True Narrative Essay

Performance Indicators:

 

P.S ELA-3 Reading (Writing) Craft and Structure: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of a text.

A. Understand SOAPSTone: Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone
B. Analyze the plot and/or design of the text, following shifts in time and place.

 

P.S ELA-5 Writing Craft:   Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

A. Create an effective introduction.
B. Use showing details v. telling details.
C. Maintain a focus on the main idea throughout the body paragraphs.
D. Write an effective conclusion.

 

VIDEO:  True Narrative Essay

Nonfiction- True Narrative Essay

A narrative is a story.  A true narrative essay is a true story, with plot, action, suspense characters and setting which delivers a theme (a lesson observed).  The events in your essay represent the facts.

A true narrative is the most informal of the various types of essays, thus it does not follow a set format because you are telling a story according to your sense of style–the narrative voice (the art or process of telling a story or giving an account of something).  The diction (choice of words to fit your context) and your ability to construct the telling of the story in order to interest and provoke the reader are essential.  Metaphorical (all language that involves figures of speech or symbolism and does not literally represent real things) expression is one popular device in crafting the art of storytelling that appeals to your reader.

How to write a narrative essay…

Basic qualities of a narrative essay:

  • A narrative essay is a piece of writing that recreates an experience through time.
  • A narrative essay can be based on one of your own experiences, either past or present, or it can be based on the experiences of someone else.
  • In addition to telling a story, a narrative essay also communicates the main idea or a lesson learned.

First steps for writing a narrative essay:

  • Identify the experience that you want to write about.
  • Think about why the experience is significant.
  • Spend a good deal of time drafting your recollections about the details of the experience.
  • Create an outline of the basic parts of your narrative according to Freytag’s Pyramid.
  • Using your outline, describe each part of your narrative.
  • Rather than telling your readers what happened, use vivid details and descriptions to actually recreate the experience for your readers.
  • Think like your readers. Try to remember that the information you present is the only information your readers have about the experiences.
  • Always keep in mind that all of the small and seemingly unimportant details known to you are not necessarily known to your readers.

Writing about the experience:  Two story-telling strategies that you should attempt to employ are:
1. tell the story in the present voice

2.consider the point-of-view that will best enhance the suspense of your story.

Communicating the significance of the experience:

  • The best advice for writing a narrative essay is to remember that the writer makes up the rules.  You are to determine the best course to follow in order to tell your story and to reveal to your reader the significance of your reason for telling the story.
  • One effective technique is to begin the essay by jumping directly into the narrative. You may be tempted to anchor your composition in a formally structure paragraph that emphasizes the essential understanding of your composition–refrain from doing so.  The narrative essay, in its purest form, is a story whose message is expressed through the skill of the storyteller.

You are to compose a narrative essay due DAY 17 of the syllabus.  True Narrative Corrections

View the true narrative essays that follow in order to guide your understanding of style and composition.

Student True Narrative Essays