A type of creative nonfiction, the narrative essay is a sub-division of creative nonfiction. This genre is also known as the personal essay. It allows writers to tell honest stories about their lives and help them make important life decisions.
Personal narrative essays can be thought of as short nonfiction stories. Although the writing methods used in the essay and short stories are different, they both produce similar results: powerful stories with a theme or moral that readers can understand. Also you need to choose a
narrative essay topic before writing.
If you've never written a narrative essay before you might be tempted to associate "essay" with high-school English class. Do you remember those 5-paragraph essays that we had to write on the subject of a book we didn't read and about a topic that didn’t interest us?
But don't be alarmed, that's not the type of essay we are referring to. French essayer means "to attempt". The word essay is derived from the French essayer. Writing a narrative essay is exactly that: an attempt to organize the world into language. It's a journey of finding meaning in the chaos of life.
Narrative Essay Example
Mary Oliver's piece "Flow", a great example of a narrative essay, is available for free in Google Books.
Mary Oliver describes the essay as a meditation on the fact that we live in paradise. Oliver's essay is both a love letter to nature and a plea to it to be loved fiercely.
Oliver's thoughts on the world are interwoven throughout the essay. She discusses everything from nature's beauty and the question, "What kind of life should I live?" These thoughts are profound but not the main thrust of the essay. These thoughts are primarily derived from observations and anecdotes: whale migration, string of fish at high tide, rescue of spiny fish from waterless shores, etc.
The most important thing about this essay and perhaps the most entertaining is Oliver's questions about living life. Yet, her stories show us how to live life with love, admiration, and tenderness for all life's amazing, mysterious, and seemingly random beauty.
This is the power and potential of the narrative essay. We can draw great conclusions by looking at the random facts in our lives.
What are the commonalities of most essays? Before we get into the narrative essays, let's first look at the basics of an essay.
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