Choose an event that feels full of meaning and significance to you personally. These events usually make the best story ideas for a personal narrative. For example, if your narrative focuses on your intended career path as a teacher, you could write a narrative about how a youth coaching experience showed you the importance of making a positive impact on children. Alternatively, if you’re writing about how you came to choose a college major in medical science, your narrative could focus on a wonderful volunteer experience you had as a child that made you want to help other people.
For instance, you may pick an experience where you lost an important match, only to learn the value of failing and do better. Or you may choose an experience where you made a moral decision to help someone, which then leads to positive outcomes for you and the person.
For example, you may choose a theme like love and use it to explore your experience of love growing up in a family with two fathers. Or you may choose a theme like freedom and use to explore your struggles with freedom as a refugee. Alternatively, you can start writing out the narrative and discover the theme as you go along. Try to notice any ideas you keep coming back to as you write and see if these relate to an overarching theme. [4] X Expert Source Grant Faulkner, MAProfessional Writer Expert Interview. 8 January 2019.
You may need to use a mixture of tenses throughout the narrative. For instance, the answer to the prompt or the narrative you discuss may be written in the present tense, while an anecdote or narration of a story may be written in the past tense, as it has already happened.
The thesis statement in a narrative essay can explore the events of the story in a brief way. Or it can tell the reader about the moral or lesson learned through the personal experience. You can also present the main theme in the essay in the thesis statement. For example, if you are writing an essay about your personal experience as a refugee, you may have a thesis statement that presents the theme of freedom. You may write, “My journey is just one of many. We all came to a new country carrying nothing more than hope and memories of the past. ”
For example, you may have three supporting body paragraphs where you tell your narrative based on the theme of your essay. You may start with your experience of “freedom” in your home country in the first paragraph, followed by your experience of the same theme in your new country in the second paragraph.
For example, you may end the essay by stating the lesson or moral you learned from the personal experience. Or you may note how the experience has positively affected your life now.
The hook is usually not longer than 1 to 2 sentences. It starts your introductory paragraph and can take the form of a scene, question, interesting fact or statement, or even an anecdote.
For example, you may wish, “I huddled under my Disney Princess bed cover as my father banged on my bedroom door. As I listened to his muffled screams, I wondered if it was possible to simply disappear, away from my lonely home life and my failing high school grades. ”
For example, you may start with a question like, “Have you ever wondered how it might feel to leave your home forever?” or “Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own country?”
For example, you may start with an interesting fact about lawnmowers if your narrative is about how mowing lawns as a kid taught you the value of hard work. Or you may choose a funny statement about winning and losing if your essay is about learning how to accept failure.
For example, if you are writing about learning how to accept failure, you may start with an anecdote about your father telling you not to lose a softball game as a kid. Or if you are writing about your personal experiences as a refugee, you may use an anecdote on a moment of acceptance you experienced in your new country.
