Pointers on Writing a Narrative Essay
Narrative Essay: Contextualising a Story
Sometimes the best way to get a point across is to tell a story. That’s where a narrative essay comes in. For those who want to become writers or journalists, this can be a very helpful essay writing exercise.
The starting point is of course the topic of the essay. Let’s say you are writing an essay on gun control laws; to explain the rationale of your stand you could narrate an incident wherein a terminated employee stormed into his office with a licensed gun and held his colleagues hostage for several hours. This would illustrate why it’s dangerous to allow the widespread ownership of guns – they are liable to be used to settle scores rather than to protect oneself and thus put many innocent lives at risk.
In this context, you outline the following:
- Setting: where the narrative takes place
- Characters: The various people involved in the story. Flesh out their background, beliefs, appearance, mannerisms and dominant personality traits.
- Duration: The period of time over which your narrative essay plays out.
- Writer’s Voice: Whether you want to write in the first person or in the third person
- Climax: How the story ends
The narration has to make the reader feel like they are watching the events unfold in front of their eyes. So don’t just tell them what happens, show it to them as it happens. For instance, “John’s boss had seemed indifferent when hading him the pink slip;” isn’t half as interesting as “John felt his blood run cold as Philip, his boss of nine years, brusquely delivered the blow, ‘I had a meeting with my superiors yesterday about the slump in our sales figures and we made some tough decisions. You have to go.’ There was no eye contact, no handshake and not even a semblance of regret on Philip’s face, as he showed John out of his office. Just like that, his twelve years of working with ABC Corp. had come to an end.”
Think about what emotions you want each character and event to evoke and structure your sentences accordingly. The above narrative essay sample excerpt would clearly not make the reader sympathise with Philip. It does portray John as the victim though, which should be handled carefully since he will turn into the villain of the piece soon. So at all times, retain full control of where your story is heading, with a view that it has to end in a certain way. Writing a story without the end in mind is great for a novel where you have ample leeway to turn things around, but in a narrative essay one cannot overdo the turning points in the plot.
One tip is to read the essay aloud to yourself; make the pauses and the tone modulations wherever appropriate and then incorporate those into the narrative, like how Philip’s indifferent tone comes across clearly in the above excerpt.
Restate the purpose of the narrative essay in your conclusion, to place the plot in the relevant context.
