandex that looks like cheesecake leotards,” feel almost alien to him.

All of these details feed back into the throughline of East Coast thinking that Wallace introduces in the first paragraph. He also refers back to it in the essay’s final paragraph, stating:

At last, an overarching theory blooms inside my head: megalopolitan East Coasters’ summer treats and breaks and literally ‘getaways,’ flights-from—from crowds, noise, heat, dirt, the stress of too many sensory choices….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. Here you’re pretty much away all the time….Something in a Midwesterner sort of actuates , deep down, at a public event….The real spectacle that draws us here is us.

Throughout this journey, Wallace has tried to demonstrate how the East Coast thinks about the Midwest, ultimately concluding that they are captivated by the Midwest’s less stimuli-filled life, but that the real reason they are interested in events like the Illinois State Fair is that they are, in some ways, a means of looking at the East Coast in a new, estranging way.

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. You don’t need this much space to explore a theme, either—as we’ll see in the next example, a strong narrative essay can also be very short.

Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolf

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 either 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, 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 raise 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 of death. I laid the pencil down again.

In this essay, Virginia Woolf explains her encounter with a dying moth. On surface level, this essay is just a recounting of an afternoon in which she watched a moth die—it’s even established in the title. But there’s more to it than that. Though Woolf does not begin her essay with as clear a motif as Wallace, it’s not hard to pick out the evidence she uses to support her point, which is that the experience of this moth is also the human experience.

In the title, Woolf tells us this essay is about death. But in the first paragraph, she seems to mostly be discussing life—the moth is “content with life,” people are working in the fields, and birds are flying. However, she mentions that it is mid-September and that the fields were being plowed. It’s autumn and it’s time for the harvest; the time of year in which many things die.

In this short essay, she chronicles the experience of watching a moth seemingly embody life, then die. Though this essay is literally about a moth, it’s also about a whole lot more than that. After all, moths aren’t the only things that die—Woolf is also reflecting on her own mortality, as well as the mortality of everything around her.

At its core, the essay discusses the push and pull of life and death, not in a way that’s necessarily sad, but in a way that is accepting of both. Woolf begins by setting up the transitional fall season, often associated with things 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. The moth’s death is part of the natural order of the world, just like fall, just like her own eventual death.

All these themes are set up in the beginning and explored throughout the essay’s narrative. Though Woolf doesn’t directly state her theme, she reinforces it by choosing a small, isolated event—watching a moth die—and illustrating her point through details.

With this essay, we can see that you don’t need a big, weird, exciting event to discuss an important meaning. 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.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.

Like Woolf, Baldwin does not lay out his themes in concrete terms—unlike Wallace, there’s no clear sentence that explains what he’ll be talking about. However, you can see the motifs quite clearly: death, fatherhood, struggle, and race.

Throughout the narrative essay, Baldwin discusses the circumstances of his father’s death, including his complicated relationship with his father. 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 Baldwin talks about his experience with a white teacher taking an interest in him and his father’s resistance to that, he is also talking about race and his father’s death. When he talks about his father’s death, he is also talking about his views on race. When he talks about his encounters with segregation and racism, 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, as well.

Baldwin doesn’t explicitly state any of this, but his writing so often touches on the same motifs that it becomes clear he wants us to think about all these ideas in conversation with one another.

At the end of the essay, Baldwin makes it more clear:

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, 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, and bringing them together in the end, you can demonstrate to your reader how all of them are related. However, it’s especially important to be sure that your motifs and clear and consistent throughout your essay so that the conclusion feels earned and consistent—if not, readers may feel mislead.

5 Key Tips for Writing Narrative Essays

Narrative essays can be a lot of fun to write since they’re so heavily based on creativity. But that can also feel intimidating—sometimes it’s easier to have strict guidelines than to have to make it all up yourself. Here are a few tips to keep your narrative essay feeling strong and fresh.

Develop Strong Motifs

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.

In the same way that an argumentative essay’s body should support its thesis, the body of your narrative essay should include motifs that support your theme.

Try to avoid cliches, as these will feel tired to your readers. Instead of roses to symbolize love, try succulents. Instead of the ocean representing some vast, unknowable truth, try the depths of your brother’s bedroom. Keep your language and motifs fresh and your essay will be even stronger!

Use First-Person Perspective

In many essays, you’re expected to remove yourself so that your points stand on their own. 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. If you want someone to identify with your point of view, it may be tempting to choose a second-person perspective. However, be sure you really understand the function of second-person; it’s very easy to put a reader off if the narration isn’t expertly deployed.

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.

That’s why first-person perspective is the standard. It keeps you, the writer, close to the narrative, reminding the reader that it really happened. And because you really know what happened and how, you’re free to inject your own opinion into the story without it detracting from your point, as it would in a different type of essay.

Stick to the Truth

Your essay should be true. However, this is a creative essay, and it’s okay to embellish a little. Rarely in life do we experience anything with a clear, concrete meaning the way somebody in a book might. If you flub the details a little, it’s okay—just don’t make them up entirely.

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. That’s okay, again, as long as you aren’t making it up entirely and assigning made-up statements to somebody.

Dialog is a powerful tool. A good conversation can add flavor and interest to a story, as we saw demonstrated in David Foster Wallace’s essay. As previously mentioned, it’s okay to flub it a little, especially because you’re likely writing about an experience you had without knowing that you’d be writing about it later.

However, don’t rely too much on it. Your narrative essay shouldn’t be told through people explaining things to one another; the motif comes through in the details. Dialog can be one of those details, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Use Sensory Descriptions

Because a narrative essay is a story, you can use sensory details to make your writing more interesting. If you’re describing a particular experience, you can go into detail about things like taste, smell, and hearing in a way that you probably wouldn’t do in any other essay style.

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. In Wallace’s essay, he discusses the sights, sounds, and smells of the Illinois State Fair to help emphasize his point about its strangeness. And in Baldwin’s essay, he describes shattered glass as a “wilderness,” and uses the feelings of his body to describe his mental state.

All these descriptions anchor us not only in the story, but in the motifs and themes as well. One of the tools of a writer is making the reader feel as you felt, and sensory details help you achieve that.

What’s Next?

Looking to brush up on your essay-writing capabilities before the ACT? This guide to ACT English 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 !

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Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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How to Write a Story About My Life Essay

Your life story is a unique tapestry of experiences, emotions, and milestones. Here's a guide on weaving these elements into a compelling narrative:

How do I write a story about my life essay? Writing about your life is an introspective journey. Reflect on milestones such as: "In 2005, my family embarked on a cross-country move from New York to California. This was not just a physical journey, but an emotional one as we navigated cultural shifts and personal growth."

How do you write a life story example? Narrative snippets can bring your essay to life. Consider: "Amid the aroma of my grandmother's kitchen, where the scent of fresh-baked bread intertwined with stories of her youth in Italy, I realized the importance of preserving family narratives."

How do you write a story essay? For instance: "As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting a golden hue over our beach campfire, my friend Sarah started narrating her unexpected escapade in the jungles of Borneo. With every twist and turn, we were gripped, realizing that sometimes life's best stories are unplanned."

What is life simple essay? Life's moments can be captured in simple narratives. Reflect upon: "Last winter, while walking my dog Max, we came across a frozen pond. Watching children gleefully slide across it, I was reminded of life's fleeting moments of joy and the importance of seizing them."

How do you write a short life story about yourself? Begin with defining moments: "When I was ten, I found a wounded bird in our backyard. Nursing it back to health didn't just kindle my love for animals but taught me compassion and patience."

How can I write about myself example? Use varied experiences: "From scaling the rocky terrains of Colorado, immersing myself in the bustling streets of Tokyo, to teaching underprivileged kids in my hometown, each experience has crafted a chapter of my ever-evolving life story."

What is our story? "In college, Lisa and I teamed up for a project on Renaissance art. Not only did we ace it, but our shared admiration for art and culture fostered a bond that turned two classmates into lifelong friends."

How do you start an interesting story example? Set the scene vividly: "It was on a cold, foggy night in London when I stumbled upon an old bookstore. Little did I know, this store harbored secrets that would lead me on a whirlwind adventure."

How do you write a successful story? Use emotions to captivate: "As Maria gazed upon the old photograph, tears welled up in her eyes. It wasn't just an image; it was a time capsule transporting her back to summers spent at her grandparents' cottage."

How do you write an example essay? Support your arguments with real-life instances: "In arguing the importance of community, I often reflect on the time my neighbors came together post a hurricane, showcasing unity and resilience."

What life means to me example? "Life, for me, is a mosaic of memories – from the giggles shared over childhood pranks to the solace found in solitary walks during challenging times."

Frequently Asked Questions

• What makes a personal life story essay engaging? True stories resonate best. Pouring genuine emotions, raw experiences, and candid reflections into your narrative makes it universally relatable.
• How can I avoid making my life story essay sound boastful? Maintain a balance. Celebrate achievements, but also shed light on challenges, lessons learned, and moments of vulnerability.
• What tense should I use when writing my life story? Past tense is often used, but present tense can create immediacy when sharing thoughts.
• How personal should I get in my life story essay? Authenticity is engaging, but set boundaries on details you share.
• Is chronological order essential in a life essay? Not necessarily. Chronology provides clarity, but thematic or importance-based sequencing can be impactful.
• Can I incorporate dialogues in my life story essay? Absolutely! Dialogues make moments come alive and give insights into character dynamics.
• Should I conclude with a lesson in my life story? Ending with a reflection or lesson provides closure and a takeaway for readers.

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The Ultimate Narrative Essay Guide for Beginners

A narrative essay tells a story in chronological order, with an introduction that introduces the characters and sets the scene. Then a series of events leads to a climax or turning point, and finally a resolution or reflection on the experience.

Speaking of which, are you in sixes and sevens about narrative essays? Don’t worry this ultimate expert guide will wipe out all your doubts. So let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Everything You Need to Know About Narrative Essay

What is a narrative essay.

When you go through a narrative essay definition, you would know that a narrative essay purpose is to tell a story. It’s all about sharing an experience or event and is different from other types of essays because it’s more focused on how the event made you feel or what you learned from it, rather than just presenting facts or an argument. Let’s explore more details on this interesting write-up and get to know how to write a narrative essay.

Elements of a Narrative Essay

Here’s a breakdown of the key elements of a narrative essay:

A narrative essay has a beginning, middle, and end. It builds up tension and excitement and then wraps things up in a neat package.

Real people, including the writer, often feature in personal narratives. Details of the characters and their thoughts, feelings, and actions can help readers to relate to the tale.

It’s really important to know when and where something happened so we can get a good idea of the context. Going into detail about what it looks like helps the reader to really feel like they’re part of the story.

Conflict or Challenge 

A story in a narrative essay usually involves some kind of conflict or challenge that moves the plot along. It could be something inside the character, like a personal battle, or something from outside, like an issue they have to face in the world.

Theme or Message

A narrative essay isn’t just about recounting an event – it’s about showing the impact it had on you and what you took away from it. It’s an opportunity to share your thoughts and feelings about the experience, and how it changed your outlook.

Emotional Impact

The author is trying to make the story they’re telling relatable, engaging, and memorable by using language and storytelling to evoke feelings in whoever’s reading it.

Narrative essays let writers have a blast telling stories about their own lives. It’s an opportunity to share insights and impart wisdom, or just have some fun with the reader. Descriptive language, sensory details, dialogue, and a great narrative voice are all essentials for making the story come alive.

The Purpose of a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is more than just a story – it’s a way to share a meaningful, engaging, and relatable experience with the reader. Includes:

Sharing Personal Experience

Narrative essays are a great way for writers to share their personal experiences, feelings, thoughts, and reflections. It’s an opportunity to connect with readers and make them feel something.

Entertainment and Engagement

The essay attempts to keep the reader interested by using descriptive language, storytelling elements, and a powerful voice. It attempts to pull them in and make them feel involved by creating suspense, mystery, or an emotional connection.

Conveying a Message or Insight

Narrative essays are more than just a story – they aim to teach you something. They usually have a moral lesson, a new understanding, or a realization about life that the author gained from the experience.

Building Empathy and Understanding

By telling their stories, people can give others insight into different perspectives, feelings, and situations. Sharing these tales can create compassion in the reader and help broaden their knowledge of different life experiences.

Inspiration and Motivation

Stories about personal struggles, successes, and transformations can be really encouraging to people who are going through similar situations. It can provide them with hope and guidance, and let them know that they’re not alone.

Reflecting on Life’s Significance

These essays usually make you think about the importance of certain moments in life or the impact of certain experiences. They make you look deep within yourself and ponder on the things you learned or how you changed because of those events.

Demonstrating Writing Skills

Coming up with a gripping narrative essay takes serious writing chops, like vivid descriptions, powerful language, timing, and organization. It’s an opportunity for writers to show off their story-telling abilities.

Preserving Personal History

Sometimes narrative essays are used to record experiences and special moments that have an emotional resonance. They can be used to preserve individual memories or for future generations to look back on.

Cultural and Societal Exploration

Personal stories can look at cultural or social aspects, giving us an insight into customs, opinions, or social interactions seen through someone’s own experience.

Format of a Narrative Essay

Narrative essays are quite flexible in terms of format, which allows the writer to tell a story in a creative and compelling way. Here’s a quick breakdown of the narrative essay format, along with some examples:

Introduction

Set the scene and introduce the story.

Engage the reader and establish the tone of the narrative.

Hook: Start with a captivating opening line to grab the reader’s attention. For instance:

Example:  “The scorching sun beat down on us as we trekked through the desert, our water supply dwindling.”

Background Information: Provide necessary context or background without giving away the entire story.

Example:  “It was the summer of 2015 when I embarked on a life-changing journey to…”

Thesis Statement or Narrative Purpose

Present the main idea or the central message of the essay.

Offer a glimpse of what the reader can expect from the narrative.

Thesis Statement: This isn’t as rigid as in other essays but can be a sentence summarizing the essence of the story.

Example:  “Little did I know, that seemingly ordinary hike would teach me invaluable lessons about resilience and friendship.”

Body Paragraphs

Present the sequence of events in chronological order.

Develop characters, setting, conflict, and resolution.

Story Progression : Describe events in the order they occurred, focusing on details that evoke emotions and create vivid imagery.

Example : Detail the trek through the desert, the challenges faced, interactions with fellow hikers, and the pivotal moments.

Character Development : Introduce characters and their roles in the story. Show their emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Example : Describe how each character reacted to the dwindling water supply and supported each other through adversity.

Dialogue and Interactions : Use dialogue to bring the story to life and reveal character personalities.

Example : “Sarah handed me her last bottle of water, saying, ‘We’re in this together.'”

Reach the peak of the story, the moment of highest tension or significance.

Turning Point: Highlight the most crucial moment or realization in the narrative.

Example:  “As the sun dipped below the horizon and hope seemed lost, a distant sound caught our attention—the rescue team’s helicopters.”

Provide closure to the story.

Reflect on the significance of the experience and its impact.

Reflection : Summarize the key lessons learned or insights gained from the experience.

Example : “That hike taught me the true meaning of resilience and the invaluable support of friendship in challenging times.”

Closing Thought : End with a memorable line that reinforces the narrative’s message or leaves a lasting impression.

Example : “As we boarded the helicopters, I knew this adventure would forever be etched in my heart.”

Example Summary:

Imagine a narrative about surviving a challenging hike through the desert, emphasizing the bonds formed and lessons learned. The narrative essay structure might look like starting with an engaging scene, narrating the hardships faced, showcasing the characters’ resilience, and culminating in a powerful realization about friendship and endurance.

Different Types of Narrative Essays

There are a bunch of different types of narrative essays – each one focuses on different elements of storytelling and has its own purpose. Here’s a breakdown of the narrative essay types and what they mean.

Personal Narrative

Description : Tells a personal story or experience from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Reflects on personal growth, lessons learned, or significant moments.

Example of Narrative Essay Types:

Topic : “The Day I Conquered My Fear of Public Speaking”

Focus: Details the experience, emotions, and eventual triumph over a fear of public speaking during a pivotal event.

Descriptive Narrative

Description : Emphasizes vivid details and sensory imagery.

Purpose : Creates a sensory experience, painting a vivid picture for the reader.

Topic : “A Walk Through the Enchanted Forest”

Focus : Paints a detailed picture of the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings experienced during a walk through a mystical forest.

Autobiographical Narrative

Description: Chronicles significant events or moments from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Provides insights into the writer’s life, experiences, and growth.

Topic: “Lessons from My Childhood: How My Grandmother Shaped Who I Am”

Focus: Explores pivotal moments and lessons learned from interactions with a significant family member.

Experiential Narrative

Description: Relays experiences beyond the writer’s personal life.

Purpose: Shares experiences, travels, or events from a broader perspective.

Topic: “Volunteering in a Remote Village: A Journey of Empathy”

Focus: Chronicles the writer’s volunteering experience, highlighting interactions with a community and personal growth.

Literary Narrative

Description: Incorporates literary elements like symbolism, allegory, or thematic explorations.

Purpose: Uses storytelling for deeper explorations of themes or concepts.

Topic: “The Symbolism of the Red Door: A Journey Through Change”

Focus: Uses a red door as a symbol, exploring its significance in the narrator’s life and the theme of transition.

Historical Narrative

Description: Recounts historical events or periods through a personal lens.

Purpose: Presents history through personal experiences or perspectives.

Topic: “A Grandfather’s Tales: Living Through the Great Depression”

Focus: Shares personal stories from a family member who lived through a historical era, offering insights into that period.

Digital or Multimedia Narrative

Description: Incorporates multimedia elements like images, videos, or audio to tell a story.

Purpose: Explores storytelling through various digital platforms or formats.

Topic: “A Travel Diary: Exploring Europe Through Vlogs”

Focus: Combines video clips, photos, and personal narration to document a travel experience.

How to Choose a Topic for Your Narrative Essay?

Selecting a compelling topic for your narrative essay is crucial as it sets the stage for your storytelling. Choosing a boring topic is one of the narrative essay mistakes to avoid . Here’s a detailed guide on how to choose the right topic:

Reflect on Personal Experiences

• Significant Moments:

Moments that had a profound impact on your life or shaped your perspective.

Example: A moment of triumph, overcoming a fear, a life-changing decision, or an unforgettable experience.

• Emotional Resonance:

Events that evoke strong emotions or feelings.

Example: Joy, fear, sadness, excitement, or moments of realization.

• Lessons Learned:

Experiences that taught you valuable lessons or brought about personal growth.

Example: Challenges that led to personal development, shifts in mindset, or newfound insights.

Explore Unique Perspectives

• Uncommon Experiences:

Unique or unconventional experiences that might captivate the reader’s interest.

Example: Unusual travels, interactions with different cultures, or uncommon hobbies.

• Different Points of View:

Stories from others’ perspectives that impacted you deeply.

Example: A family member’s story, a friend’s experience, or a historical event from a personal lens.

Focus on Specific Themes or Concepts

• Themes or Concepts of Interest:

Themes or ideas you want to explore through storytelling.

Example: Friendship, resilience, identity, cultural diversity, or personal transformation.

• Symbolism or Metaphor:

Using symbols or metaphors as the core of your narrative.

Example: Exploring the symbolism of an object or a place in relation to a broader theme.

Consider Your Audience and Purpose

• Relevance to Your Audience:

Topics that resonate with your audience’s interests or experiences.

Example: Choose a relatable theme or experience that your readers might connect with emotionally.

• Impact or Message:

What message or insight do you want to convey through your story?

Example: Choose a topic that aligns with the message or lesson you aim to impart to your readers.

Brainstorm and Evaluate Ideas

• Free Writing or Mind Mapping:

Process: Write down all potential ideas without filtering. Mind maps or free-writing exercises can help generate diverse ideas.

• Evaluate Feasibility:

The depth of the story, the availability of vivid details, and your personal connection to the topic.

Imagine you’re considering topics for a narrative essay. You reflect on your experiences and decide to explore the topic of “Overcoming Stage Fright: How a School Play Changed My Perspective.” This topic resonates because it involves a significant challenge you faced and the personal growth it brought about.

Narrative Essay Topics

50 easy narrative essay topics.

• Learning to Ride a Bike
• My First Day of School
• A Surprise Birthday Party
• The Day I Got Lost
• Visiting a Haunted House
• An Encounter with a Wild Animal
• My Favorite Childhood Toy
• The Best Vacation I Ever Had
• An Unforgettable Family Gathering
• Conquering a Fear of Heights
• A Special Gift I Received
• Moving to a New City
• The Most Memorable Meal
• Getting Caught in a Rainstorm
• An Act of Kindness I Witnessed
• The First Time I Cooked a Meal
• My Experience with a New Hobby
• The Day I Met My Best Friend
• A Hike in the Mountains
• Learning a New Language
• An Embarrassing Moment
• Dealing with a Bully
• My First Job Interview
• A Sporting Event I Attended
• The Scariest Dream I Had
• Helping a Stranger
• The Joy of Achieving a Goal
• A Road Trip Adventure
• Overcoming a Personal Challenge
• The Significance of a Family Tradition
• An Unusual Pet I Owned
• A Misunderstanding with a Friend
• Exploring an Abandoned Building
• My Favorite Book and Why
• The Impact of a Role Model
• A Cultural Celebration I Participated In
• A Valuable Lesson from a Teacher
• A Trip to the Zoo
• An Unplanned Adventure
• Volunteering Experience
• A Moment of Forgiveness
• A Decision I Regretted
• A Special Talent I Have
• The Importance of Family Traditions
• The Thrill of Performing on Stage
• A Moment of Sudden Inspiration
• The Meaning of Home
• Learning to Play a Musical Instrument
• A Childhood Memory at the Park
• Witnessing a Beautiful Sunset

Narrative Essay Topics for College Students

• Discovering a New Passion
• Overcoming Academic Challenges
• Navigating Cultural Differences
• Embracing Independence: Moving Away from Home
• Exploring Career Aspirations
• Coping with Stress in College
• The Impact of a Mentor in My Life
• Balancing Work and Studies
• Facing a Fear of Public Speaking
• Exploring a Semester Abroad
• The Evolution of My Study Habits
• Volunteering Experience That Changed My Perspective
• The Role of Technology in Education
• Finding Balance: Social Life vs. Academics
• Learning a New Skill Outside the Classroom
• Reflecting on Freshman Year Challenges
• The Joys and Struggles of Group Projects
• My Experience with Internship or Work Placement
• Challenges of Time Management in College
• Redefining Success Beyond Grades
• The Influence of Literature on My Thinking
• The Impact of Social Media on College Life
• Overcoming Procrastination
• Lessons from a Leadership Role
• Exploring Diversity on Campus
• Exploring Passion for Environmental Conservation
• An Eye-Opening Course That Changed My Perspective
• Living with Roommates: Challenges and Lessons
• The Significance of Extracurricular Activities
• The Influence of a Professor on My Academic Journey
• Discussing Mental Health in College
• The Evolution of My Career Goals
• Confronting Personal Biases Through Education
• The Experience of Attending a Conference or Symposium
• Challenges Faced by Non-Native English Speakers in College
• The Impact of Traveling During Breaks
• Exploring Identity: Cultural or Personal
• The Impact of Music or Art on My Life
• Addressing Diversity in the Classroom
• Exploring Entrepreneurial Ambitions
• My Experience with Research Projects
• Overcoming Impostor Syndrome in College
• The Importance of Networking in College
• Finding Resilience During Tough Times
• The Impact of Global Issues on Local Perspectives
• The Influence of Family Expectations on Education
• Lessons from a Part-Time Job
• Exploring the College Sports Culture
• The Role of Technology in Modern Education
• The Journey of Self-Discovery Through Education

Narrative Essay Comparison

Narrative essay vs. descriptive essay.

Here’s our first narrative essay comparison! While both narrative and descriptive essays focus on vividly portraying a subject or an event, they differ in their primary objectives and approaches. Now, let’s delve into the nuances of comparison on narrative essays.

Narrative Essay:

Storytelling: Focuses on narrating a personal experience or event.

Chronological Order: Follows a structured timeline of events to tell a story.

Message or Lesson: Often includes a central message, moral, or lesson learned from the experience.

Engagement: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling storyline and character development.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, using “I” and expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a plot with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Focuses on describing characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Conflict or Challenge: Usually involves a central conflict or challenge that drives the narrative forward.

Dialogue: Incorporates conversations to bring characters and their interactions to life.

Reflection: Concludes with reflection or insight gained from the experience.

Descriptive Essay:

Vivid Description: Aims to vividly depict a person, place, object, or event.

Imagery and Details: Focuses on sensory details to create a vivid image in the reader’s mind.

Emotion through Description: Uses descriptive language to evoke emotions and engage the reader’s senses.

Painting a Picture: Creates a sensory-rich description allowing the reader to visualize the subject.

Imagery and Sensory Details: Focuses on providing rich sensory descriptions, using vivid language and adjectives.

Point of Focus: Concentrates on describing a specific subject or scene in detail.

Spatial Organization: Often employs spatial organization to describe from one area or aspect to another.

Objective Observations: Typically avoids the use of personal opinions or emotions; instead, the focus remains on providing a detailed and objective description.

Comparison:

Focus: Narrative essays emphasize storytelling, while descriptive essays focus on vividly describing a subject or scene.

Perspective: Narrative essays are often written from a first-person perspective, while descriptive essays may use a more objective viewpoint.

Purpose: Narrative essays aim to convey a message or lesson through a story, while descriptive essays aim to paint a detailed picture for the reader without necessarily conveying a specific message.

Narrative Essay vs. Argumentative Essay

The narrative essay and the argumentative essay serve distinct purposes and employ different approaches:

Engagement and Emotion: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling story.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience or lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, sharing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a storyline with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Message or Lesson: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Argumentative Essay:

Persuasion and Argumentation: Aims to persuade the reader to adopt the writer’s viewpoint on a specific topic.

Logical Reasoning: Presents evidence, facts, and reasoning to support a particular argument or stance.

Debate and Counterarguments: Acknowledge opposing views and counter them with evidence and reasoning.

Thesis Statement: Includes a clear thesis statement that outlines the writer’s position on the topic.

Thesis and Evidence: Starts with a strong thesis statement and supports it with factual evidence, statistics, expert opinions, or logical reasoning.

Counterarguments: Addresses opposing viewpoints and provides rebuttals with evidence.

Logical Structure: Follows a logical structure with an introduction, body paragraphs presenting arguments and evidence, and a conclusion reaffirming the thesis.

Formal Language: Uses formal language and avoids personal anecdotes or emotional appeals.

Objective: Argumentative essays focus on presenting a logical argument supported by evidence, while narrative essays prioritize storytelling and personal reflection.

Purpose: Argumentative essays aim to persuade and convince the reader of a particular viewpoint, while narrative essays aim to engage, entertain, and share personal experiences.

Structure: Narrative essays follow a storytelling structure with character development and plot, while argumentative essays follow a more formal, structured approach with logical arguments and evidence.

In essence, while both essays involve writing and presenting information, the narrative essay focuses on sharing a personal experience, whereas the argumentative essay aims to persuade the audience by presenting a well-supported argument.

Narrative Essay vs. Personal Essay

While there can be an overlap between narrative and personal essays, they have distinctive characteristics:

Storytelling: Emphasizes recounting a specific experience or event in a structured narrative form.

Engagement through Story: Aims to engage the reader through a compelling story with characters, plot, and a central theme or message.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience and the lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s viewpoint, expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Focuses on developing a storyline with a clear beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Includes descriptions of characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Central Message: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Personal Essay:

Exploration of Ideas or Themes: Explores personal ideas, opinions, or reflections on a particular topic or subject.

Expression of Thoughts and Opinions: Expresses the writer’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives on a specific subject matter.

Reflection and Introspection: Often involves self-reflection and introspection on personal experiences, beliefs, or values.

Varied Structure and Content: Can encompass various forms, including memoirs, personal anecdotes, or reflections on life experiences.

Flexibility in Structure: Allows for diverse structures and forms based on the writer’s intent, which could be narrative-like or more reflective.

Theme-Centric Writing: Focuses on exploring a central theme or idea, with personal anecdotes or experiences supporting and illustrating the theme.

Expressive Language: Utilizes descriptive and expressive language to convey personal perspectives, emotions, and opinions.

Focus: Narrative essays primarily focus on storytelling through a structured narrative, while personal essays encompass a broader range of personal expression, which can include storytelling but isn’t limited to it.

Structure: Narrative essays have a more structured plot development with characters and a clear sequence of events, while personal essays might adopt various structures, focusing more on personal reflection, ideas, or themes.

Intent: While both involve personal experiences, narrative essays emphasize telling a story with a message or lesson learned, while personal essays aim to explore personal thoughts, feelings, or opinions on a broader range of topics or themes.

A narrative essay is more than just telling a story. It’s also meant to engage the reader, get them thinking, and leave a lasting impact. Whether it’s to amuse, motivate, teach, or reflect, these essays are a great way to communicate with your audience. This interesting narrative essay guide was all about letting you understand the narrative essay, its importance, and how can you write one.

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Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Adolescence — Personal Narrative Essay: My Experience In My Life

Personal Narrative Essay: My Experience in My Life

• Categories: Adolescence

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Published: Mar 13, 2024

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Early childhood, adolescence, young adulthood.

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Telling Short, Memorable Stories From Your Life: ‘My Secret Pepsi Plot’

An invitation to students to tell a meaningful story in a limited number of words, with an example from The Times’s Lives column to help.

By Katherine Schulten

Our new Mentor Text series spotlights writing from The Times that students can learn from and emulate.

This entry, like several others we are publishing, focuses on an essay from The Times’s long-running Lives column to consider skills prized in narrative writing. We are starting with this genre to help support students participating in our 2020 Personal Narrative Essay Contest .

Our Personal Narrative Essay Contest is inspired by The New York Times’s Lives column, which ran from 1996 to 2017 and featured “short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences .”

The editor of the column once posted some advice on “How to Write a Lives Essay” to guide those who submitted to the column annually. Much of that advice applies to our contest as well.

For example, several points boil down to reminders to keep it simple, including tips like:

Don’t try to fit your whole life into one “Lives.”

Don’t try to tell the whole story.

Tell a small story — an evocative, particular moment.

Better to start from something very simple that you think is interesting (an incident, a person) and expand upon it, rather than a large idea that you then have to fit into a short essay. For example, start with “the day the Santa Claus in the mall asked me on a date” rather than “the state of affairs that is dating in an older age bracket.”

This advice is similar to advice often given to high school seniors writing college essays : You have only 650 words to show admissions officers something important, interesting or memorable about who you are and what matters to you. A list of awards you’ve won won’t do it, but an engaging story about making brownies with your stepbrother just might.

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The Story of my Life

In this personal narrative, the author will recount key experiences and events that have shaped their life. The piece will cover significant moments, challenges overcome, lessons learned, and how these experiences have contributed to personal growth and identity. It will be a reflective exploration of the author’s journey and accomplishments. More free essay examples are accessible at PapersOwl about Cancer.

How it works

Throughout my childhood life, my dream was always to be a medical doctor. Besides, I also prayed so hard that my childhood girlfriend would get married to me and that she would even pursue the same medical course like mine.

My, then girlfriend and I were in the same primary and secondary levels of education until the College level when we moved to separate colleges. At the college education, my dream of pursuing medicine was validated when we joined the class with few other comrades.

Interestingly enough, my girlfriend was also privileged to be admitted to the medical school in the different college.

During my college life, I got to interact with different people of different races and built the best rapport with them. I also advised my girlfriend to follow the same in her respective college as this would create the best business relation with them in future. My future expectation was to establish the most successful and entrepreneurial cancer center at The Washington DC in partnership with my future wife.

I expected that my love for her would reach that point where we would be married together and be business partners at the same time. On reaching the second level of my college education, we both established a joint cancer treatment foundation at the New York City, which was later known everywhere to be having the best entrepreneurial attributes and skills in managing developing cancer cases. By having such kinds of developments, we were always invited for series of motivational talks in various campuses and colleges.

Besides, my next aim from such exposure was to develop a clinic at the Washington DC when I reached my final year at the college. On reaching my final year, I received some awards for my activities together with my girlfriend, and consequently, we were privileged to get government sponsorship to spread the medical skills to other neighboring states and continents. Similarly, my parents were so much impressed that they always offered me the necessary moral support from my needs. I then graduated from the college a year later with a distinction. I attained a first-class honor in my medical studies while my girlfriend managed equally excellent points that offered us free government sponsored scholarships.

I got engaged in some medical services as I earned while making some savings for my future expectation of having the most admired cancer center at the Washington DC.Usually, all my activities were moving smoothly because I always had the physical and psychological support from my girlfriend. We had loved each other for a very long time since childhood, and hence we had the reason to plan for our future endeavors.

By then we were already engaged, but still, it was a bit early to get married at that tender age since we were at our early 20s.However, during our postgraduate education, I chose to pursue the same medical related course, but my then girlfriend opted for a new field. The field of engineering. At that time, a disparity between us was identified because most the time we were always in different areas of activities except for the weekends when we could gather for refreshment vacations at the nearby beaches.

Still, we were very close, and our partnership with the foundation even grew stronger. Apart from daily educational and commercial activities, every month we both used to visit various places for recreational vacations. Some of the places we visited include Bangkok, Dubai, Mombasa, New York City, Seoul, and London within four years of our engagement. This was an indication of appreciation and love for my childhood “sweetheart.” I also bought her a Mercedes Benz car to appreciate her for giving me her time all those years of our existence.

A year later, our cancer foundation recorded an enormous recognition from various states, and as a result, we received more sponsorships which offered us financial support to help us run it smoothly. At the same time, my girlfriend had a separate engineering firm for herself, which also registered a handsome profit. She had opted to join the engineering school for her postgraduate education program and hence had the upper hand than me to deal with such engineering activities. I had only educational skills in the field of medicine unlike her who developed skills in both the areas, one in the field of medicine during her college level and the engineering skills she attained during her postgraduate studies.As we both reached 30, I proposed to her for an official marriage but she declined to claim that it was still very early to make such decision.

However, we always maintained our engagement as we often went out for dates. During my first date with her, I organized series of entertaining activities, and we both enjoyed. During that same night of our date, I decided to give her engagement ring while getting prepared sooner to get married to her. I moved to a well-decorated mansion at the Washington DC while getting motivated that my dream of having the best-recognized cancer center within the city was edging closer. I was wholly convinced that the time to get married to my long-time girlfriend had equivalently arrived because we had moved together to the mansion as we planned along on the structure, foundation and distinct functions of our future center.

I had set aside a right amount of money for buying a 24-storey building within the city to cater for all the activities within the premise.

During my second date with her, I noticed that besides my engagement ring, she put on a better one than mine. I did not hesitate to ask her but the answer she gave me almost killed me. She affirmed to me that she had been dating another man from her engineering school and that they had a proliferating joint engineering workshop within the city, which was always known everywhere to be furnishing the items used in the White House.

I got perplexed about the issue as I remained to wonder the kind of heartbreak I had encountered. From losing the love of my life to losing my business partner. To add more pain on the same, she was expecting a baby with the other man. I wondered why she had hidden all that from me for the many occasions we had been together. Those were the most disgusting days of my life as I lost interest in my occupation as well as the love story. Perhaps, in future, I will find someone who loves me unconditionally!!

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Why Fiction Matters

The story of my life (and yours).

Tiphanie Yanique

At the New School, where I am a professor, I teach a literature seminar called Girls: Narratives of the Girl Child . Every text we read features a girl. The class seeks to ask questions like, do girls have adventure? Do girls have subjectivity? Do girls have agency? Are girls fundamentally different from boys, from grown-up women? If so, under what circumstances? And if not, what are the barriers in place? And finally, how does literature answer these questions? Though the class might seem narrow given the subject matter, it doesn’t take much to think of numerous stories featuring young people, girls and boys both. Just think about what you read in high school or even later in college.

It turns out that so much of American literature is about youth. Perhaps this is because we are still a relatively young country. Either way, much of American canonical literature reveals that as a culture, we in the U.S. value the lessons taught and the experiences culled from childhood and adolescence. We see this at the formative time for self-discovery and self-making. Just consider The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger or The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Or go back further in our literary history and bring in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Even as our literary canon made room for writers of color, queer writers, and immigrant writers we see that the attention to youth remained. Consider Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes, Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, or How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. Even if the main character in a novel is a grown-up by the end, her narrative so often starts out in childhood. The examples for this are abundant: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. When weighing this, it does seem that fiction in the U.S. is fiction of the child. The American fiction tradition might just be a bildungsroman tradition. A tradition of self-actualization, of personal agency, of growing up and becoming who you will become.

Which is to say that fiction matters for many reasons. Some of these reasons are particular to one book or even more particular to one private reading experience. But over the life of a book and the life of a reader, it does seem so clearly and so simply that fiction, in this country, has all along been doing something incredibly profound: It has been helping us figure out who we are.

But over the life of a book and the life of a reader, it does seem so clearly and so simply that fiction, in this country, has all along been doing something incredibly profound: It has been helping us figure out who we are.

We sophisticated readers and writers are somewhat ashamed to admit this. We think this reduces fiction to some sort of simple cause and effect, as we might say happens when violent video games make young kids smack each other on the playground. We hate to think that we are so easily manipulated by art. And yet. And yet. This is so much of why we go to fiction. To be manipulated—worked on and worked over—even if just for the duration of the reading. We want to fall in love as the character falls in love. We want to be eighteen and sent off to the war. We want to be sixteen and losing our virginity and our minds. We want to laugh in the middle. To cry at the end. In fact, as both anthropology and neuropsychology seem to admit, fiction is designed to do this work of making us feel and act. This is why humans told stories to begin with. Our intention was to teach and to challenge. To examine and to explore. To say: This is human. This is our humanity. You are human. You are part of this. This is who you are.

Of course, books of fiction have been claiming this all along.

“You better not never tell nobody but God.” So starts Alice Walker’s masterpiece The Color Purple . In Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina , a character says: “I’m going to tell you who you are.”

The characters that speak these words, Don’t tell…I will tell you who you are , make clear the importance of storytelling in defining the self. They exclaim what fiction is for in their communities and what fiction can do for the individual. The fact that these characters are the abusive fathers of the novels telling this to the girl children doesn’t lessen the point. It underscores it. All around us, especially around children, perhaps especially around girls, there is a swirl of narrative telling us who to be. Fictions of all kinds are constantly shaping our personhood. Fiction is that vital and powerful. Stories will “kill your mammy” says Alphonso to Celie in The Color Purple . Stories will keep you from killing yourself, as Bone shows us in Bastard Out of Carolina .

Celie is told she’s evil and ugly by her father. This is a fiction to be sure, but one she believes because it is the only story of herself she is offered. It is not until Shug gives Celie another story—that every part of her is pretty and good—that Celie can begin to see herself as pretty and good. Shug’s version of Celie is a story, too (Celie is certainly rather homely in comparison to Shug). But it’s one that Celie can take and place over the other. This latter fiction is the one that gives Celie the confidence to transform her life.

When we experience fiction, we live that fiction.

Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal (we humans are that animal) says this:

“(A)ll of us understand that fiction is about fake people and fake events. But this doesn’t stop the unconscious centers of our brains from processing it like it’s real. When the protagonist of a novel is in a bad fix we know it’s all pretend, but our hearts still race, we breathe faster, and stress hormones spike our blood…FMRI studies show when we experience these things, our brains light up as though that thing were happening to us, not just to the characters. So novels make us feel like we’re experiencing an alternative reality because, from the brain’s perspective, we actually are.”

So reading is about being in a different world and experiencing someone else’s life. Which is to say that reading might be very much about empathy. And when it’s a character who has gone through some shit that you have gone through, reading can also help you empathize with yourself via your own lived experiences.

Writers and writing teachers (I belong to both camps) rarely ever talk about this possibility and when we do it’s not usually to embrace it. Writing can help you know yourself or even love yourself? It sounds hokey. But I think teachers and writers veer away from this tall task of fiction because they are afraid to admit that the work we are doing in writing fiction is that dangerous and vital. It’s too scary to admit. It feels like a shackle—what do you mean, I have to consider that kind of impact? I’m just writing to get my story collection published so I can get an adjunct job! And yet art has always been in the service of building and destroying human beings. That’s why when one wants to erase a people you tear up their art, you burn down their libraries. To admit that fiction does not have this power is to be unaware of the history of fiction.

…when one wants to erase a people you tear up their art, you burn down their libraries. To admit that fiction does not have this power is to be unaware of the history of fiction.

When Daddy Glen in Bastard Out of Carolina tells Bone that he will tell her who she is, he does so to erase the stories her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and mother have been giving her. Her family stories, all of which are full of flat-out fictions (lies, we could call them), have nonetheless been the narratives that communicate to Bone that she belongs to her family. These stories of belonging are especially vital to Bone because she doesn’t look like the rest of her family and because “illegitimate” is stamped on her birth certificate. For Bone those family fictions are how she knows herself. After she suffers abuse from Daddy Glen, the fictions she tells herself are stories of horrific violence; stories about being caught in fire, being buried under hay. In these stories she is still strong and brave. She is the victim who saves herself or is saved by a kind hero. Because she has these stories of her own survival she is able to survive. The stories give her that possibility.

But we know this! Every reading parent knows this and so gives their children books they hope will allow the children to see their beauty or intelligence or bravery. We give our children books about sharing so they will, please, learn to share. We give them books about sleeping in their own beds so they will stay out of ours. About preparing for a new sibling. Watching any child study these books you know, you know, you cannot deny, that the books are giving the child a possibility—a possibility to be that sharing child. To be that child who can sleep all night in her own bed. Psychology makes it so clear that none of us escapes our childhood. But we seem to think that we lose this fundamental purpose of fiction as we age. We don’t.

Which is not to say that grown-ups read for instruction. (Frankly, kids don’t go to fiction for that purpose, either). I am not arguing at all that fiction must seek to instruct. But I am offering the idea that fiction asks the instructive questions. Fiction says, did you know humans could be this way? Could you be this way? Could this be you? Could this be humanity?

Which is also to say that stories don’t always save us. Stories can hurt us, destroy us. Readers who have found their own ethnicity or sexual orientation or able-bodiedness underrepresented in literature or marginalized in literature, have known the serious personal erasure that can occur with reading. It is still refreshing to find a complex character of color in American fiction. This is not to say that we readers can’t imagine ourselves into any character; of course, we can…of course, we must if we are to be good readers. But when the black character is always the uneducated maid or the magical negro, the black reader comes to understand quite quickly that though she may be called upon to have depth of imagination, the writer is often not doing the same. (This is why the current “We Need Diverse Books” campaign is so vital.)

Both The Color Purple and Bastard out of Carolina were banned (and in some cases, continue to be banned). They were banned because someone, many someones, thought these fictions did not present safe stories. Thought they were stories that would hurt girls, especially, because they were stories about girls who were hurt. The powers that be were sure that these books, though fiction, tell a horrible truth girls could not bear. When we ban books it’s often because we know that these books tell us who we are. We ban them because we don’t want to be what the books declare. Though, of course, The Color Purple and Bastard out of Carolina are both about the kinds of horrors young girl often are made to bear.

When we ban books it’s often because we know that these books tell us who we are. We ban them because we don’t want to be what the books declare.

Paradoxically, by not telling those stories, hurt girls, abused girls, bastard girls, black girls, poor girls could too easily come to believe that their personal stories are not only shameful, ( never tell nobody but God ) but also that their true personal stories made them shameful. Their storied selves were to be censored. Don’t tell. I will tell you who you are.

But fiction tells.

Fiction says every possible story is a human story. Celie and Bone are fully complex humans in their novels. Though banned, these books have been in print since they were published. Read and read, despite anybody saying not to. Though fiction, they tell a truth girls need to know in order to see that their own experiences as victims of abuse do not dehumanize them.

Fiction, too then, can say: Sing! Can say: Here is story like yours. Here is a story like someone you know.

But let us push this further. Perhaps it is not just that fiction can tell you who you are. But it is rather that fiction does tell you who you are. Too much pressure? Too bad. Because, in fact, storytelling is the way we instill cultural and personal identity. Good or bad. We know who we are through the stories we are told about ourselves, about our communities. We read and we place ourselves into the narrative. We can’t help it. It’s the way we are made. Fiction, however it comes, is a necessity in human culture.

In her 2008 TED Talk the neurologist Jill Bolte Taylor reveals her experience of waking up one morning and realizing that she is having a stroke. As she says, her “brain chatter” went silent. The left half of her brain shut down completely and she lost language. Because she lost her language, she also lost her memory. What she says this meant for her (and for all us) is pretty intense: “I lost all definition of myself in relation to everything in the external world.”

What essentially happened is that Dr. Bolte Taylor lost her ability to tell herself the story of herself. The narrative that she had built up over her life, how important she is in her field, who she loves, etcetera, was suddenly and completely unavailable to her. We tell ourselves the story of ourselves as we develop language. This story is, of course, a fiction. Someone else might see you as less or more talented than you do. In fact, the whole world might think you are unfair and stingy, whereas your own self-narrative is that you are judicious and generous. For the self, the self-narrative defines you. Language tells us ‘I am.’ When Dr. Bolte Taylor loses language she loses herself. Without this fiction, her own personhood did not exist to herself. The story you tell yourself of who you are is who you are.

Fiction matters because we cannot exist without it.

Did Bastard Out of Carolina or The Color Purple do this for me as a reader? Did they give me my humanity? Fuck yes. Absolutely. I was the bastard girl. The poor girl. The black girl. The girl with the bad daddy. In these novels, I saw that my private narrative wasn’t one that made me such a shameful object that it couldn’t be turned into art. Couldn’t be made into something beautiful.

The story you tell yourself of who you are is who you are.

But also, these fictions told me quite clearly that I also needed other stories. I needed stories, too, about girls and boys. I needed The Woman Warrior . I needed Drown . I needed so much! I needed to know I wasn’t one narrative only. Not just the abused girl. But the warrior girl. All of me could be valid, even when bad, even if a boy, even if Asian or white, for that matter. I could imagine myself into all those possibilities. I also needed to know that I could change that narrative. I needed to know that all the narratives weren’t about me, but were maybe about someone next to me. I needed to know that my stories are part of the community stories, part of the human stories. And that any narrative is possible. Did fiction save my life? Fuck yes. But more. Fiction made my life. Of course fiction matters.

In the season 1, episode 1 podcast of Radiolab called “Who am I” Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich examine this idea of fiction making us who we are. They introduce us to U.C. San Diego Neurologist, V.S. Ramachandran. He says that what is human about us is our ability to construct stories. That storytelling and the self go hand in hand. And he doesn’t just mean nonfiction. He means fiction. He says that because we can formulate inner thoughts (the “brain chatter” that Dr. Bolte Taylor talked about) we can also make stuff up, we can imagine things that do not exist. We can make fiction. His research suggests that the evolution of introspection coincides with our ability to tell a story. Basically, we think, therefore we make fiction. Because we can introspect, we can abstract and tell fictional stories. But also because we tell fictional stories, we can introspect and abstract. It’s not that one comes before the other. They occur as interdependent capabilities.

Dr. Ramachandran and many other prominent neurologists think that being able to tell fictional stories is what makes humans different from other sentient animals. The human being is not a human being just because we have language (dolphins have language, for example) but because we create fiction.

Which is to say that we humans must have fiction in order to be human.

We must have diverse and multiple fictions so we will have multiple versions of our selves and our communities. We must read fiction and write fiction, so that we can release the dangerous stories from their shame and so we can see ourselves in as many versions as possible. We must write diverse stories—stories where characters are rich and poor, and brown and yellow and black and white. Stories where we desire, where we repel. Stories that make us laugh and cry. Stories that piss us off. Stories we know intimately. Stories we didn’t know before at all. Because each narrative, each fiction, becomes our actual truth. Becomes who we are. And the more complex we are the more we are able to tolerate and even celebrate all of humanity in its complexity. This is a tall order for fiction writers.

James Baldwin says, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world. But then you read. It was books that taught me the things that tormented me most, were the very things that connected me, to all the people who were alive or had ever been alive.” Let’s be real: headlines in the newspapers do not do this.

Fiction does this.

I recently had the pleasure of being in the audience when the fiction writer Christopher Castellani accepted his 2015 Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers Award for the work his organization, Grub Street, does in teaching writing and nurturing emerging writers. In his acceptance speech, Castellani spoke about a novel he is writing about the playwright Tennessee Williams. One of Williams’ most quoted lines is: “Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.” Castellani says that he has come to understand that in this quote Tennessee Williams is claiming that writers write “not to escape life, but to reclaim it…Life,” Castellani continues, “is unsatisfactory because it’s a frantic blur; and writers write to put that blur in focus. The best writers do it so well it takes our breath away.”

There are perhaps so many reasons that fiction matters. But I am claiming this one as my own. Fiction writers and readers intentionally seek this meaning that we are all constantly and unconsciously seeking. If we write books of fiction it is because we are joining a special priestess-hood where being “of the cloth” is about putting the blur of the brain chatter into a focused beauty that might take a reader’s breath away. Readers are the believers in that focused beauty. Literary fiction, we call it. But we all believe in fiction, even if we don’t worship at the altar of it as art. It is just that simple and that profound. Fiction can make your life. Fiction is your life.

About this series

These essays on the subject of Why Fiction Matters were written by a panel of distinguished authors. We hope you'll find these essays both illuminating and inspiring, and that they'll lead you to think about why fiction matters to you.

Discover Our Fiction, Essays & More

Chris Jackson on the Privilege of Being an Editor, and Publishing’s Systemic Problems

Inua Ellams on Writing The Half-God of Rainfall

Family Histories

A Tribute to Edith Grossman

First Fiction

Our Other Futures

Moby-Dick and In the Heart of the Sea

Stronger by Way of Breaking or How to Handle the Failed Election

The Science of Magical Thinking

Supermarket Mittelschmerz

The Invention of the Self Is Another Kind of Fiction

Appreciating Tillie Olsen

On alice munro.

Four Surprising Influences on We Love You, Charlie Freeman

Ha Jin on Literature and Evil

That's My Story and I'm (Probabilistically) Sticking to It

What Was It You Wanted?

On Mind & Meaning

Remembering John Updike

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The Story of My Life Assignment

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Personality

Strengths and weakness, typing test, word count (119), time spend and skill sets, favorite quotations.

• 1) Life is just a chance to grow a soul. - A. Powell Davies
• 2) People living deeply have no fear of death. - Anais Ni
• 3) Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. - Confucius
• 4) If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. - Katherine Hepburn
• 5) Don't hate what you don't understand. - John Lennon
• 6) It is not only necessary to love, it is necessary to say so. - French proverb

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Need editing and proofreading services, narrative essay | step-by-step guide with examples.

• Tags: Academic Writing , Essay , Essay Writing

The narrative essay is a unique and creative form of academic writing. It tests your ability to narrate personal anecdotes in a structured, meaningful, and engaging manner. This type of writing vastly differs from other academic writing types, which rely more on facts and statistics. 

In this article, we’re going to understand what is a narrative essay, how to write one, and its various types with the help of plenty of examples. We have also provided a narrative essay outline to help you craft a foolproof essay. But before we get into all of that, let’s start with something simple: what’s a narrative essay in the first place?

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What is a narrative essay?

A narrative essay is a highly creative form of academic writing which involves recounting personal anecdotes in an organized and climactic format. Although not as frequently used as expository essays or argumentative essays , this type of essay is a common requirement in high schools and creative writing courses in colleges. A personal statement is also a common requirement for many college admissions. 

A narrative essay uses literary devices such as similes, metaphors, and alliteration that add depth and character to your essay. The objective is to express yourself in a creative and compelling way, and not just convey information.

Now that you understand the narrative essay definition, it’s time to look at some common topics you may have to write on.

Topics for a narrative essay

Narrative essay topics can range from a personal narrative and specific essay topics to loose open-ended prompts. Let’s better understand this with the help of a few good narrative essay topics.

Here are a few topics. 

1. Write about your last day of school.

2. Write about your favorite book and your interpretation of its message.

3. An awkward encounter that led to a long-lasting friendship.

4. Your favorite vacation.

5. The moment you realized, you’re finally an adult.

Here are a few narrative essay examples of open-ended prompts.

1. Describe a life changing event and how it impacted you.

2. What is your favorite childhood memory? 

3. A personal accomplishment that you are proud of and how it has shaped you as a person.

4. The time when you overcame a fear or obstacle and how it helped you grow as a person.

5. A moment of personal growth and reflection that helped you realize something important about yourself.

Here are a few personal narrative essay topics.

1. The moment you realized what you wanted to do with your life.

2. A time when you felt like an outsider and how you dealt with it.

3. A moment when you had to make a difficult moral decision.

4. An experience that changed your perspective on a particular issue.

5. A personal passion or interest and how it has impacted your life.

Narrative essay structure

Although less formulaic than an expository or argumentative essay, your narrative essay format still needs to be well-structured and cohesive for it to be impactful. Like all essay types, the narrative format essay consists of an introduction, body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. However, this structure is less rigid than most essay types and mainly serves as a guideline. 

Let’s look at the main components of the structure of a narrative essay.

1. Introduction

In order to write a well-structured narrative essay, you need to know how to start it. The introduction of a narrative essay plays a crucial role in capturing the reader’s attention and setting the stage for the story that follows. 

A good introduction should include three key elements. First, an attractive, eye-catching opening statement that intrigues the reader and creates suspense. Second, background information that provides context for the story. Finally, a central idea or narrative that serves as a foundation of the story. 

Here are examples of a narrative essay introduction:

• Background information
• Central idea

As I stepped off the plane and took my first breath of the humid air, I knew my life was about to change forever. The next few weeks would be filled with new experiences, new people, and a new perspective that would stay with me for a long time. My study trip to Costa Rica was an unforgettable experience that had a significant impact on me.

2. Body paragraph

You can showcase most of your creative writing skills in the body paragraphs of your narrative essay. Use a topic sentence to introduce each experience, provide detailed elaboration, and conclude with a key takeaway or moral.

The body paragraphs of a narrative essay are also used to showcase numerous artistic elements. These elements may include the introduction of fresh characters, vivid descriptions of settings, subtle hints toward the conclusion, and the build-up of a pivotal event or a climactic situation. You can use these elements to transform a boring piece of writing into an impactful and captivating essay. 

Here’s an example of a vivid and highly descriptive body paragraph:

• Topic sentence with descriptions of setting
• Sensory descriptors elaborating the topic sentences
• Key takeaway

The moment I set foot on Central American soil, I was welcomed by the tropical rainforest, the vibrant colors of the flowers, and the sounds of exotic birds. The air was filled with the sweet scent of fresh fruits, and I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. This trip was not only a cultural and educational experience, but it was also an adventure of a lifetime.

3. Conclusion

When writing the conclusion of a narrative essay, it’s important to include three essential elements: an updated version of your thesis statement, reflections on all your experiences, and your final thoughts and key takeaways. 

You can remind your readers of the central idea you explored throughout your essay, by revisiting your thesis statement. Reflecting on your experiences allows you to explore the personal impact of your narrative. Whereas, your final thoughts help in providing a cohesive and impactful summary of your message.

Here’s an example of a strong conclusion:

• Updated thesis statement
• Reflections on experiences
• Final thought

My study trip to Costa Rica was certainly a transformative experience. This trip taught me how to approach the world with an open mind and strive in the face of difficulties. It also inspired me to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Experiencing the rich culture of Costa Rica is something I would highly recommend to all students. It’s an opportunity to break free from our comfort zones, challenge our perspectives, and immerse ourselves in a world of stunning natural beauty.  

Now that we’ve looked at how to structure a narrative essay, let’s move on to writing a narrative essay.

How to write a narrative essay

Writing narrative essays is not just about telling a captivating story, but also about communicating a message to the reader. Although less formal than other types of essays, it still requires a coherent sequence of events, a clear central idea, a moral or message, and a structured outline.

Let’s understand how to write a narrative essay step by step. 

1. Choose an appropriate topic.

While essay topics are often predetermined, certain classes may give you the freedom to select your own topic. When choosing a topic for your narrative essay, it is crucial to consider the message that you want to convey. 

Simply recounting a one-dimensional, uneventful story can bore the reader. It is necessary to keep the reader in mind and choose an engaging story topic. This topic should encompass surprising plot twists, a recurring theme, and a significant takeaway or moral.

Here are a few examples of narrative essay topics for college:

Describe a moment in your life that challenged your beliefs or values and forced you to reconsider your perspective.

Describe a time in your life when you faced a difficult decision that required you to choose between two equally compelling options.

2. Form a central idea.

Your narrative essay should revolve around a central idea or theme, which is similar to a thesis statement. This idea should be unique and have a moral or message that sets the tone for your entire essay. Keep in mind that the central idea is crucial to your essay, so choose one carefully and make sure it’s unique and impactful.

Here are a few examples of central ideas:

Growing up as a first-generation immigrant, I faced several setbacks. But these setbacks motivated me to overcome language barriers and also taught me the value of hard work, and determination.

My journey of learning a new language in a foreign country challenged me in ways I never imagined. However, it also taught me the importance of persistence, adaptability, and embracing discomfort to achieve personal growth and success.

3. Construct an essay outline. 

While a narrative essay allows for a great deal of creative expression, it still sticks to a loose structure that includes a clear beginning, middle, and end. A well-organized narrative allows readers to follow and understand your story. Before writing your essay it’s crucial to answer key questions in your narrative essay outline. 

Here are a few questions you need to answer before starting your essay:

• What central idea or message do I want to convey through my essay?
• Which personal experiences and anecdotes will best support my central idea?
• In what ways can I incorporate dialogues or other creative expressions to enhance my essay?
• How can I effectively structure my essay to ensure it flows cohesively and logically?
• What techniques can I use to build up to a climactic end that leaves a lasting impression on the reader?
• What key takeaway do I want my audience to have after reading my essay?

4. Begin writing your essay.

The narrative essay differs from other forms of essay writing and typically follows a chronological order. Hence, it’s advisable to start by fleshing out your introduction and providing sufficient background information to give relevance to your central idea.

Written in the first-person point of view, the narrative essay shares several similarities with a short story. These include a clear plot structure with a beginning, middle, and end, vivid and detailed settings, a climactic point or peak, dialogues, and a key takeaway or moral. These elements can be incorporated to add depth and dimension to your essay.

Narrative essay outline

An outline for a narrative essay differs significantly from that of an evidence-based essay. The narrative essay outline provides structure and coherence to your essay, helping you map out a clear and logical flow of your ideas. This can guide your writing and help ensure that your story is well-organized, engaging, and effectively conveys your central message.

Here’s an example of a personal narrative essay outline that focuses on the challenges of low self-esteem and the ways to overcome them.

Journey to Self-Acceptance

I. Introduction

A. Hook: Start with an anecdote or a shocking statistic that highlights the rampantness of low self-esteem.

B. Background information: Explain what low self-esteem is, how it affects people, and how it can manifest in different ways.

C. Thesis statement: Describe your challenges with low self-esteem and how you overcame them.

II. Tackling Challenges

A. Describe the situation that challenged your self-esteem, such as a particular event or a persistent feeling.

B. Explain how it affected your life, such as your relationships, academic and professional performance, or your mental health.

C. Share your thoughts and feelings about the situation, and how they contributed to your low self-esteem.

III. Seeking Help

A. Describe how you recognized that you needed help, and what motivated you to seek it.

B. Discuss the steps you took, such as talking to a friend or therapist.

C. Explain the challenges you faced, such as stigma, fear of judgment, or financial barriers.

IV. Building Self-Esteem

A. Describe the strategies you used to build your self-esteem, such as positive self-talk, affirmations, or therapy.

B. Share your progress, and how you measured it, such as tracking your thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.

C. Explain how these strategies helped you, and how they impacted your life, such as improved relationships, academic or professional success, or mental health.

V. Maintaining Self-Esteem

A. Describe how you maintain your self-esteem on a daily basis, and what routines or habits you have developed.

B. Share your challenges and setbacks, and how you cope with them.

C. Explain the importance of self-care in maintaining self-esteem, and what self-care practices you use.

VI. Conclusion

A. Summarize the key points of your essay, and what you have learned from them.

B. Restate your thesis, and how you successfully overcame the challenge of low self-esteem.

C. Discuss how the experience has impacted your life, and what advice you would give to someone who is struggling with low self-esteem.

Narrative essay examples

To guide you in writing a foolproof narrative essay, we’ve constructed an example of a narrative essay. The following is a personal narrative essay example that explores the challenges faced by a student who was bullied in school. This personal narrative essay example will guide you on how you write a personal narrative essay.

Beyond the Shadows

Starting high school as a timid and shy kid was a daunting experience for me. I craved new opportunities and friendships but was overcome by the fear of being judged. Unfortunately, my fears soon became a reality as I found myself being relentlessly bullied.

It began with verbal abuse but soon escalated to physical aggression. Consulting my teachers was of no help since they did not understand the gravity of the situation. The only option was to ignore the bullies and concentrate on my classes, but the constant harassment made it difficult.

The bullying soon took its toll on my mental health, and I spiraled into a pit of anxiety and depression. I lost faith in myself and I believed I was undeserving of happiness. I retreated from my loved ones and spent my days battling my inner demons.

Despite the pain and anguish, I still decided to hold onto hope. I realized that standing up for myself and others was the only way to combat the bullying. I began speaking out against the harassment and also spoke up for those who were scared to raise their voice.

In an attempt to break out of my shell, I made a conscious effort to socialize with my fellow students and offered support to those going through a tough time. As a result, I encountered several friends who had shared experiences with mine. We bonded over our shared struggles and formed a tight-knit community of support and solidarity. Together, we worked to raise awareness of the devastating impact of bullying.

With time and effort, I began to heal from the trauma of my experiences. I learned to embrace my unique qualities and appreciate myself for who I am. The challenges I faced made me stronger and more resilient. As a result, I became more outgoing and confident, which allowed me to forge genuine friendships with my peers.

The bullying I experienced during high school transformed me in ways I could never have imagined. It instilled in me the value of empathy and courage and compelled me to use my voice to create positive change in the world.

Once you’re done writing your narrative essay, the process of editing and proofreading still remains. You can either choose to do this on your own or consider working with an essay editing service .  

Keep reading with more resources from your loyal editors and proofreaders:

• What is an Expository Essay?
• What are the Different Types of Essays
• What is an Essay and What are the Parts of an Essay
• How to Write an Essay Header
• How to Write an Argumentative Essay 

Found this article helpful?

2 comments on “ Narrative Essay | Step-by-Step Guide with Examples ”

very good https://kabarcikpatiler.com/

your narrative essays have excellent introductions. They are really helpful

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16 The Story of My Life: Narrative and Self-Understanding

• Published: June 2017
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If narrative is thought to be a privileged form of understanding a human life, what relation does that thought bear to the idea of the “agent’s point of view?” This essay returns to an early source of this debate, the claims for the priority of narrative self-understanding in Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue and, in particular, a disagreement he registers with the early Sartre. It explores an Existentialist critique of the idea of “living one’s life as a story,” and in doing so seeks to rescue it from a certain psychological (or perhaps “phenomenological”) interpretation of the “agent’s point of view” on which both MacIntyre and Sartre rely. It argues that the exclusive focus on narratives that concern individual human lives, as capturing or failing to capture “life as it is lived,” are in various ways distorting of both the nature of narrative form and the understanding of human lives.

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20+ Narrative Essay Prompts

by Sue Weems | 0 comments

Start Your Story TODAY! We’re teaching a new LIVE workshop this week to help you start your next book. Learn more and sign up here.

If you're practicing your personal essay skills or just storytelling in general, these narrative essay prompts are a great way to get started!

What is narrative writing?

Narrative essays are a unique form of writing that allows authors to tell their personal stories, weaving personal experiences into a cohesive and engaging format. Unlike traditional essays that focus on analysis or argumentation, narrative essays emphasize storytelling, often emphasizing emotions, character development, and vivid imagery. The aim is to transport readers into the writer's world, offering them insights into personal beliefs, values, or lessons learned through real-life situations.

At the heart of a narrative essay is a central theme or message that resonates throughout the narrative. This theme serves as a guiding thread, connecting various events, emotions, and characters.

In this article, we'll explore various narrative essay ideas designed to spark creativity and inspire writers to delve into their experiences. Whether you're a student looking for a writing assignment or a seasoned writer seeking new material, these prompts will help ignite your imagination and shape compelling narratives.

If you're looking for a step-by-step guide on how to write a personal narrative essay , check out our comprehensive guide here .

Narrative Essay Prompts

• Describe a time when a seemingly trivial decision led to an unexpected adventure that changed your perspective on life.
• Write about the moment you realized that you had become just like one of your parents, and how it made you feel.
• Reflect on a mistake you made that spiraled into a series of fortunate events, ultimately leading to a significant life lesson.
• Tell the story of someone who lost their home (or something of value) but found a new sense of community and belonging in an unexpected place.
• What major event has changed your life more than any other? Write an essay describing the event and what it changed.
• Write about a time you or someone you know had to make a difficult decision.
• Revisit a passion or hobby you abandoned long ago, detailing the emotions and memories that surfaced upon your return.
• Share the experience of a family gathering that revealed surprising secrets and strengthened your bonds with relatives.
• Write about a time you stood up for someone else, and how it impacted your understanding of bravery and justice.
• Describe an encounter with a stranger that taught you something profound about compassion and human connection.
• Reflect on a cherished recipe passed down through generations, and the memories it evokes each time you prepare it.
• Write about a family road trip or a family vacation that was a memorable experience.
• Tell the story of facing a fear that had haunted you for years, and how overcoming it transformed your self-image.
• Write a narrative about receiving a phone call that brings unexpected news. Capture the emotions you experience and how you respond to the information, whether it’s good or bad.
• Narrate a day when everything seems to go wrong—from waking up late to losing something important. Use humor and creativity to depict the mishaps and how you ultimately find a way to turn the day around.
• Write about a time someone taught you something difficult and taught you a valuable lesson.
• Tell about a time you made something whether a cake, birdhouse, song, story, or something else.
• Write about a place you go that feels like a second home.
• Write about a time you volunteered or helped someone else in a significant way.
• What is something you and your family or friends do that is unique to you or your culture?
• Tell about a time you visited somewhere new and learned something about yourself or the world.
• Write about a gift that changed your perception of something.
• Tell about an experience with music or art that shifted your understanding or gave you a deeper appreciation.

These prompts encourage students to tap into their imagination and life experiences, making narrative writing both fun and meaningful!

 Choose one of these ideas and write for fifteen minutes . When you're finished, share your story in the Pro Practice Workshop for feedback from the community. And if you share, please be sure to comment on a few stories by other writers.

Sue Weems is a writer, teacher, and traveler with an advanced degree in (mostly fictional) revenge. When she’s not rationalizing her love for parentheses (and dramatic asides), she follows a sailor around the globe with their four children, two dogs, and an impossibly tall stack of books to read. You can read more of her writing tips on her website .

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10 Biographical Essay Examples

Writing a biographical essay like the ones in these examples involves more than just recounting events. You have to research and identify the key moments that define a person's life. 

Fredrick Eghosa

Aug 23, 2024

Table of Contents

Malala Yousafzai: The Girl Who Stood Up

The voice in the valley, the day the world stood still, a voice for the voiceless, the road ahead, mahatma gandhi: the quiet thunder, the lawyer who found his cause, the salt of the earth, the man who would be mahatma, the legacy of peace, the man who changed the world, marie curie, nelson mandela: a life in layers, the educated rebel, the fight against oppression, the prisoner of conscience, the statesman and reconciler, the legacy of a giant, frida kahlo: a portrait in shadows and light, the accidental artist, the unconventional muse, the political and personal landscape, legacy in every stroke, leonardo da vinci: the man who saw more, the apprenticeship, the visionary, the art and the struggle, the later years, albert einstein: early life and curiosity, the patent clerk’s days, the annus mirabilis, the general theory of relativity, life in america and beyond, mother teresa: a life of compassion, the foundation of a legacy, the power of small acts, the controversy and the criticism, a legacy of compassion, steve jobs: a story of innovation and resolve, the garage days, struggles and success, the revolution, end and legacy, winston churchill, the soldier and the statesman, world war ii, post-war years.

• Focus on a Pivotal Moment
• Highlight the Impact
• Use Clear, Simple Language
• Connect to Larger Themes

Join other 100,000+ writers now!

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