Narrative Essay Examples for Academic Writing

Top Narrative Essay Writing Examples

Students think that writing narrative essays is similar to creating fiction. But it is not valid. Narrative essay writing samples can be a key to understanding specific aspects of this writing style. We created a database where you can find narrative essay writing example for any topic or field of study. 

Remember that this type of essay can be emotional, but it still should be based on actual facts. Try to search for examples of narrative stories from your study perspective. You will find how helpful they can be in your writing process. Also, you probably know that such assignments for high school and college students have differences. The best option to understand what type of essay you need to create is to use our sample database at any time.  

Narrative Story Examples for Everything You Write

Why do you need to be proficient in writing narratives? And how can examples of a narrative story make your text better? Our answer is quite simple. In this task you learn how to tell the story compellingly and share your own feelings. 

Moreover, these assignments have a clear structure. Use colorful vocabulary, flashbacks and elements that support your story. Don't know how to implement it better? Check the pdf sample of narrative story we have in our database. We are sure that a picture is worth 1000 words. Start your writing by learning from a narrative story example! Our free tool is acceptable for anyone in any location!

Free Narrative Essays Examples to Make Your Writing Perfect

You may wonder how good narrative essay examples can improve your personal texts? First of all, learning from cases is the best way of getting new information and improving practical skills. When writing, use our free base to find the essays close to your topic or specialization. 

Then you can learn from vocabulary, tone of voice, structure and emotional figures used in the example. Your writing should be related to your personal experience, lessons learned or have unique structure ideas. For a narrative essay example college students can use StudyBounty base. It is 100% that you will find fresh ideas and essential tips! 

Examples of a Narrative Essay for All Students

Storytelling is not an easy task for any student. First of all, because of the ability to tell a coherent story based on one motive and guided by objective facts. As you can see from our sample of narrative essays, it is more important how you tell a specific story than what this story is about. It differs from strict academic writings of argumentative essays. We would even say that it is more complicated. You can see everything with your eyes if you look at argumentative essay examples.

Have clear thoughts from the first sentence to the last one. Use eye-catching language and make your readers share the same feelings as you have. Moreover, narrative essay samples can be used for all high school or college students. 

High School Narrative Essay Samples

Narrative essay examples for high school will differ from other texts by topic. In most cases, you need to tell something personal that happened to you. How did your first teacher influence your decision on your future profession? What did you learn from your classmates? Remember that your story typically should be chronological. But it should have one motive for all events, feelings and emotions you describe. 

Open any sample of narrative essay. Learn from the best examples! You will see how to incorporate the motive professionally and effectively. Most stories will be written from a first-person perspective. But it can be ok to use third or even second-person narration if it fits your plot. 

Narrative Essay Examples College

What is the first step every student should start a writing process with? The correct answer is to read as many examples of narrative essays for college as possible. Speaking about college studies, the topics for these writings can be more complicated. 

However, still, you will use the same rules and tips. Also, this type of writing helps create personal statements and cover letters when you start looking for your first job to apply for a scholarship. (Look through personal essay examples and scholarship essay examples in our database.) This text aims to explain your motive and thoughts but not convince readers or persuade them to your side. Wondering how to do this? Go through narrative college essay examples we collect for you and find the answer. 

How to Write a Narrative Essay

We encourage you to learn from examples and not copy someone's text for your assignments. After reading a considerable number of samples, you can start writing your own text. Let's overview the best recommendation on creating this type of essay and go through all steps to write a narrative paper. Here is our guide to excellent writing. 

1. Brainstorm Narrative Essay Topics Examples

How to find good topics for a narrative essay? You may think that it's something impossible for people without writing talent. But it is not valid. Everyone can learn how to pick the best stories for their narration. Let's start with brainstorming and learning how to find the best topic. First, your story can be personal or based on specific subjects of your study. But even talking about scientific things, apply personal evaluation and thoughts to support your motive. We would suggest you look at the memory mining strategy for brainstorming ideas. It stands on uncovering memories about people, places, events and activities. Our examples of narrative essay topics also can be a significant point in choosing your idea and motive for writing. 

2. Check Out a Narrative Writing Example

After your topic is defined, you need to look at the example of narrative essay writing we prepared for you. Why is it important? First of all, it can help you develop your ideas and motives. Maybe you will find essays that have the same topic and purpose. And it's excellent! You can look at how proficient writers build a theme and implement the motive flow through specific issues. You can learn how other writers introduce their ideas and incorporate personal experience into the text.

If you find an example of narrative writing that fits your topic, you will be able to improve it and make your reading clear and complete. 

3. Compose a Narrative Essay Thesis Statement

We can guess what is on your mind at this stage. How to write a thesis statement for a narrative essay? After you have decided on a topic, chosen a motive and created a clear view of the story you are going to tell, you can make a thesis statement. This is the short introduction of your story, the main idea to share, and the most important lesson you want to show. Your thesis statement should be clear and straightforward. Usually, writers point to the central thesis in the very beginning. "In this essay, I will show you how important small human help is for a huge world…". This is your thesis that explains the purpose of this story. 

4. Create Your Narrative Essay Outline

This kind of essay usually tells the story in chronological order. It is not a rule. In some cases, it is possible to change it. But it doesn't mean that such essays do not have a standard outline. Writing a narrative essay outline should be your next step after statement detection. It is essential to focus on it before the actual writing, as it will help to be more consistent. Outline for a narrative essay has an introduction, main body and conclusion. Let's look at how it can be structured in an example. 

• Introduction

Start with a hook sentence to make readers interested in your story. Then it can be a rhetorical question and, finally - thesis statements. 

• Main body

Set up, tell your story, and share how it ends. This is the most critical part of the narration.

• Conclusion

Outline for narrative essay example illustrates that you need to restate your point and relate it to readers at the end of the essay. 

5. Write a Narrative Paper

You define the idea, thesis statement, outline, and it means that you are ready to create a narrative style paper. It already looks like you have enough to complete a professional document. Let's briefly remind all components of a good essay:

• Include all story elements into your outline – introduction, main body and conclusion.  
• Also, be clear with your story's plot, characters, and setting.
• Make your thesis statement clear and focus on how it is represented in all text parts. 
• If it is appropriate, use dialogues. Find a good narrative paper example to learn the best ways of implementing talks into text. 
• Focus on sensitive details. Be sure they are related to your motive and plot. 

Narrative Essay Structure

It is time to look at the structure of a narrative essay more precisely. It does not differ a lot from any other type of writing, but there are some features you need to be aware of. Outline of a narrative essay you created already will guide you through the structure. 

• Introduction

It is emotional writing, and it matters how you tell your story. That is why your first sentences should be done well. Make your readers interested in what you are going to tell! Underline the purpose of writing. 

• Main body

We will suggest you pick a minimum of three components you want to include in your text while telling the story. Include details and dialogue if possible. 

• Conclusion

At this point, remind yourself of rhetorical questions or statements. Do not retell everything, make readers think. 

Every writing task has its requirements. If you have a certain word count and do not know how many pages it should be, try our tool that easily converts words to pages.

Narrative Essay Introduction Example

Writing an introduction is the most significant part of your paper. The future of your essay will depend on this first sentence in the text. We collect the best narrative essay introduction examples to inspire you and bring some fresh ideas. 

What to consider for creating an excellent introduction:

1. Hook sentence. It can be a citation, quote, interesting fact, or essential statistic. Something that will make you readers think: "And what is next?". 
2. Point your thesis statements. Readers should understand what this text is about, is it relevant to their interests?
3. Outline the essay’s purpose. It will make your text clear and readable for everyone.

Let's look at how an introduction is realized in the following essay example. 

Narrative writing sample introduction

In the journey to success, many hurdles might prevent an individual from achieving their desired goals. Hurdles can either be psychological or physical, but the most important thing is to find the most appropriate way to deal with them. As a scholar and a leader, my greatest challenge in life was the fear of addressing the public or crowds. Despite the faith shown to me by my tutors and fellow students with regards to my leadership abilities, I always experienced anxiety and tension while standing in front of my subjects to the extent that it was noticeable. I could tremble, stammer, or even forget the important things that I was supposed to tell the crowd once I stepped in front of them. However, this did not take away from them the fact that they still believed that I was the right leader who would represent them in class and other organizations in college. In a bid to strive and be a good and complete leader, I had to overcome this challenge to offer my leadership services and increase the faith my subjects had on me.

Narrative Essay Thesis Statement Examples

We already mentioned the importance of a clear thesis statement for narrative essay example. What does it mean in practice? How to create strong statements? 

The statement's goal is to define your position on a specific topic. This is the main idea of your writing, something you will follow during the whole writing process. Writing a thesis will take some time, and you should plan it accordingly. Start with a straightforward thesis, and then you can develop it into more complicated sentences. 

StudyBounty prepares excellent thesis statement examples for narrative essays you can use for inspiration. You can't copy someone's thesis, but you can look at how experienced writers defined it for their essays.  

Narrative Essay Main Body

This part of the essay you will spend the most time on. Narrative paragraph structure can consist of three or more elements. What to include into your storytelling for making it better:

• Details

It will be more visual for readers to look at specific information you add to the story.

• Chronology

It will be easier to tell your story in this way. It is not fiction. It is simple in structure. 

• Add dialogues if possible

It is a great trick to make your text more readable. 

 An example of a narrative essay body paragraph

After an encounter with a crowd, most of my friends always made attempts to ensure that I knew what they felt about my speech. Whereas some came with good words to praise how bold and courageous I was, most of them were open and made their real thoughts clear to me. They felt that I needed to do more with regards to polishing my public speaking skills. On my part, I had acknowledged my weakness and also the fact that it made me look like a weak leader. I contemplated many things, among them quitting my various positions as a leader to prevent me from always having to stand in front of huge crowds and making speeches. I decided to share my story with my elder brother, a person I regarded as one of my best friends and whom I turned to when I needed help. This step proved to be a decisive moment in my leadership life as my brother played a major role in addressing my challenge.

Narrative Paragraph Examples

Our team prepared an example of a narrative paragraph that can help you to understand an idea of good writing. It is always better to look at how others implement dialogues or chronology principles into simple text. Narration papers usually use the first-person voice, as in most cases, you will tell about your experience. It has a specific stylistic, vocabulary and tone of voice. We encourage you to look at an example of narrative paragraph in our database. Learn about subtopics and build headings. Become better and learn from others’ good experiences. 

Narrative Essay Conclusion Examples

Many people think that if the body and introduction are done well, that conclusion is unimportant. But it's not true. Any narrative essay conclusion is a bottom line for your text. It is a reminder of your story, your thoughts and your ideas. It is not a classical summary. Give the reader something to think about, remind them of your thesis statements, or go back to your introduction hook. 

A solid final thoughts section will open a future discussion on the topic. There is no need for rewriting a whole story. In a narrative essay conclusion sample, you should make your point on future discussion and underline the idea and motive mentioned in the text. 

How to do it? Look below!

Narrative paper conclusion example

Overcoming this challenge was one of my greatest breakthroughs in life. I changed completely as a leader and I could address different crowds from small to the largest one could ever imagine. It made me more confident and authoritative as a leader, and people trusted me to take them to greater heights. However, the most important lesson that I drew from the ordeal was that every challenge could be overcome if only the mind is positive and ready to accept change. Also, to address a problem in life, it is first important to accept and acknowledge that it is a hurdle in one's life.

Best Narrative Essay Topics

Are you ready to start writing? Let's look at examples of narrative essay topics for essay inspiration.

Topics for narrative essays for college students:

• Lesson learned in your first course.
• First day at the University.
• How do you make friends on campus?
• What course do I like the most?
• How I make notes in classes.
• The incident in college I will remember for my whole life.
• Why do I like working in a group?
• A day of life for college students. 
• How I prepare for finals.

Narrative essay topics for high school students:

• How I find my best friend at school.
• How my teacher changed my life.
• What makes me a good student.
• One day in my school I want to come back.
• Do we need social media?
• How can computer games make me a better student?
• My first trip abroad.
• My first pet.

Tips for Narrative Writing

Writing a narrative essay is not a piece of cake. But we collect some tips that can make your studying easier. 

1. Have a strong motive, as it will guide a whole work. 
2. Use colorful and vivid vocabulary.
3. Establish your point or thesis statements in the first or second sentence.
4. Be clear with the purpose of the essay.
5. Write in the first-person if it's possible. 
6. Use facts, not fantasies. It is not a fiction novel, and you can not write about imaginary events.
7. Use dialogues. Remember that it will make your story more visually attractive for readers. 
8. Use dynamic words. It always makes your text more readable. 
9. Do not be afraid of rewriting the story. It is also some sort of learning process. 
10. Do not skip essential points and information. You may think that it will make your writing clear, but it will not. 

And the best tip is to check the examples of narrative writing we prepared for you! Have fun!