Is It Possible to Teach How to Write a Narrative Essay?

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The skills to write a nice narrative are a tough thing to find. These essays are one of the most difficult to get hold of. The thing which makes writing a narrative essay so difficult to fathom is because of only good writing skills will not help the cause. The person should have a knack of yarn a story.

Good narrative writing skills are hard won by students of any age group. In this blog, we will be making an attempt to teach you how to write a narrative.

What makes the narrative essay unique and different?

The problem with teaching our readers how to write a narrative essay is it cannot follow certain set guidelines and technique. These essays are so unique that the writer should have that in-built wiring skill to tell the story properly, and the sroty should have proper flow.

We hear stories everywhere on a regular basis. These stories can be gossiping between two neighbors to the story told by billboards on the side of a highway. The art of storytelling is unique and a set of guidelines will not help to teach that art.

We may help our reader to sharpen his skills but that knack of storytelling should come from within. Since the art of storytelling is a form of craft and as we know craft can be taught, practiced and perfected over time.

In our attempt to teach how to write a narrative essay we will be talking about some of the aspects that make a good story both individually and mixing them. The aspects or elements that make a story are setting, characters, problems, climax, and resolution. Before we go into details of writing a narrative essay, we must understand what is a narrative essay?

A narrative essay is an opportunity for a student to share his imagination and creativity to yarn a story which will captivate the audience and keep them hooked to the story till the end. The objective of a narrative is very simple -to tell a story. It can be used to motivate, entertain or educate someone. These essays can be both facts as well as fictional. We often refer to the narrative as creative writing.

5 stages to teach our readers how to write a narrative essay.

In this tutorial on how to write a narrative, we will explain in a systematic manner regarding initial steps of writing.

  • The first step a person while writing a narrative is to sit and prepare himself for the essay. Since, a narrative involves a setting, characters, problems and finally a climax. If the author does not spend much time creating a link among all these elements individually, then while writing these elements will not mush properly and give a feeling out of place. So, spend 1/5th of your total time on planning and preparing.
  • Now, the setting is one of that element which is the most important part of our how to write a narrative to the tutorial. Now, the setting will tell our readers to answer two questions- when and where. The answer to these question will be often be informed by the type of story the person is writing.

For example, if it is a horror story a good writer will describe the setting in such a way that people will easily realize that they are in for a horror show. He will provide an eerie description with the lighting of the place to be dim. A good writer can describe the setting in such a way that the reader can feel himself being transformed into the setting. Now if the story is a romantic one, the setting will be all about flowers and beautiful bright mornings with the protagonist in the arms of her lover.

  • Once we are done with the setting, now readers already have a general idea regarding the type of story they are about to read. Now is the perfect time to introduce the characters of your story. If you are in the initial stages of writing narrative, prefer to keep the number of characters less. It is safe to keep one lead character and few secondary characters as a large number of characters may become difficult to handle initially.

If a writer introduces a character, he must provide the reader with some background to that character. This task of assigning a background to each character may become intimidating for a novice writer. In our how to write a narrative essay tutorial, we always advise our readers to take inspiration from some real-life characters as it may become easier for him to provide a physical appearance to the character.

  • As we are done with the setting and character introduction, now is the time to set that driving force of the story in motion. This is where most of the novice fails to deliver. The driving force of a story is “problem”. There is no story without a problem. In short stories, these problems will surround the main character and as the story moves forward it will depict the struggles of our main character and how he overcomes that.
  • This is the last chapter of our how to write a narrative tutorial where we will be talking about the dramatic high point of the story. It is called the climax. The climax determines whether the story will have a bitter or happy ending. This is part of the story where two forces meet and one comes out triumphant. But the success of the climax greatly depends on how well you have gelled all the other elements of the story.

If the writer has created a perfect setting and provided with well-drawn believable character then the climax will be an impactful one which will have some effect on our reader’s mind. In spite of the climax, there remain some loose ends even though the conflict has been resolved. The conclusion or resolution is the part where these questions will be answered.

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