Essay writing is a craft whose skills you have to develop over time. An authentic essay should clearly communicate the intended message. It’s a composition that should express the intended idea and back it up with credible explanations, facts, and analysis.
There are various essay types that you could come across. They include descriptive, argumentative, expository, and narrative essays. Expository and argumentative essays express factual information and main points. However, Descriptive and narrative essays accord you as a writer to write creatively.
In this article, we will concentrate and expound on narrative essays. This article helps you know how to write a narrative essay introduction, and most importantly, provides you with tactics on how to be a better narrative essay writer in general.
How to write a Narrative Essay introduction
A narrative essay is an essay that assumes a storytelling form, and as a writer, you have the independence to express yourself on the subject matter.
That said, a narrative essay is personal and experiential in nature. Typically, a narrative essay should have an introduction, a plot, a setting, characters, climax, and the conclusion.
When writing a narrative essay, the introductory paragraph is pretty vital. It is from this paragraph that a reader decides whether the whole paper is worth reading.
Therefore, ensure that your introductory paragraph catches the reader’s attention and offers a glimpse of what your narration aims to address.
Also see: Can an Essay Be One Paragraph?
Below is a list of guidelines to direct you into composing a thrilling and compelling introductory paragraph for your narrative essay.
- Start your essay with a hook as the introductory sentence
Remember, you want your introductory sentence to attract the reader’s attentiveness and keep them engaged. To do that, begin your introductory sentence with a creative hook.
For example, you may formulate your hook sentence by employing a quote, rhetoric question, anecdotes, statistics, a shocking statement, or an interesting fact.
- Usher in the principal characters
Since the reader needs to have a general idea of what and who your narrative is about, introduce and distinguish your main characters concisely.
Give the reader a picture of what the principal characters look like and their position in your story.
- Outline the setting of your narrative
The setting describes where and when your narration took place. Here, ensure that you render the reader with sensory details to help them create a clear picture of the scene.
How you describe your setting should trigger the reader’s senses of smell, taste, sight, touch, and hearing.
- Cover the overview and theme of your narrative in the end sentence
Your last sentence in the introduction forms your thesis statement. In this sentence, you should inform the reader what to anticipate in the rest of the narrative essay without giving any specific details.
Does a Narrative Essay Need a Thesis Statement?
A narrative essay needs a thesis statement. Although different from the thesis statements in analytical, descriptive, or argumentative essays, a narrative essay should have a thesis statement. This statement should be included in the essay’s introduction and is meant to tell the reader what to anticipate by reading the narration.
For your thesis statement to be clear and robust, it should meet several desirable features. For example, a good thesis statement for a narrative essay should be declarative, specific, can be demonstrated and argued, confident, and should fully express the essay’s subject.
How Do You Write a Narrative Essay Outline?
Like any other type of essay, a narrative essay should follow a functional outline structure. In attempting to write a compelling narrative essay that communicates clearly to the reader, drafting your essay outline is one of the most vital steps.
The outline acts as your plan, which makes the writing organized and less stressful.
To help you craft an effective outline with the correct critical elements for your narrative essay, below is a clear structure that you should consider employing.
- Introduction
Start the introductory paragraph with a hook, followed by the stage of your narrative and the thesis statement as the closing sentence. A hook should be the first sentence of your narrative essay and should be reflective, personal, and intriguing to captivate the reader’s attention.
After the hook, introduce the stage of your essay where you introduce the setting, scene, main characters, and a general overview of your essay.
The last and most crucial element of your introduction is the thesis statement. A thesis statement summarizes the essay’s main point by providing the reader with a sneak peek of what the narrative essay is all about. In general, your introduction should be intriguing, short, precise, and relatable.
- The Body
The body is the main element of your narrative essay because it describes the beginning, the growth, and the end of your narration. Depending on the word count and the narration’s plot, a narrative essay’s body contains three paragraphs.
In the first paragraph, ensure that you launch the story by introducing its background. The second paragraph under the body is the heart of your narration, where you narrate the story up to the climax. Finally, the third paragraph is where you wrap up your narration. Here, ensure that the story ends naturally.
Overall, ensure that you give detailed descriptions and accurate information relevant to your story in the body. In addition, ensure that the body is fascinating and serves the reader with clear emotions.
Also see: Are Essay Mills Legal?
- Conclusion
The conclusion is the final part of your narrative essay outline. This part acts as the summary to your story and where you unite the reader and the story. Here, you could state the moral of the story, state its significance, and call the reader to action to ensure that they meditate more on the subject.
Tips to Writing an Excellent Narrative Essay
You may be writing a narrative essay for your lecturer to grade, or you are a professional essay writer writing for their audience. In either of the cases, you need to write a fascinating article that will capture the reader’s attention and pass your intended message. To help you with that, below are essential tips you could utilize.
- Read narrative essays from other writers. For you to be a pro narrative essay writer, you need to be an extensive reader. Read a wide range of essays with different subjects written using distinct styles and arguments. From doing so, you will develop more writing confidence and even grow your creativity and ability to narrate.
- Analyze the essay question thoroughly. Before you start to write a narrative essay, ensure you understand the essay question to get a clear grasp of what you ought to write about. From the essay question, be alert to distinguish between directive, limiting, and content terms. You can therefore brainstorm on the question and choose the suitable topic to write on.
- Create an outline. Create an outline where you include the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Draft a structure where you include your main ideas and how you want them to follow each other chronologically. This process will simplify your writing in a significant way.
- Do extensive research. For your essay to be authentic, you have to convince your reader of your arguments by providing them with reasoning, facts, and evidence where possible. To do so, you have to carry out comprehensive research on the subject matter from credible sources and have a good grasp of the story you are narrating.
- Edit and proofread your essay. Before you submit your narrative essay for marking or publishing, proofread the essay severally while editing. By doing so, you will discover and correct any spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors in your essay. Moreover, you will be able to check whether your points make sense and smoothly follow each other as you designated.
Conclusion
Narrative essay writing can be complicated if you don’t have confidence and a clear writing plan.
However, by reading this article, you will be better positioned to write authentic and sound narrative essays. Moreover, you will know how to write a narrative essay introduction.
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