Tips for Writing a Personal Narrative Essay
A personal narrative essay talks about a person’s experience. It may be about something positive like your best birthday celebration, negative like the death of a pet or a loved one, or even simple memories such as an enjoyable walk in the park or getting wet in the rain. It aims to narrate the details of the experience and its effect on your life. To write a good personal narrative essay, you must place emphasis on the information that makes the essay engaging to read. These are the things to consider when writing a personal narrative:
Must-Haves
- It must have an emotional impact on the reader – the aim is to make the reader feel the experience, or at least to relive it using the imagination. Emotional language must be used.
- It must possess many references to things and elements that the senses can feel.
- It must include vivid details and descriptions, but should not be confused with writing a descriptive essay.
Structure
- In the first paragraph, which is your introduction , express to the reader the importance of what you are describing and your point of view.
- For the essay’s body, you need to give the reader a clear picture of what happened and the emotions that you felt during the time and now that you are looking back, quite like when writing a memoir . You may write in chronological order or according to the importance of events that comprise the whole experience. Make sure that you do not confuse the reader when you write the experience according to the event’s importance.
- The essay may be a paragraph or two or more, as it will depend on your requirements.
- When you want to finish the essay, the closing paragraph (your conclusion ) should discuss the point of your story. You may write what the experience did to you – whether it gave you a fond memory that you can always remember, taught you a lesson or an idea, or just a story that you can always tell for fun.
Preparation
As mentioned earlier, writing a good personal narrative essay involves the need to write interesting details. So to effectively write and keep your readers interested in your narrative, consider doing these:
- Recall the experience first.
- Do your best to remember even the little details as they would help make the story more interesting.
- Once you have a complete recollection of the experience, it helps if you can record yourself telling the story. It is also important to not get too conscious about how you sound. Once you get conscious, you might get distracted and forget the details of the story. Listen to the recording once, twice, or more, to make sure that you get a clear flow of the story.
The writing part
- Make sure to begin writing after you have established a good recollection of the whole story.
- To make the essay more alive and interesting, you may include anecdotes or dialogue.
- Use words that are colorful, lively, illustrative, emotional, and exact. For example, if your personal narrative is about something exciting, make sure to use words that are often associated with happiness. That way, you will make the reader feel the same emotions you felt.
- A good transition is important to engage the reader further. Feel free to use words like: thus, therefore, and however. This will help the reader maintain focus on the flow of your story.
Example of a personal narrative
Here is an example of the kind of writing that should be present when writing a personal narrative essay
. Pay attention to the tone and the power of the words used. You can clearly feel the cold: 
Read an example of a narrative essay.
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