To write the narrative from your perspective or someone else’s?
Since many narrative essays are inspired by personal experiences, they are often written from the perspective of the author - which means they’re written in the first person. This means that they can be emotional, unlike many other essay types. Also, you want to fill the essay with stuff that makes the reader feel what it was like for you to go through this personal experience.
Describing various sensory details can help you do this - sensory input is a great way of making the reader feel what you felt. So is emotional feeling, as long as they’re feelings that most people will have experienced. Here’s a very powerful one:
And then, just as I handed the exam paper to the teacher, I remembered the answer to the last question! I frantically begged for the teacher to give me back the paper for just one minute, but alas, she would not give it back. And it was worth 50% of the entire exam!
Most people have gone to school, and many of them will have had an experience like this - one of those horrible experiences that you’d rather forget! So when you describe it vividly in your essay, you hopefully get the same sort of emotional response from your reader that you felt when it happened.
Narratives can also be written using the third person. This is more likely to happen if you’re writing the narrative based on the experiences of a friend or family member, rather than your own. You can also write in the third person if you feel uncomfortable placing yourself in a fictional or bad situation - perhaps you’re writing from the perspective of someone who’s done something very bad. Just remember that it can be easier to write a powerful narrative essay if you’re writing from the first person point of view.
Click here to move on to the next topic: Normal story conventions