The narrative essay itself comes from your personality. It is based on your own experience, thoughts, perhaps, feelings and emotions, if you feel comfortable to share them with your reader. In this kind of essay, you simply tell a story that can be humorous, related to some points that interest you or have a certain importance for you. However, behind any kind of simplicity nearly always stands a huge portion of well-done work, especially preparatory.
As our life is so diverse, we receive plenty of experience daily. So, to write a strong paper, you should select only relevant information, organize it properly, and form your attitude towards the situation you tell your reader about. The outline will help you, in this case, at ease.
However, when you ignore this stage, you risk getting stuck in your thoughts, procrastinate, or leave your narrative essay raw. Even more – without the outline, it is even hard sometimes to understand what kind of content should be in your narrative essay to describe your topic or situation properly. So, realizing the proposed approach can significantly boost the quality of your narrative essay and make your writing more joyful.
Tips for drafting your outline effectively
Ideas
The first step is to choose the topic that moves first. Being interested in it for yourself is the shortest and easiest way to make your future reader interested also. Make your choice based on your personal experience you would like to share.
Afterward, describe the subject of your narrative essay in detail for yourself. Draw your attention to the main things you would like to address in your narrative essay:
- key points of the story or situation you want to tell;
- your feelings and emotions on this regard;
- your considerations;
- supporting examples.
At this stage, don’t be afraid to include any excessive information – you are simply forming a pool of ideas that will help you to select only things you exactly need. A separate paper will help you to save your thoughts for the next stage.
If necessary, take another paper and organize your thoughts more clearly – build some kind of your own tree of ideas. It should contain your main idea, related supplementary ideas, and some brief explanations of what you want to indicate near each of them. Keep this scheme nearby when organizing the structure of your future narrative essay.
Manner of writing
Your outline can also help to realize what kind of author you would like to appear. This is determined by your intention and the topic of your narrative essay. Nevertheless, there are some general trends to keep in mind:
- narrative essay is generally written from the first-person perspective. However, it is not desired to start nearly every sentence with “I”;
- it should be written in a genuine and logical manner;
- should be written in plain language and briefly;
- your narrative essay should clearly express your thoughts and statements you want to share.
Also, keep in mind certain requirements for formatting you need to follow.
Map your narrative essay
The most effective approach, in this case, is to start from preparing the body paragraphs of your narrative essay. The idea is simple – it is much easier to form the introduction and conclusion when you have pretty much formed the basic content of your essay. Ideas will come to your mind nearly automatically.
Before that, choose the main idea from your pool to form a thesis statement on its basis. It should reflect your opinion towards the subject of your narrative essay, be concise and powerful. The next step is to select a couple of supplementary ideas you have previously elaborated and devote to each of them one paragraph or two if the statement you want to characterize is quite broad.
Body paragraphs
In body paragraphs of your narrative essay, simply tell your story. Outline, in this case, will facilitate you to see the mainline of your story and tell it in a flowing manner. During the writing process, you will also be able to see any excessive or missing statements. Make any adjustments, if necessary, to improve further your roadmap and narrative essay, consequently.
An effective approach, in this case, is to start each body paragraph with some short introductory phrase/sentence or with your argument itself. The length of each body paragraph can vary depending on your statement. However, it is advisable to keep it brief and limit to 5-7 sentences.
Tell your future reader in your body paragraphs about different parts of your story and experience avoiding some general or boring phrases. Emphasize in your outline certain parts where you want to add more details.
If you provide arguments – strengthen such with any supporting pieces of evidence to make them more persuasive and interesting. You are free to add here details of your story, share your emotions and reflections on this regard.
Note that each following sentence should be in conjunction with the main point of your paragraph. Make sure your body paragraphs are related and united with transitions. You can simply put such a transition at the end of your body paragraph or at the beginning of the next one with reference to your previous paragraph. Feel free to experiment in this case, so your transitions could also help you to make your narrative essay flow and become more convenient for your reader.
Introduction
When your body paragraphs are ready, you can make your introduction easily. Now you have the overall picture of your content, so you could share this picture with your future reader briefly.
Keep in mind that the strong start with a hook is appropriate in this part more than anywhere in your narrative essay. It should be moving or captivating to make your future reader interested from the first lines and motivated to continue his/her reading. Your hook may include some interesting information (facts, figures) or even intrigue your reader a little bit with some of your non-standard statements.
Apart from making your future reader interested, the main purpose of your introduction is to explain your topic briefly. Avoiding any excessive details, simply tell your reader what he/she will find out in your narrative essay. Note that you should not explain directly why it is so important to get acquainted with your content. The best strategy, in this case, is to form your introduction in such an interesting manner that it will induce any person to continue his/her reading. This specific feature of a narrative essay should be taken into consideration.
And one more thing – your thesis statement, elaborated previously based on the man idea of your narrative essay, should be included wisely to your introduction also. Simply put it at the beginning as closer as it is possible and appropriate.
Conclusion
When you have the major part of your essay, you can simply move to your conclusion. Make it also strong and catchy by sharing some important findings for you, feelings, or even placing some call to action. This part of your narrative essay should contain a summary of your thesis statement and expressed arguments.
Take these benefits
A well-prepared outline can save plenty of your time and efforts. It enables you to make your own roadmap for the future narrative essay, brings clarity and space for elaborating new ideas. When practiced frequently, this approach can significantly enhance your writing skills. But the foremost is that preparing the outline will help you to express yourself more freely. This is of great importance when writing narrative essays. So, use this facilitation tool effectively, boost the quality of your narrative essay, and have a lot of inspiration.
