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Narrative Essays

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The Modes of Discourse—Exposition, Description, Narration, Argumentation (EDNA)—are common paper assignments you may encounter in your writing classes. Although these genres have been criticized by some composition scholars, the Purdue OWL recognizes the widespread use of these approaches and students’ need to understand and produce them.

What is a narrative essay?

When writing a narrative essay, one might think of it as telling a story. These essays are often anecdotal, experiential, and personal—allowing students to express themselves in a creative and, quite often, moving ways.

Here are some guidelines for writing a narrative essay.

  • If written as a story, the essay should include all the parts of a story.

This means that you must include an introduction, plot, characters, setting, climax, and conclusion.

  • When would a narrative essay not be written as a story?

A good example of this is when an instructor asks a student to write a book report. Obviously, this would not necessarily follow the pattern of a story and would focus on providing an informative narrative for the reader.

  • The essay should have a purpose.

Make a point! Think of this as the thesis of your story. If there is no point to what you are narrating, why narrate it at all?

  • The essay should be written from a clear point of view.

It is quite common for narrative essays to be written from the standpoint of the author; however, this is not the sole perspective to be considered. Creativity in narrative essays oftentimes manifests itself in the form of authorial perspective.

  • Use clear and concise language throughout the essay.

Much like the descriptive essay, narrative essays are effective when the language is carefully, particularly, and artfully chosen. Use specific language to evoke specific emotions and senses in the reader.

  • The use of the first person pronoun ‘I’ is welcomed.

Do not abuse this guideline! Though it is welcomed it is not necessary—nor should it be overused for lack of clearer diction.

  • As always, be organized!

Have a clear introduction that sets the tone for the remainder of the essay. Do not leave the reader guessing about the purpose of your narrative. Remember, you are in control of the essay, so guide it where you desire (just make sure your audience can follow your lead).

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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.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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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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Narrative History Essay

Narrative History Essay

Knowing stories about history is really interesting. You will be able to come across with old traditions and cultures and the people’s way of life in the old times. Sometimes, a good story lies on our most compelling history. History plays a vital role in our lives where we are able to compare how we are living today versus how they used to live before. With all their strategies for survival during the old times, would it be amazing to know everything about it? In this article, you will get to know about narrative history and how to create history essays.

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What is a Narrative History?

A narrative history teaches you how to tell stories about the past. It contains when, where and why it happened, the importance of the event and who are the people involved in it. It basically allows us to understand the events in time. A narrative history focuses on the most substantial moment in the past which focuses on the actions and the causes that contributed to the outcome.

Why Narrative History Matters?

  • Narrative history establishes the identity of their authors and readers.

Narrative histories are may be about a story of a family, community, experience of a person, etc. It gives credits to the authors and provides life with the information to the readers.

  • Narrative history represent language and literature .

It makes reading available and easy to organize because it allows everyday life to center on historical orientation.

  • Narrative history gives people the chance to take action from what they have learned over the past.

The purpose of a narrative history is to make people aware of the past actualities. It allows people living for today to take action as individuals or groups with regards to their historical knowledge.

How to Write a Narrative History Essay

Just like any other essay , creating a narrative history essay should also follow a certain format. Since you are going to tell a story of history, you add more components to the structure itself.

– Know the narrator of the story. Whose voice will perform in the narrative? Usually, the voice will be the author’s but using the 3rd person to describe events. You may also use 1st person to account a communication event or to describe an experience over looking for some historical facts.

The author is known as the one who controls the narrator. All that is happening in the story must not be in the narrator’s account because you should be able to see from different perspectives to undergo observations to see possible errors.

– Make sure that all the sequence of the events are connected to each other. It should have a beginning, middle and end. This contains what you are going to include in the story and take time to know the pace or the tempo of the story.

– Narratives should contain accounts of action. This means that it is the place where the elements of the story would gather.

– A good narrative has characters that is developed from forces on all sides of choice and has a tension between the person and his or her time and the way they resist.

– You have to put in mind that a narrative is not just any writing, rather it responds to accuracy. It should have coherence and fidelity that brings truth to the experience of a reader.

Why is history a narrative?

History is a narrative representation of the past that can be communicated in different methods as a form of expression. It tells stories so that the people living in modern times will be able to know what kind of life they had been living in the old times.

What makes a good historical narrative?

Narrative history should be organized in chronological order. You will not be able to understand the sequence of the events if the stories were not arranged by time.

What is the most important element of a narrative?

The most important element of a narrative is the conflict . It is the part where you are torn between having the idea that an ending would be a tragedy or something happy.

You just have to worry less about writing your narrative history essay. You just have to put the story on your paper, see if you have left out something and work artistically in your work.

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General Education

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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.

body_fair

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.

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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.

body_baldwin

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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As already mentioned in my Chap. 1 , Jenni Russell (2019) captures eloquently all the important reasons for studying history in schools, as she believes, it ‘reveals all human nature’, events, the rise and fall of empires, and unintended and intended consequences of our actions. One could argue that there are at least five major reasons for learning and teaching historical narratives in history classrooms today:

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Gaps, Plots, and Narration

Adventures in Teaching with Historical Fiction

Jeffrey Wasserstrom | Nov 10, 2021

I first became interested in history at age 10, when my family spent a year in England. Fascinated by seeing old buildings and coins, I began reading novels about Britain’s past. After returning to California, I turned to historical fiction about other places. In college, picking a class on ancient Greece was natural, since I loved Mary Renault’s novels. I had a chance to go to China, so I thought I would learn a bit about the place and enrolled in a Chinese history class. The trip fell through, but I was hooked on Chinese history—partly because the professor assigned a historical mystery novel.

Four books lie on top of a historic map of Shanghai. The books are Poets and Murder, The Death of Woman Wang, Boxers, and Saints.

Assigning novels set in the past alongside nonfiction helps Jeffrey Wasserstrom to fill gaps in the historical record.  Jeffrey Wasserstrom

As historians, we are often asked how we became interested in history and our specific fields—in my case, Chinese studies. The preceding story is one of my responses. But as with all storytelling, I have highlighted some things and left others out.

Here is a different way I could tell the tale: I first became interested in history when I spent my fifth-grade year in England, and I became an avid player of Diplomacy , a game involving the period leading up to World War I. My fascination with the past was deepened by reading historical novels; watching films about historic events; and seeing plays set in the past, including one by Tom Stoppard featuring Lenin and James Joyce. I also watched television programs set in the past. I was addicted to Time Tunnel , a time-travel show, and Kung Fu , which focused on the life of a Shaolin monk in 1870s America with flashbacks to his earlier life in China. In my first Chinese history class in college, I was intrigued to encounter Daoist texts in a sourcebook that seemed familiar from my watching Kung Fu .

Both of these narratives are true, and taken together, they help explain my career path and why I’ve spent decades assigning historical fiction. I have had students read J. G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun in classes on Shanghai and Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel Boxers in courses on the world in 1900. In a course on comparative revolutions, students read The Underdogs , a fictional account of the 1910 Mexican Revolution written by Mariano Azuela in 1915. In undergraduate seminars on historical narrative, I use novels such as Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account and Janet Lewis’s The Wife of Martin Guerre . And when I teamed up with literary specialist Deidre Lynch to co-teach an interdisciplinary graduate seminar on history and fiction, our syllabus included a Walter Scott saga and a novella featuring Cecil Rhodes and a time machine.

Why assign historical fiction? Sometimes I want to fill a gap. For example, the anti-Christian insurgents who missionaries dubbed “Boxers” were illiterate, and we do not have a record of a confession by a Boxer. If I assign only nonfiction, students will not get a story told from a Boxer’s perspective. Yang’s Boxers gives them one.

I assign fiction to draw attention to the way all creators of historical narratives make decisions about plotting that have consequences.

Sometimes, instead, I assign fiction to draw attention to the way all creators of historical narratives make decisions about plotting that have consequences. In nonfiction and fiction alike, it matters, for example, where one begins and ends, and I have found it easier to get students to appreciate this when I bring in novels and films. Consider again the Boxers: they murdered Chinese Christians and missionaries early in 1900, but foreign soldiers sent to China to suppress them later committed atrocities. When I show the 1963 film 55 Days at Peking , I stress that the film ends before foreign soldiers leveled villages. I then refer to nonfiction books that do and do not, metaphorically, have the credits roll at the same point. We discuss the implications of the chronological choices involved.

When selecting fictional readings, I am generally drawn to authors who strive to do justice to the historical record and give voice to those left out of traditional top-down historical narratives. This explains why, as different as they are, I like The Moor’s Account (whose protagonist is a real person mentioned in passing in standard narratives of an expedition) and Boxers (whose protagonist is a fictional Chinese boy who became part of an anti-Christian group in 1900). Each is boldly imaginative, but the authors did research much like historians do. When Lalami graciously guested in my class, she gave eloquent answers to questions on method. At the end of his book, Yang references key scholarly works that he used to research his graphic novel. (He also wrote a companion book to Boxers called Saints , which focuses on the very different experiences of a fictional Chinese Christian girl during 1900 and is also good for classroom use.)

Sometimes I find pedagogic uses for top-down tales and works that show little concern for the historical record. These novels and films are ones I teach largely to criticize them for the liberties they take and what they reveal about the time they were created, and 55 Days at Peking is a case in point. Not only does this film have white actors playing key Asian roles (as did Kung Fu ) and focus on elite figures, but it includes plot moves lifted from old westerns and Fu Manchu films.

Selecting fiction for a course depends on the kind of class I’m teaching. In survey courses, it is sometimes incidental whether a work is fiction or nonfiction and, if fiction, whether it is about the author’s present or past. Reading The Underdogs gives students a sense of events given short shrift in comparative works on revolutions. Had I discovered an engaging memoir written in 1910 about events as they took place, I may have chosen that instead. In Chinese history surveys, fiction can provide a window into a period before the author wrote it or to the era in which it was written. In other cases, though, I use memoirs or accessible academic histories written with flair (such as Jonathan Spence’s The Death of Woman Wang ) to achieve the same result. In courses specifically about historical narrative, by contrast, style and genre are crucial. One goal I have in these classes is to work with students on teasing out the differences among works of fiction and nonfiction and those that blur the line, as Spence does when he imagines a dream his title character had just before dying.

I think strategically about pairing fiction and nonfiction readings—but different courses lead to different pairings.

I also think strategically about pairing fiction and nonfiction readings—but different courses lead to different pairings. In a Shanghai course, I might pair Empire of the Sun , which is written from the perspective of a British boy who lives a privileged existence in the city and then faces hardship, with fiction by a Chinese writer that deals with the same period. Through these books, students get a sense of how different a single historical setting can look through the eyes of different observers. In a course on historical narrative, by contrast, I might pair Empire of the Sun with the author’s autobiography, Miracles of Life . If I ever taught a French history class, I might assign either Lewis’s The Wife of Martin Guerre or Natalie Zemon Davis’s nonfiction work The Return of Martin Guerre . In a course on historical narrative, I once assigned both books and urged students to notice distinctions, like only Davis using phrases like “might have.”

I have focused on what I hope students will learn from my use of historical fiction, but I have learned a lot myself from teaching novels. I once thought, for example, that a clear difference between novels and nonfiction works was that only the latter had footnotes. But when teaching a graduate seminar led me to read my first novel by Scott, I saw it had footnotes by the author. When I stress to students that it is wrong to refer, as some do, to all books as “novels,” I do not mention footnotes. Instead, I focus on a concept I first came to appreciate while co-teaching that same class: the “unreliable narrator.” Fiction often has narrators we clearly should not trust. Historians strive to be narrators who readers can trust, even when experimenting. The Death of Woman Wang ’s dream section has a fictional feel, but Spence sets it off in italics, a signal to readers that he is venturing into speculations.

I have learned not only from teaching historical fiction but also from trying here to explain my relationship to it. And doing so has left me with new questions to ponder. Why, I wonder now, looking back at the two stories I began with, each striving to present my personal history in the guise of a reliable narrator, have I assigned novels and films but never any of the plays or television shows that early on sparked my interest in history? Perhaps being assigned Tom Stoppard’s Travesties or episodes of Time Tunnel would play the same role in inspiring a first-year student to major in history that being assigned a Judge Dee mystery did for me at age 18.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. He tweets @jwassers.

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18 Narrative and Memoir Essays

Narrative writing.

Holmes, Sherlock (Fictitious character) Furniture. Detectives. Smoking. Theatrical productions.

Human beings tell stories every day. We understand most of nature through stories. Though facts can be memorized, stories — the details, the description, the experience — make us believe.

Therefore, as we begin to study writing, we need to begin with the properties of the story. How do good storytellers make us believe? How can good writing draw a reader into a story? How can we harness the power of the story to make a point, even in a dry, academic context?

The purpose of narrative writing is to tell stories. This is a form we are familiar with, as any time we tell a story about an event or incident in our day, we are engaging in a form of narration. In terms of writing, narration is the act of describing a sequence of events. Sometimes this is the primary mode of an essay—writing a narrative essay about a particular event or experience, and sometimes this is a component used within an essay, much like other evidence is offered, to support a thesis. This chapter will discuss the basic components of narration, which can be applied either as a stand-alone essay or as a component within an essay.

Ultimately, narrative writing tries to relay a series of events in an emotionally engaging way. You want your audience to be moved by your story, which could mean through laughter, sympathy, fear, anger, and so on. The more clearly you tell your story, the more emotionally engaged your audience is likely to be.

WHERE DO WE FIND NARRATIVE?

We talk about narrative writing in many ways. Books will introduce it as Narration, Narrative, and Storytelling. Narrative creeps into most of the other kinds of writing we learn about, too. Persuasive essays use short stories — often called anecdotes  — to engage a reader’s attention and sympathy. Consider the difference between these two openings to the same essay:

Which opening makes you want to read more? The second one engages its readers with a story — and we’re hard-wired, as humans, to want to hear the end of a story.

Television plays on this characteristic all the time. Think of your favorite show and the maddening, brief preview that starts before the credits roll. It’s always a quick snippet that makes you stay tuned because the writers and producers know their audience will sit through several minutes of mindless commercials just to find out how the story will continue.

In our own writing, we can use stories in just the same way. We can draw our readers into our own experiences, even if they’ve never been through anything even similar to what we have, by telling our own stories.

HOW DO WE WRITE A NARRATIVE?

A narrative essay is a piece that tells one consistent, cohesive story. In academic writing, a narrative essay will also always convey a lesson, a moral, or a point that the writer wishes the reader to take.

When we say “moral,” some people think of after-school specials and having “good behavior” tips crammed down their throat. However, the most powerful lessons conveyed through writing are often done with great subtlety. True, the punishing pace of writing expected in a college course may not leave enough time to develop a nuanced story — no one is going to churn out War and Peace  or even  The Hobbit  in ten weeks — but not every story has to have the moral stated clearly, in bold font, at the very beginning.

Think about it this way: When you were a kid, if your grandmother had sat you down and said, “Listen. We’re now going to have a thirty-minute conversation about how it’s really bad if you start smoking,” would you have listened? Probably not. If, however, your grandmother took you to visit your uncle Larry, who had terminal lung cancer, and then casually mentioned as you left that Larry had been smoking since he was your age — would you get the lesson? Would you remember it? Do you remember better the 200 lectures you had as a teenager about not being a bully, or do you remember the one time that you witnessed its effects firsthand?

In a narrative, we want to pull that same kind of trick on our readers: get our point across, but do it in a way that engages the imagination and attention. Use the power of the story.

The narrative relies on the same components that all good writing does: it needs detail, clear organization, and a central purpose (AKA our friends Development, Organization, and Unity).

NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT: BRING THE DETAILS

Consider this passage from the very first Sherlock Holmes mystery, “A Study in Scarlet,” which describes a major character:

The author includes detail upon detail to describe this gentleman. He could have simply said, “He was dying from hunger and from thirst,” which would tell us everything we need to know. Instead, he describes how these feelings have had an effect upon the man — he is  gaunt , he’s starting to look like a skeleton, and he can barely stand without the support of his rifle.

Think of the best book you’ve ever read (or the best television show you’ve ever watched, or the movie you love), and you may be able to relate to this. Good description is the difference between hearing a game on the radio and watching it live in the stadium (or on a ginormous 3-D television). The very breath of life in a narrative will always be your ability to describe a scene.

66 Chevelle Malibu SS396

This relies on the use of specific language. As you read through the revision section, you were encouraged to avoid phrases that your audience might find misleading. Consider this as you write a story. With every sentence, ask, “What does my audience know? What do they think?” If you say a car is “beautiful,” will your audience think of a 2018 Hybrid Honda Accord or of a 1966 Chevelle (pictured at right)? If there’s some doubt, change your words to reflect your meaning.

You may have heard the advice that asks you to “show, not tell” in writing. This is what we mean: be so descriptive in telling a story that the reader feels s/he is there beside you, seeing the swimming pool or the school’s front doors or the new car or the new child with his/her own eyes.

NARRATIVE ORGANIZATION

Narrative traditionally follows time order, or  chronological order , throughout. This seems obvious when you think about it — we tell stories in time order, starting (usually) at the beginning and working through to the end.

In an essay, pieces of the story can be organized into timespans by paragraph. For instance, if I’m describing a particularly harrowing day at work, I might have a paragraph just for the morning, and then a paragraph about my terrible lunch break, and then a paragraph about my afternoon.

Narrative essays usually can’t cover more ground than a day or two. Instead of writing about your entire vacation experience, study abroad month, two years of work at the plant, or 18 years living at home, focus on one particular experience that took place over a day or two. That’s enough for a reader to digest in a few pages, and it will also give you a chance to really lay in details without feeling rushed.

Sometimes, we start stories out of order. Many popular movies and television shows do this regularly by showing a clip of something that happens later before starting the whole show. If you’ve ever seen an episode of NCIS, you’ll be familiar with this technique: they start each section of the show with a photo of the ending scene, then start an hour or two before that scene in the live-action. Shows often jump to “One Week Earlier” between commercial breaks.

Think of the emotional impact that has upon you as a viewer. Again, it’s a trick the writers pull with their story to drive you through the boring/silly/pointless/insulting commercials so that you’ll stay with them. We want to know how the characters get to that end.

You can manipulate your audience in this way, too, but be careful; giving away too much of the ending may sometimes make a reader simply put down what they’re reading. It’s safer (though not always better) to just start at the beginning and write things down as they happened. Particularly in a first draft, sticking to the natural story order will be a good way to make sure nothing gets missed.

Chronological order , the order in which events unfold from first to last, is the most common organizational structure for narratives. Stories typically have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Certain transitional words and phrases aid in keeping the reader oriented in the sequencing of a story. Some of these phrases are listed below.

Figure 5.2 Transition Words and Phrases for Expressing Time

The following are the other basic components of a narrative:

•  Plot . The events as they unfold in sequence.

•  Characters . The people who inhabit the story and move it forward. Typically, each narrative has there are minor characters and main characters. The minor characters generally play supporting roles to the main character, or the protagonist.

•  Conflict . The primary problem or obstacle that unfolds in the plot, which the protagonist must solve or overcome by the end of the narrative. The way in which the protagonist resolves the conflict of the plot results in the theme of the narrative.

•  Theme . The ultimate message the narrative is trying to express; it can be either explicit or implicit.

Writing at Work

When interviewing candidates for jobs, employers often ask about conflicts or problems a potential employee had to overcome. They are asking for a compelling personal narrative. To prepare for this question in a job interview, write out a scenario using the narrative moved structure. This will allow you to troubleshoot rough spots as well as better understand your own personal history. Both processes will make your story better and your self-presentation better, too.

Narrative Anecdotes

An  anecdote  is a short, personal  narrative  about something specific. It is often used as a component in an essay, acting as evidence to support your thesis, as an example to demonstrate your point, and/or as a way to establish your credibility. It always has a point in telling it.

Elements of an Anecdote

1. Who, Where, When

Have you ever wondered why children’s stories begin something like this?

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, the teachers were revolting …

It is the start of a simple narrative. It also contains all the elements of a beginning to any narrative: when, where, and who. An anecdote, because it is short, will begin similarly:

One day, while I was sitting at a stop sign waiting for the light to change…

This little particle of an anecdote tells when, who, and where before the first sentence even ends.

Note : An anecdote sets up a particular incident; it does not tell about a long period of time.

2. What Happened (Sequence of Events)

Any narrative also includes a sequence of events. You should be able to read an anecdote and tell what happens first, what happens next, and so on. In the following anecdote, the bolded words suggest each event in the sequence.

Example Anecdote:

My first day of college I parked in the “South Forty,” which is what everyone called the huge parking lot on the edge of the campus. It was seven forty-five in the morning, hazy and cool. I walked across the parking lot, crossed a busy street, walked over a creek, through a “faculty” parking lot, crossed another street, and came to the first row of campus buildings. I walked between buildings, past the library and the student mall. I passed many quiet, nervous-looking students along the way. Many of them smiled at me. One trio of young girls was even chuckling softly among themselves when they all smiled and said “Hi” to me at once. By the time I got to my classroom, far on the other side of campus from the parking lot, I was smiling and boldly saying “Hi” to everyone, too, particularly the girls. Every single one of them smiled or responded with a “Hi” or made a friendly comment or even chuckled happily. It was my first day of college.

When I found the building I was looking for, a friend from high school appeared. She was in my first class! I smiled at her and said, “Hi!” She looked at me. She smiled. Then she laughed. She said, “Why are you wearing a sock on your shirt?” I looked down. A sock had come out of the dryer clinging to my shirt.

3. Implied Point

Most of us want to make sure that we “get the point across” to whatever story we are telling, assuming it has a point. To do this, we tend to explain what we are telling. It is sometimes very difficult to stop. However, stopping in a timely way allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

Show, don’t tell

In the anecdote above, I am very tempted to tell the reader what I felt at the moment I realized that everyone was laughing AT me rather than just being friendly. For the ending, where the point is in this case, it is best to let the reader infer (draw conclusions, fill in the blanks) what happens implicitly rather than to state explicitly what the point is, or what the narrator felt, or anything else.

The more indirect you are about your object or place the better. In the anecdote above, it might be obvious that my object is a sock or my place is a parking lot. The point is, it is not an anecdote “about” a sock; it is referred to indirectly.

How do we show rather than tell? First, describe what you see (I don’t really see anything with “I was SO embarrassed…”) or what you smell, hear, or taste, but NOT what you feel. An easy way to check whether you are showing or telling is to go through your anecdote and underline the verbs. If the verbs are “be”-verbs (is, was, were, etc.) or verbs that describe actions we cannot see (“I thought…” “I believed…” “I imagined…” “it made me upset…” and so on) then you are probably telling. In the sentence above I used “walked,” “lecturing,” “ripped,” and “said.”

Most Common Question:

“What makes stories or anecdotes interesting and something I can relate to?”

Actually, it is a simple principle, even though it may not be obvious. We “relate” or “connect” most easily to situations we recognize and so fill in the blanks. If you “tell” me, for example, “I was SO embarrassed …” then you have not let me fill in MY embarrassment. On the other hand, if you “show” me a scene, it allows me to fit my own experience into it:

“I walked past the corner of the aluminum whiteboard tray while lecturing to a class. It ripped my pants. After a moment I said, ‘Class dismissed.’”

The writer of those statements, hopes the reader will fill in some similarly embarrassing moment without the writer clearly stating that this is what is supposed to be done. The connection, the act of “filling in,” is what people tend to refer to as “relating to.”

Interestingly, it does not even matter whether or not readers fill in what the writer intend for them to fill in; it is the act of filling in our own experiences that makes us “relate” to an incident. From a writer’s perspective, that means we should show rather than tell.

Second, resist the temptation to “explain.” Let the reader fill in the blanks! It is so much more personal when the reader participates by filling in.

Assignment 1

Write an anecdote that contains who, where, when, and what happens (a sequence of events). Think about an anecdote that  involves ,  alludes to, or otherwise includes your object or place ; it does not have to be “about” your place. It also does not have to be “true” in the strict sense of the word; we will not be able to verify any believable details if they add to the effect of the anecdote. Type it out. Keep it simple and to the point.

What are ‘clichés’ and why can’t we use them?

Clichés are figurative phrases and expressions that you have probably heard a million times. For our purposes, there are two kinds of clichés: the ones that jump out at you and the ones that we use without thinking.

If you are paying attention, you will notice that the two sentences above contain at least 3 clichés. You might also notice that clichés are best suited to spoken language, because they are readily available and sometimes when we speak, we don’t have time to replace a common expression with a unique one. However, we DO have time to replace clichés while we are writing.

The problem with clichés in writing is that they are too general when we should be much more specific. They also tend to tell rather than show. In the first sentence above, we have most likely heard the phrase, “have probably heard a million times.” In speech, that expression works. In writing, it should be  literal  rather than  figurative.  The first sentence is better this way:

Clichés are figurative phrases and expressions that we have heard so many times that we all share some understanding of what they mean.

Not exactly what you thought when you read it at the beginning of this answer, is it? That is why being  literal and specific  in writing is better than  figurative and vague  as a rule.

Here is a re-write of the second sentence at the start of this answer:

For our purposes, there are two kinds of clichés: the ones that are obvious expressions (like “You can lead a horse to water …”) and the ones that are not part of expressions but seem to “go” easily into a group of words (like “we use without thinking”).

The second type is more difficult to identify and eradicate. Usually it is a group of words we have heard before that doesn’t add anything to a statement. For example, instead of “We watched the donuts roll down the street every night,” you might be tempted to add to it this way: “We watched the donuts roll down the street each and every night.” Avoid clichés in your writing.

To see more see more commonly used clichés and for guidance on how to rewrite them, see this  handout (https://writingcenter.unc.edu/cliches/)from The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Writing Center.

Some Other Rhetorical Tips

  • To create strong details, keep the human senses in mind. You want your reader to be immersed in the world that you create, so focus on details related to sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch as you describe people, places, and events in your narrative.
  • Create tension by making the reader nervous about what is going to happen through sentence structure, tone, and voice.
  • Add dialogue to show the immediacy and drama of the personal interactions (re-creating conversations as necessary to make your narrative work).
  • Name specific objects to re-create the scene by selecting details that leave the readers with a dominant impression of how things were.
  • Show people in action by describing precise movements and dialogue to convey the action of the scene.

External Links:

“ Sixty-nine Cents ” (https://tinyurl.com/ybjasq9c) by Gary Shteyngart: In “Sixty-nine Cents,” author Gary Shteyngart describes a coming-of-age experience as a first-generation Russian-Jewish immigrant in modern America.

Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Reservation in Washington State. He chronicles his challenges in school, starting in first grade, in  Indian Education (https://tinyurl.com/hlshngr).

Sandra Cisneros offers an example of a narrative essay in “ Only Daughter ”  (https://tinyurl.com/yc4srod7) that captures her sense of her Chicana-Mexican heritage as the only daughter in a family of seven children. The essay is also available here  (https://tinyurl.com/y7hzxhz6).

 Annie Dilliard offers an example of a narrative essay in an excerpt, often entitled “ The Chase ” (https://tinyurl.com/ycsen7r4) from her autobiography  An American Childhood , outlining a specific memorable event from her childhood. This essay is also available  here  (https://tinyurl.com/y7udsl88).

NARRATIVE UNITY

The final consideration in putting together a narrative essay should be unifying it around a single theme or lesson. As you draft, you may already have this lesson in mind:  everyone should wear a seatbelt.  However, remember that your reader needs to make up her own mind. Don’t insult a reader by beating them up with your lesson, and don’t leave them guessing about the meaning of your piece by leaving it out completely.

Many writers include a paragraph of reflection after telling a personal story in an essay that lets a reader know, directly, the significance that the story has on the writer’s life. This can be a good way to get a lesson across. Showing what you’ve learned or found important in an event will provide the reader with a clue about the overall meaning of the story.

You should use “I” in a personal, narrative essay . There are types of academic writing where “I” is inappropriate, but this is not one of those times. In fact, the best narratives will often be the most personal, the stories that avoid hiding behind “you” or “they” and instead boldly tell the writer’s own story.

NARRATIVE OUTLINES

The typical narrative essay follows an outline that should seem like common sense:

  • Paragraph 1: Introduction
  • Paragraph 2: Event #1
  • Paragraph 3: Event #2
  • Paragraph 4: Event #3
  • Paragraph 5: Conclusion

This outline is flexible. Perhaps the first event in your story will take significant space to describe; it may need 2 paragraphs of its own. Maybe there are smaller events that happen within the larger events. Maybe for your piece, it makes sense to jump right into the story instead of spending an introduction paragraph to give some setup. What matters most is that a reader can easily follow the piece from beginning to end and that she will leave with a good understanding of what you wanted the reader to learn.

Student Sample Essay

My College Education

The first class I went to in college was philosophy, and it changed my life forever. Our first assignment was to write a short response paper to the Albert Camus essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” I was extremely nervous about the assignment as well as college. However, through all the confusion in philosophy class, many of my questions about life were answered.

I entered college intending to earn a degree in engineering. I always liked the way mathematics had right and wrong answers. I understood the logic and was very good at it. So when I received my first philosophy assignment that asked me to write my interpretation of the Camus essay, I was instantly confused. What is the right way to do this assignment, I wondered? I was nervous about writing an incorrect interpretation and did not want to get my first assignment wrong. Even more troubling was that the professor refused to give us any guidelines on what he was looking for; he gave us total freedom. He simply said, “I want to see what you come up with.”

Full of anxiety, I first set out to read Camus’s essay several times to make sure I really knew what was it was about. I did my best to take careful notes. Yet even after I took all these notes and knew the essay inside and out, I still did not know the right answer. What was my interpretation? I could think of a million different ways to interpret the essay, but which one was my professor looking for? In math class, I was used to examples and explanations of solutions. This assignment gave me nothing; I was completely on my own to come up with my individual interpretation.

Next, when I sat down to write, the words just did not come to me. My notes and ideas were all present, but the words were lost. I decided to try every prewriting strategy I could find. I brainstormed, made idea maps, and even wrote an outline. Eventually, after a lot of stress, my ideas became more organized and the words fell on the page. I had my interpretation of “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and I had my main reasons for interpreting the essay. I remember being unsure of myself, wondering if what I was saying made sense, or if I was even on the right track. Through all the uncertainty, I continued writing the best I could. I finished the conclusion paragraph, had my spouse proofread it for errors, and turned it in the next day simply hoping for the best.

Then, a week or two later, came judgment day. The professor gave our papers back to us with grades and comments. I remember feeling simultaneously afraid and eager to get the paper back in my hands. It turned out, however, that I had nothing to worry about. The professor gave me an A on the paper, and his notes suggested that I wrote an effective essay overall. He wrote that my reading of the essay was very original and that my thoughts were well organized. My relief and newfound confidence upon reading his comments could not be overstated.

What I learned through this process extended well beyond how to write a college paper. I learned to be open to new challenges. I never expected to enjoy a philosophy class and always expected to be a math and science person. This class and assignment, however, gave me the self-confidence, critical-thinking skills, and courage to try a new career path. I left engineering and went on to study law and eventually became a lawyer. More important, that class and paper helped me understand education differently. Instead of seeing college as a direct stepping stone to a career, I learned to see college as a place to first learn and then seek a career or enhance an existing career. By giving me the space to express my own interpretation and to argue for my own values, my philosophy class taught me the importance of education for education’s sake. That realization continues to pay dividends every day.

Most People Don’t Understand Memoirs  

In 2006, James Frey wrote a memoir about parts of his life when he was under the influence of drugs called  A Million Little Pieces , and after Oprah had him on her show to discuss the book – it was featured in her popular book club, of course – she was told that he “lied” about certain parts. Well, he didn’t lie. Memoirs contain what we remember. What we remember isn’t always “fact.” What I always say is that if you have all of your family members report what happened at a family gathering – like a birthday party or Christmas – whose report would be correct? No ones! That’s what a memoir is. It’s still nonfiction because it’s what the person remembers, but it’s not false on purpose. If I remember that my sister responded to me in a snotty way one day and my other sister didn’t think so, no one is correct. It’s just my memory versus hers.

Now, typically, memoirs encompass just a chunk of someone’s life, like when James Frey wrote about his drug years, but sometimes, some famous person in their 70s (or older) will write his/her memoir. No matter what, it’s simply what they remember, and I suppose if someone’s on drugs or has an awful memory, the stories could appear to be false. But they aren’t. That’s why they say, “life is stranger than fiction.”

Memoirs are part of the nonfiction category of literature; they contain a lot of description and detail, and they are typically very, very personal in content.

educational history narrative essay

The Bits and Pieces of Memoir

The memoir is a specific type of narrative. It is autobiographical in nature, but it is not meant to be as comprehensive as a biography (which tells the entire life story of a person). Instead, a memoir is usually only a specific “slice” of one’s life. The time span within a memoir is thus frequently limited to a single memorable event or moment, though it can also be used to tell about a longer series of events that make up a particular period of one’s life (as in Cameron Crowe’s film memoir Almost Famous ). It is narrative in structure, usually describing people and events that ultimately focuses on the emotional significance of the story to the one telling it. Generally, this emotional significance is the result of a resolution from the conflict within the story. Though a memoir is the retelling of a true account, it is not usually regarded as being completely true. After all, no one can faithfully recall every detail or bit of dialogue from an event that took place many years ago. Consequently, some creative license is granted by the reader to the memoirist recounting, say, a significant moment or events from his childhood some thirty years, or more, earlier. (However, the memoirist who assumes too much creative license without disclosing that fact is vulnerable to censure and public ridicule if his deception is found out, as what happened with James Frey and his memoir,  A Million Little Pieces .)

Furthermore, names of people and places are often changed in a memoir to protect those who were either directly or indirectly involved in the lives and/or event(s) being described.

Why read memoirs?

To learn about other people’s lives and their thoughts about events that have occurred.  Memoirs are a personalized look at history.

How to write memoirs?

Reflect n your life. write what you remember about events that matter to you from your unique point-of-view.

Dialogue is another way to bring life to your writing. Dialogue is conversation or people speaking in your story. An engaging dialogue goes beyond what is simply being said to include descriptions of non-verbal communication (facial expressions, body movement, changes in tone, and speed of speech) and characterization. The way people speak and interact while talking reveals much about them and the situation.

Writing a natural-sounding dialogue is not easy. Effective dialogue must serve more than one purpose – it should:

  • Drive the plot forward,
  • Reveal information about the characters, and
  • Build tension or introduce conflict.

Sample Dialogue

“So, what was it really like?” I asked.

“I’ve told you. It was amazing.”

I shifted to my side so I could look at her. “You have to give me more than that,” I insisted, “and not the mom and dad version.”

Liv mirrored my move to her side and propped up her head with her arm. Her blue eyes searched my greens, looking for the right words. “I shouldn’t–”

We broke our gaze as we heard our mom call for us. Once again, I didn’t get the truth.

Basic Dialogue Rules

  • “I want to go to the beach,” she said.
  • He asked, “Where’s the champagne?”
  • “That is,” Wesley said, “that neither you nor me is her boy.”
  • Even if the speaker says only one word, with no accompanying attribution or action, it is a separate paragraph.
  • Start a new paragraph when you wish to draw the reader’s attention to a different character, even if that character doesn’t actually speak.
  • For internal dialogue, italics are appropriate.

Example Memoir

Chocolate Can Kill You

Just when you think your life could not get any better, the Great One Above throws you for a loop that causes you to think upon your life, yourself, and your “little” obsession with chocolate. I am somewhat ashamed of this story, but it taught me so much. I still remember Alisa’s face when I came crying into the Valley City gym, I can hear Dad’s echoing “Are you OKAY?” consistently in my mind as if it had been a childhood scolding, and I see the image of the snow coming at me at 70mph every time I drive on a highway now.

In 1997, the morning after Valentine’s Day, I took off to see my sister in Valley City. She was there because of a wrestling meet. She is one of their prized assistants and without her, they would never get to see how goofy they look in tights. It was a crisp morning, and I cannot remember if I filled the bronco’s tank, but I did purchase a Twix bar before heading out on I-94. I vaguely remember thinking, Gee a seat belt would be good, even though the roads were as clean as they could have been in a North Dakota February. On that ten-degree morning, I met up with no one on the highway.

I was just bee-bopping along the left side of the road, listening to the radio and singing aloud as if I was Mariah Carey. It was at this time that I chomped into my first Twix bar.

In an attempt at a different radio station or something or another, I dropped the last bar between my legs onto the floor of the black beastly bronco.

This is where I become a stupid human. I tried to recapture the chocolate bar thinking, or maybe not even thinking, It will only take me a second. Whoever has said that seconds count in any accident WAS RIGHT! All of a sudden, I look up to see that I am driving 70 mph into the median’s snowdrifts. I cranked the wheel, thinking I could just drive back onto the highway. I mumble a few swear words and realize I am going 70 MPH IN A VERY DEEP SNOWDRIFT! I take my foot off the accelerator and while the front end slows, the back end has accumulated too much energy or velocity (a good physics question) and begins to lift upwards. I close my eyes, cross my arms across my chest, and crouch back into my seat and start to feel the bronco as well as myself turn and twist and hover for what seemed an eternity in slow motion. I did not open my eyes once.

And then all of a sudden, the small jolted car lands- PLOP – ON ITS WHEELS! My chair has completely reclined, and I sit up seeing smoke coming from my engine. I forget how to work my car and instinctively get out as if to show God I am alive. I stand on top of the drift becoming taller than my boxy 4×4. There are small dents in the front where you would open the hood but that is the biggest damage I can see.

“Are you OKAY?” An old couple are parked and honking at me from the other side of the highway going towards Fargo. They tell me to come with them and turn off the engine. I grab my parka and make my way through the snow to sit down in the back seat of the long car and take in that old people smell. This is when I quietly cry.

“You did a flip! It’s amazing you walked away from it,” says the old man and I think to myself sarcastically to calm down, Yeah I tried to do that. I ask them to take me to Valley City trying not to sound three and a half. Another major thought echoes What will Dad say?

They turned around at the next available bridge which was a mile away and the lady told me the exit so I could give it to the people that will tow my little bruised bronco. They talked to themselves as I tried to think of what exactly happened, how glad I was to be alive, and how I felt about it. Once inside the gymnasium, I found Alisa’s eyes and she instantly frowned and looked scared.

“Did you and Jason fight?” No, I try to say but I am crying in front of a large crowd who all seem more interested in me now than the matches. I sit down beside her and say:

“I did a flip… the bronco… flipped … it did a 360.”

“The bronco did a WHAT! ARE YOU OKAY!” She panics. I go to call Dad as she tells her friends, and they also feel sympathetic and are quite amazed. I don’t know how I managed to remember my calling card number, but I reached Mom and Dad just waking up. Once again Dad frightens me with his voice and vows to be there as soon as possible and tells me to call the highway patrol.

I was the only accident that whole day on the highway, I think, so I looked pretty silly.

Mom and Dad showed up an hour later. Mom was half-awake, and Dad looked like he’d been chugging coffee left and right. They had seen the bronco being towed incorrectly towards Fargo, so Dad feared the transmission was screwed up again much less the rest of the car. We took off for Fargo and stopped at the spot seeing the tracks lead into the snow, then 25 feet of no tracks, and suddenly a large indentation where the bronco had sat down.

Once at the Mobile on I-29, Dad jumped into the bronco to try to start it. It revved right up. I shook my head and thought of the motto, Built Ford Tough. Only the alignment and steering was off from me trying to turn it back onto the road, and the steam I had seen was the radiator fluid splashing onto the hot engine.

We had to meet with a highway patrolman, so the bronco could get a sticker and photos could be taken. I also, fortunately for the taxpayers, had to pay a Care of Vehicle bill of thirty dollars which means that the government basically can fine someone for trashing his/her own vehicle. This pissed me off incredibly after a day like I had just had. My mom had to remind me though that at least it wasn’t a medical bill.

The highway patrolman reminds me how valuable it was that I had had a seat belt on because I would have for sure gone through the windshield with that type of event and all the tossing that I had endured. That does not make replaying this event in my memory any better. As if God was saying: “No, not yet.”

It’s a common joke to not let me eat while I am driving.

That day made me incredibly grateful for my life, and for the people who came to my aid, especially my parents for spending their whole Saturday with me. Whether we were trying to contact the highway patrolman, paying the tower and the ticket, or comforting me- they never complained. Who knew chocolate could lead to such a life-threatening, yet philosophical day?

Time to Write

Purpose:  This assignment will demonstrate the understanding of how to write a memoir

Task: This assignment frames a single event for the memoir essay.

Write a Memoir Essay.  This essay should clearly identify a significant event or series of closely tied events that convey the significance of that event or has somehow shaped your personal perspective.  Remember that you are writing for an audience that doesn’t share your knowledge of the event(s), people, setting, etc. It is up to you to make your memoir come to life.

Key Features of a Memoir:

  • Invoke the 5 senses
  • Use narrative suspense
  • use metaphor
  • include significant details
  • provide descriptive language
  • use effective dialogue
  • include transitions

Key Grading Considerations

  • The rhetorical purpose is clear, focused, and appropriate to the audience and assignment.
  • The purpose is focused on the memoir.
  • Shows engagement with issues of story, language, rhetoric, or thinking deeply about a personal event.
  • The theme relates to a personal experience but also illustrates more universal principles.
  • Transitions
  • Learning Point Thesis Statement
  • Topic Sentences
  • Some Narrative Elements that flow with the paper
  • Clear introduction, event story, and conclusion
  • Dialogue is used
  • Descriptions and quotes to help visualize the event
  • Correct, appropriate, and varied integration of textual examples, including in-text citations
  • Limited errors in spelling, grammar, word order, word usage, sentence structure, and punctuation
  • Good use of academic English
  • Demonstrates cohesion and flow
  • Uses the rules of dialogue
  • Date format

Attributions

  • Memoir Content Adapted from Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). (2020).  Excelsior College. Retrieved from https://owl.excelsior.edu/ licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .
  • Narrative Writing Content Adapted from BETTER WRITING FROM THE BEGINNING . (2020).  Jenn Kepka. Retrieved from Better Writing from the Beginning licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .

English 101: Journey Into Open Copyright © 2021 by Christine Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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  1. Step-by-Step Guide How to Write Narrative Essay (2023 Update)

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  3. Sample History Essay

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COMMENTS

  1. Narrative Essays

    What is a narrative essay? When writing a narrative essay, one might think of it as telling a story. These essays are often anecdotal, experiential, and personal—allowing students to express themselves in a creative and, quite often, moving ways. Here are some guidelines for writing a narrative essay. If written as a story, the essay should ...

  2. How to Write a Narrative Essay

    Interactive example of a narrative essay. 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.

  3. Narrative History Essay

    Narrative history establishes the identity of their authors and readers. Narrative histories are may be about a story of a family, community, experience of a person, etc. It gives credits to the authors and provides life with the information to the readers. Narrative history represent language and literature. It makes reading available and easy ...

  4. 3 Great Narrative Essay Examples + Tips for Writing

    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 ...

  5. Narrative Essay On Educational History

    Narrative Essay On Educational History. Growing up, school was never my number one priority. Getting by and always doing the bare minimum was okay with me. As long as I passed, I didn't care. Little did I know, freshmen year had a rude awakening for me. I had zero motivation to even get out of bed in the mornings.

  6. Historical Thinking and Historical Narratives in School Textbooks

    3.1 Historical Thinking and Historical Narratives in a Global Culture: Introduction. This chapter, using critical discourse analysis, examines conceptual models of historical thinking and historical narratives in school textbooks. It considers the role of historiography in the classroom and major classroom pedagogical models relevant to ...

  7. Advantages of Teaching Historical Narratives in History Classrooms

    1. Historical narratives contribute to strengthening a sense of belonging and one's identity. 2. They facilitate the development of historical consciousness. 3. Historical narratives in history classrooms, by means of textual analysis, contribute to analytical reasoning and critical thinking. 4.

  8. Engaging in educational narrative inquiry: making visible alternative

    Lessard, Caine and Clandinin show that narrative inquiry, as we also see in Tamboukou and Leitch's articles, is a way of making people visible in the research and, consequently, to make their stories matter. Resistance to viewing the experience of the youth and their families from within a single story of vulnerability is central to their work ...

  9. Why Historical Narrative Matters?

    Whether the historical narrative is from the family, the school or the community, it comprises a continuous temporal experience, from the past to the present, making it possible for people to situate themselves - individually and collectively - in reference to others in the course of time. - Historical narratives give people reasons for ...

  10. Gaps, Plots, and Narration

    In a course on comparative revolutions, students read The Underdogs, a fictional account of the 1910 Mexican Revolution written by Mariano Azuela in 1915. In undergraduate seminars on historical narrative, I use novels such as Laila Lalami's The Moor's Account and Janet Lewis's The Wife of Martin Guerre. And when I teamed up with literary ...

  11. Full article: Narrative and analytical interplay in history texts

    Related research. Although the role of narrative in history has not been extensively researched within the field of history education (Barton & Levstik, Citation 2004), there is agreement that narratives are a pedagogical asset valued by history educators (Vass, Citation 2004).However, there is also scepticism towards unreflective use of stories that invite students to 'empathize with a ...

  12. A Narrative of My Challenging Educational Journey

    To protect the anonymity of contributors, we've removed their names and personal information from the essays. When citing an essay from our library, you can use "Kibin" as the author. Kibin does not guarantee the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of the essays in the library; essay content should not be construed as advice.

  13. My Educational Journey Narrative Essay

    Narrative Essay on my educational journey throughout the past few years. Course. Advanced College Writing (ENG 301) 10 Documents. Students shared 10 documents in this course. University California State University, Fullerton. Academic year: 2021/2022. Uploaded by: Anonymous Student.

  14. 4

    Writing is a skill that varies from individual to individual and that requires the personal creativity of the author. However, guidelines can aid the development of this skill. After all, the historian does not write just for himself or herself. The aim of an academic text is to communicate information in the clearest possible way.

  15. Narrative History and Theory

    18Rury, John L., "The Curious Status of the History of Education: A Parallel Perspective," History of Education Quarterly 46 "Winter 2006": 592. Google Scholar. 19. 19Burke, History and Social Theory, 1; Burke, History and Social Theory, 26, defines "model" as "an intellectual construct which simplifies reality in order to ...

  16. Narrative History and Theory

    152 History of Education Quarterly others"; and (4) hermeneutically oriented philosophers, among them Hans Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, who viewed narrative as the "manifestation in discourse of a specific kind of time-consciousness."4 In this essay I discuss the first two of the major challenges to narrative history.

  17. The narrative teacher: Narrative nonfiction as a teaching tool in the

    This research tested whether teaching history through expository or narrative texts would be more effective. Why the new findings matter. Findings suggest narrative can be a powerful teaching tool, with pedagogical implications for practitioners, such as when and how to utilise both narrative and expository texts to best support history learning.

  18. My Educational History Narrative Essay.docx

    2 My Educational History Narrative Essay I was homeschooled until I joined the CCP here. I am quite eager to learn new things at college. Everything is new to me, including turning in papers on time, having a timetable, and completing coursework online. Homeschooling is quite different from public education.

  19. Educational Narrative Essay Examples

    Educational Narrative Essay Examples. Educational History Narrative I have received most of my education outside of school. The one person who has always left a lasting effect on me is Anthony Scalzi. My freshman year of high school I realized I needed a way to make money. A lot of my friends were getting jobs, and I didn't wanna be left behind ...

  20. Narrative and Memoir Essays

    I walked across the parking lot, crossed a busy street, walked over a creek, through a "faculty" parking lot, crossed another street, and came to the first row of campus buildings. I walked between buildings, past the library and the student mall. I passed many quiet, nervous-looking students along the way.

  21. Educational History Narrative Essay

    educational history narrative essay - hana evans 1 - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Scribd is the world's largest social reading and publishing site.

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    final draft - the educational history narrative essay - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Scribd is the world's largest social reading and publishing site.

  23. Free Essay: Narrative essay about Education

    Narrative essay about Education. Education is the Key to SuccessThe disadvantage of not completing high school is missing the prom, senior day, and graduation. Looking back, as a teenager my judgment was idle toward negativity and peer pressure. I struggled throughout the years without my high school diploma. To pursue higher education, my high ...

  24. Noonan Narrative Essay (docx)

    Terry M Noonan Fitzgerald Houston Community College English I Narrative Essay A Transformative Encounter: Criticism of Triumph Introduction The day I walked the stage to receive my Master of Religious Education was a result of years' worth of effort, commitment, and personal development. But what made this moment even more meaningful was the presence of a familiar face in the crowd: Ed Hindson.