The five steps to writing a narrative essay

Writing a narrative essay should be a rewarding experience, and following these five simple steps will help you get the most from your work.

During the research phase you will develop an understanding of your audience, and the topic area covered by your essay.

In order to write effectively it is important to consider who it is that you are writing for, and the context within which your writing will be read.

Consider the answers to these three simple questions:

Keeping the answers to these questions in mind whilst you write will guide your use of language, the level of technical detail that you need to include, and whether or not you can make any assumptions about the reader’s level of knowledge.

Before starting to draft your story, spend some time considering the topic that your essay will address:

As you consider your topic be sure to make good notes, so that you can keep track of the sources that you will use when you begin writing.

During the drafting phase you will build an outline of your essay.

Giving a narrative essay a solid overarching structure from the outset will make sure that you have a clear understanding of both what work there is still to do, as well as ensuring that you leave enough space for the different parts of your story.

Using an Outliner to organize your essay gives you a flexible structure within which to develop your ideas whilst you consider your topic, and provides you with a framework within which to construct your story as you write-up your essay’s individual sections.

A narrative essay starts with an introduction, followed by one or more sections that articulate the plot or your story, and ends with a conclusion that describes the story’s underlying message, and how this is supported by the plot.

We have provided a narrative essay outline template to help get you started, which gives you a basic structure around which to organize your research and writing.

During the revision phase you will develop your outline into a detailed narrative that is easy for your intended audience to read and understand.

Begin developing your essay’s narrative structure by ensuring that it has a strong introduction which captures the reader’s attention, provides an overview of the topic area covered, and sets out your story’s underlying message.

Each of the following sections of your essay should focus on one element of the story’s plot – an event, setting or character – and include your analysis its contribution to the wider story.

Finally, you should wrap up your essay with a strong conclusion that highlights your underlying message, and then outlines the main plot points that support this message. As part of your concluding statement you should challenge the reader to consider why your message was important, and how it might be applied to their own circumstances.

Rather than attempting to get each section right the first time through, you should iteratively revise your work, improving it a little more with each pass:

Approaching your writing in this way will give your ideas time to develop, and enable you to refine the way in which you are articulating those ideas within the context of the rest of your document.

During the editing phase you will finialize your work, ensuring that your use of language and style is consistent and correct.

Begin by reviewing your message, considering whether you have approached it in a balanced and structured way, and how your audience might critique what you have written in support of it.

Look for repetition and redundancy in your writing, and ensure that your sentences, paragraphs & sections are reduced to their simplest and shortest form.

Ensure that you have used a consistent voice (active or passive), tense (past, present or future), and writing style throughout your work.

Make sure you have included any citations to the work of others that you have referenced within you writing, and that any links that you have established to other parts of your own document remain valid.

Check your spelling, punctuation, and grammar, as well as your usage of lists, numbering, and categorization.

It is important to give yourself a break before editing your work – so that your thoughts have time to settle – ideally waiting until the following day.

During the publishing phase you will choose the most appropriate format for sharing your work, and ensure that its layout is correct.

Make sure that you understand what format your work should be submitted in – electronic submission, printed and bound, etc – and whether there are any layout or style restrictions e.g. font size or type.

Once you have selected the right format for your work, check that its layout is correct in that format. If it is to be printed on paper then make sure that you have time to check that it has printed correctly, and to fix any issues.

To use our narrative essay outline template simply sign up and create your first outline (it’s free!).

Five essay templates for a list of all of our essay outlines.