What is a Narrative Essay?
A narrative Essay tells a story.
- Even though the narrative essay has the
same basic form as most other academic
essays, it allows the writer to be more
creative than academic essay usually do.
Narrative Essays
Several important elements make up a story:
1) Setting: the location where the action in a story happens.
2) Theme: the basic idea of the story. Very often the
theme will deal with a topic that is common in life or
human nature, such as greed, envy, love, independence,
and so on.
3) Mode: the feeling or atmosphere that the writer creates
for the story. It could be happy, hopeful, suspenseful, or
scary. Both the setting and descriptive vocabulary create
the mood in a narrative
Narrative Essays
4.) Characters: the people in the story.
They are affected by the mood, and they react to the events
in which they are involved.
5.) Plot: what happens in the story, that is, the sequence of
events. The plot often includes a climax or turning point at
which the characters or events change.
An effective narrative essay includes these elements:
a thesis that sets up the action in the introduction.
transition sentences that connect events and help the
reader to follow the story.
a conclusion that ends the story action and provide a moral,
prediction, or revelation.
Narrative Essays
• The Introduction:
The introduction is the paragraph that begins your story.
This is where you describe the setting, introduce the
characters, and prepare the reader for the action to come.
Of course, the introduction should have a hook and a
thesis.
•The Narrative Hook:
Usually the first sentence or two- that grabs readers'
attention. Hooks are especially important in narrative
essays because they help " set the stage" for the story.
The hook makes readers start guessing about what will
happen next.
Narrative Essays
An example of a good hook:
I had never been more anxious in my life. I had just
spent the last three endless hours trying to get to
the airport so that I could travel home.
It makes the reader asks:
Who is the narrator and why is he or she anxious?
Where is the airport?
What made the trip to the airport seem endless?
Why is this person going home?
Narrative Essays
The Thesis
Usually the thesis states the main idea of the essay and tells what the
organization of the information will be. However, in a narrative essay the
thesis introduce the action that begins in the first paragraph of the
essay.
Examples of thesis statements:
Now, as I watched the bus driver set my luggage on the airport
sidewalk, I realized that my frustration had only just begun.
Because his pride wouldn't allow him to apologize, Ken now had to fight
the bully, and he was pretty sure that he wouldn't win.
The example sentences do not tell the reader what happens. They only
introduce the action that will follow. The paragraph in the body will
develop the story.
Narrative Essays
The Body:
The body of your narrative essay contains most of the
plot- the supporting information. The action in the plot
can be organized in many different ways.
chronological, or time order in this method each
paragraph gives more information about the story as it
proceeds in time: the first paragraph usually describe
the first event, the second paragraph describes the
second event and so on.
Narrative Essays
Transitional Sentences:
In a chronological organization, each paragraph ends
with a transitional sentence. Transitional sentences
have two purposes:
1.) To signal the end of action in one paragraph
2.) To provide a link to the action of the next
paragraph.
These sentences are vital because they give your story
unity and allow the reader to follow the action easily.
The conclusion:
Narrative Essays
Like academic essays, narrative essays need to have
concluding ideas. In the concluding paragraph, you finish
describing the action in the essay. The final sentence can
have two functions:
1.) It can deliver the moral for the story, or tell the reader
what the characters learned from the experience.
2.) It can make a prediction or a revelation (disclosure of
something that was not known before) about future
actions that will happen as a result of the events in the
story.
Effective narrative essays
There are three elements in an effective
narrative essay:
1. A thesis that sets up the action in the
introduction
2. Transition sentences that connect events
and help the reader follow the story.
3. A conclusion that ends the story action
and provides a moral or revelation.
THANK YOU!
Presented by: ANN MYLLCE M. BUAN