essay on story telling

The Ultimate Narrative Essay Guide for Beginners

A narrative essay tells a story in chronological order, with an introduction that introduces the characters and sets the scene. Then a series of events leads to a climax or turning point, and finally a resolution or reflection on the experience.

Speaking of which, are you in sixes and sevens about narrative essays? Don’t worry this ultimate expert guide will wipe out all your doubts. So let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Everything You Need to Know About Narrative Essay

What is a narrative essay.

When you go through a narrative essay definition, you would know that a narrative essay purpose is to tell a story. It’s all about sharing an experience or event and is different from other types of essays because it’s more focused on how the event made you feel or what you learned from it, rather than just presenting facts or an argument. Let’s explore more details on this interesting write-up and get to know how to write a narrative essay.

Elements of a Narrative Essay

Here’s a breakdown of the key elements of a narrative essay:

A narrative essay has a beginning, middle, and end. It builds up tension and excitement and then wraps things up in a neat package.

Real people, including the writer, often feature in personal narratives. Details of the characters and their thoughts, feelings, and actions can help readers to relate to the tale.

It’s really important to know when and where something happened so we can get a good idea of the context. Going into detail about what it looks like helps the reader to really feel like they’re part of the story.

Conflict or Challenge 

A story in a narrative essay usually involves some kind of conflict or challenge that moves the plot along. It could be something inside the character, like a personal battle, or something from outside, like an issue they have to face in the world.

Theme or Message

A narrative essay isn’t just about recounting an event – it’s about showing the impact it had on you and what you took away from it. It’s an opportunity to share your thoughts and feelings about the experience, and how it changed your outlook.

Emotional Impact

The author is trying to make the story they’re telling relatable, engaging, and memorable by using language and storytelling to evoke feelings in whoever’s reading it.

Narrative essays let writers have a blast telling stories about their own lives. It’s an opportunity to share insights and impart wisdom, or just have some fun with the reader. Descriptive language, sensory details, dialogue, and a great narrative voice are all essentials for making the story come alive.

The Purpose of a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is more than just a story – it’s a way to share a meaningful, engaging, and relatable experience with the reader. Includes:

Sharing Personal Experience

Narrative essays are a great way for writers to share their personal experiences, feelings, thoughts, and reflections. It’s an opportunity to connect with readers and make them feel something.

Entertainment and Engagement

The essay attempts to keep the reader interested by using descriptive language, storytelling elements, and a powerful voice. It attempts to pull them in and make them feel involved by creating suspense, mystery, or an emotional connection.

Conveying a Message or Insight

Narrative essays are more than just a story – they aim to teach you something. They usually have a moral lesson, a new understanding, or a realization about life that the author gained from the experience.

Building Empathy and Understanding

By telling their stories, people can give others insight into different perspectives, feelings, and situations. Sharing these tales can create compassion in the reader and help broaden their knowledge of different life experiences.

Inspiration and Motivation

Stories about personal struggles, successes, and transformations can be really encouraging to people who are going through similar situations. It can provide them with hope and guidance, and let them know that they’re not alone.

Reflecting on Life’s Significance

These essays usually make you think about the importance of certain moments in life or the impact of certain experiences. They make you look deep within yourself and ponder on the things you learned or how you changed because of those events.

Demonstrating Writing Skills

Coming up with a gripping narrative essay takes serious writing chops, like vivid descriptions, powerful language, timing, and organization. It’s an opportunity for writers to show off their story-telling abilities.

Preserving Personal History

Sometimes narrative essays are used to record experiences and special moments that have an emotional resonance. They can be used to preserve individual memories or for future generations to look back on.

Cultural and Societal Exploration

Personal stories can look at cultural or social aspects, giving us an insight into customs, opinions, or social interactions seen through someone’s own experience.

Format of a Narrative Essay

Narrative essays are quite flexible in terms of format, which allows the writer to tell a story in a creative and compelling way. Here’s a quick breakdown of the narrative essay format, along with some examples:

Introduction

Set the scene and introduce the story.

Engage the reader and establish the tone of the narrative.

Hook: Start with a captivating opening line to grab the reader’s attention. For instance:

Example:  “The scorching sun beat down on us as we trekked through the desert, our water supply dwindling.”

Background Information: Provide necessary context or background without giving away the entire story.

Example:  “It was the summer of 2015 when I embarked on a life-changing journey to…”

Thesis Statement or Narrative Purpose

Present the main idea or the central message of the essay.

Offer a glimpse of what the reader can expect from the narrative.

Thesis Statement: This isn’t as rigid as in other essays but can be a sentence summarizing the essence of the story.

Example:  “Little did I know, that seemingly ordinary hike would teach me invaluable lessons about resilience and friendship.”

Body Paragraphs

Present the sequence of events in chronological order.

Develop characters, setting, conflict, and resolution.

Story Progression : Describe events in the order they occurred, focusing on details that evoke emotions and create vivid imagery.

Example : Detail the trek through the desert, the challenges faced, interactions with fellow hikers, and the pivotal moments.

Character Development : Introduce characters and their roles in the story. Show their emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Example : Describe how each character reacted to the dwindling water supply and supported each other through adversity.

Dialogue and Interactions : Use dialogue to bring the story to life and reveal character personalities.

Example : “Sarah handed me her last bottle of water, saying, ‘We’re in this together.'”

Reach the peak of the story, the moment of highest tension or significance.

Turning Point: Highlight the most crucial moment or realization in the narrative.

Example:  “As the sun dipped below the horizon and hope seemed lost, a distant sound caught our attention—the rescue team’s helicopters.”

Provide closure to the story.

Reflect on the significance of the experience and its impact.

Reflection : Summarize the key lessons learned or insights gained from the experience.

Example : “That hike taught me the true meaning of resilience and the invaluable support of friendship in challenging times.”

Closing Thought : End with a memorable line that reinforces the narrative’s message or leaves a lasting impression.

Example : “As we boarded the helicopters, I knew this adventure would forever be etched in my heart.”

Example Summary:

Imagine a narrative about surviving a challenging hike through the desert, emphasizing the bonds formed and lessons learned. The narrative essay structure might look like starting with an engaging scene, narrating the hardships faced, showcasing the characters’ resilience, and culminating in a powerful realization about friendship and endurance.

Different Types of Narrative Essays

There are a bunch of different types of narrative essays – each one focuses on different elements of storytelling and has its own purpose. Here’s a breakdown of the narrative essay types and what they mean.

Personal Narrative

Description : Tells a personal story or experience from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Reflects on personal growth, lessons learned, or significant moments.

Example of Narrative Essay Types:

Topic : “The Day I Conquered My Fear of Public Speaking”

Focus: Details the experience, emotions, and eventual triumph over a fear of public speaking during a pivotal event.

Descriptive Narrative

Description : Emphasizes vivid details and sensory imagery.

Purpose : Creates a sensory experience, painting a vivid picture for the reader.

Topic : “A Walk Through the Enchanted Forest”

Focus : Paints a detailed picture of the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings experienced during a walk through a mystical forest.

Autobiographical Narrative

Description: Chronicles significant events or moments from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Provides insights into the writer’s life, experiences, and growth.

Topic: “Lessons from My Childhood: How My Grandmother Shaped Who I Am”

Focus: Explores pivotal moments and lessons learned from interactions with a significant family member.

Experiential Narrative

Description: Relays experiences beyond the writer’s personal life.

Purpose: Shares experiences, travels, or events from a broader perspective.

Topic: “Volunteering in a Remote Village: A Journey of Empathy”

Focus: Chronicles the writer’s volunteering experience, highlighting interactions with a community and personal growth.

Literary Narrative

Description: Incorporates literary elements like symbolism, allegory, or thematic explorations.

Purpose: Uses storytelling for deeper explorations of themes or concepts.

Topic: “The Symbolism of the Red Door: A Journey Through Change”

Focus: Uses a red door as a symbol, exploring its significance in the narrator’s life and the theme of transition.

Historical Narrative

Description: Recounts historical events or periods through a personal lens.

Purpose: Presents history through personal experiences or perspectives.

Topic: “A Grandfather’s Tales: Living Through the Great Depression”

Focus: Shares personal stories from a family member who lived through a historical era, offering insights into that period.

Digital or Multimedia Narrative

Description: Incorporates multimedia elements like images, videos, or audio to tell a story.

Purpose: Explores storytelling through various digital platforms or formats.

Topic: “A Travel Diary: Exploring Europe Through Vlogs”

Focus: Combines video clips, photos, and personal narration to document a travel experience.

How to Choose a Topic for Your Narrative Essay?

Selecting a compelling topic for your narrative essay is crucial as it sets the stage for your storytelling. Choosing a boring topic is one of the narrative essay mistakes to avoid . Here’s a detailed guide on how to choose the right topic:

Reflect on Personal Experiences

• Significant Moments:

Moments that had a profound impact on your life or shaped your perspective.

Example: A moment of triumph, overcoming a fear, a life-changing decision, or an unforgettable experience.

• Emotional Resonance:

Events that evoke strong emotions or feelings.

Example: Joy, fear, sadness, excitement, or moments of realization.

• Lessons Learned:

Experiences that taught you valuable lessons or brought about personal growth.

Example: Challenges that led to personal development, shifts in mindset, or newfound insights.

Explore Unique Perspectives

• Uncommon Experiences:

Unique or unconventional experiences that might captivate the reader’s interest.

Example: Unusual travels, interactions with different cultures, or uncommon hobbies.

• Different Points of View:

Stories from others’ perspectives that impacted you deeply.

Example: A family member’s story, a friend’s experience, or a historical event from a personal lens.

Focus on Specific Themes or Concepts

• Themes or Concepts of Interest:

Themes or ideas you want to explore through storytelling.

Example: Friendship, resilience, identity, cultural diversity, or personal transformation.

• Symbolism or Metaphor:

Using symbols or metaphors as the core of your narrative.

Example: Exploring the symbolism of an object or a place in relation to a broader theme.

Consider Your Audience and Purpose

• Relevance to Your Audience:

Topics that resonate with your audience’s interests or experiences.

Example: Choose a relatable theme or experience that your readers might connect with emotionally.

• Impact or Message:

What message or insight do you want to convey through your story?

Example: Choose a topic that aligns with the message or lesson you aim to impart to your readers.

Brainstorm and Evaluate Ideas

• Free Writing or Mind Mapping:

Process: Write down all potential ideas without filtering. Mind maps or free-writing exercises can help generate diverse ideas.

• Evaluate Feasibility:

The depth of the story, the availability of vivid details, and your personal connection to the topic.

Imagine you’re considering topics for a narrative essay. You reflect on your experiences and decide to explore the topic of “Overcoming Stage Fright: How a School Play Changed My Perspective.” This topic resonates because it involves a significant challenge you faced and the personal growth it brought about.

Narrative Essay Topics

50 easy narrative essay topics.

• Learning to Ride a Bike
• My First Day of School
• A Surprise Birthday Party
• The Day I Got Lost
• Visiting a Haunted House
• An Encounter with a Wild Animal
• My Favorite Childhood Toy
• The Best Vacation I Ever Had
• An Unforgettable Family Gathering
• Conquering a Fear of Heights
• A Special Gift I Received
• Moving to a New City
• The Most Memorable Meal
• Getting Caught in a Rainstorm
• An Act of Kindness I Witnessed
• The First Time I Cooked a Meal
• My Experience with a New Hobby
• The Day I Met My Best Friend
• A Hike in the Mountains
• Learning a New Language
• An Embarrassing Moment
• Dealing with a Bully
• My First Job Interview
• A Sporting Event I Attended
• The Scariest Dream I Had
• Helping a Stranger
• The Joy of Achieving a Goal
• A Road Trip Adventure
• Overcoming a Personal Challenge
• The Significance of a Family Tradition
• An Unusual Pet I Owned
• A Misunderstanding with a Friend
• Exploring an Abandoned Building
• My Favorite Book and Why
• The Impact of a Role Model
• A Cultural Celebration I Participated In
• A Valuable Lesson from a Teacher
• A Trip to the Zoo
• An Unplanned Adventure
• Volunteering Experience
• A Moment of Forgiveness
• A Decision I Regretted
• A Special Talent I Have
• The Importance of Family Traditions
• The Thrill of Performing on Stage
• A Moment of Sudden Inspiration
• The Meaning of Home
• Learning to Play a Musical Instrument
• A Childhood Memory at the Park
• Witnessing a Beautiful Sunset

Narrative Essay Topics for College Students

• Discovering a New Passion
• Overcoming Academic Challenges
• Navigating Cultural Differences
• Embracing Independence: Moving Away from Home
• Exploring Career Aspirations
• Coping with Stress in College
• The Impact of a Mentor in My Life
• Balancing Work and Studies
• Facing a Fear of Public Speaking
• Exploring a Semester Abroad
• The Evolution of My Study Habits
• Volunteering Experience That Changed My Perspective
• The Role of Technology in Education
• Finding Balance: Social Life vs. Academics
• Learning a New Skill Outside the Classroom
• Reflecting on Freshman Year Challenges
• The Joys and Struggles of Group Projects
• My Experience with Internship or Work Placement
• Challenges of Time Management in College
• Redefining Success Beyond Grades
• The Influence of Literature on My Thinking
• The Impact of Social Media on College Life
• Overcoming Procrastination
• Lessons from a Leadership Role
• Exploring Diversity on Campus
• Exploring Passion for Environmental Conservation
• An Eye-Opening Course That Changed My Perspective
• Living with Roommates: Challenges and Lessons
• The Significance of Extracurricular Activities
• The Influence of a Professor on My Academic Journey
• Discussing Mental Health in College
• The Evolution of My Career Goals
• Confronting Personal Biases Through Education
• The Experience of Attending a Conference or Symposium
• Challenges Faced by Non-Native English Speakers in College
• The Impact of Traveling During Breaks
• Exploring Identity: Cultural or Personal
• The Impact of Music or Art on My Life
• Addressing Diversity in the Classroom
• Exploring Entrepreneurial Ambitions
• My Experience with Research Projects
• Overcoming Impostor Syndrome in College
• The Importance of Networking in College
• Finding Resilience During Tough Times
• The Impact of Global Issues on Local Perspectives
• The Influence of Family Expectations on Education
• Lessons from a Part-Time Job
• Exploring the College Sports Culture
• The Role of Technology in Modern Education
• The Journey of Self-Discovery Through Education

Narrative Essay Comparison

Narrative essay vs. descriptive essay.

Here’s our first narrative essay comparison! While both narrative and descriptive essays focus on vividly portraying a subject or an event, they differ in their primary objectives and approaches. Now, let’s delve into the nuances of comparison on narrative essays.

Narrative Essay:

Storytelling: Focuses on narrating a personal experience or event.

Chronological Order: Follows a structured timeline of events to tell a story.

Message or Lesson: Often includes a central message, moral, or lesson learned from the experience.

Engagement: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling storyline and character development.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, using “I” and expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a plot with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Focuses on describing characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Conflict or Challenge: Usually involves a central conflict or challenge that drives the narrative forward.

Dialogue: Incorporates conversations to bring characters and their interactions to life.

Reflection: Concludes with reflection or insight gained from the experience.

Descriptive Essay:

Vivid Description: Aims to vividly depict a person, place, object, or event.

Imagery and Details: Focuses on sensory details to create a vivid image in the reader’s mind.

Emotion through Description: Uses descriptive language to evoke emotions and engage the reader’s senses.

Painting a Picture: Creates a sensory-rich description allowing the reader to visualize the subject.

Imagery and Sensory Details: Focuses on providing rich sensory descriptions, using vivid language and adjectives.

Point of Focus: Concentrates on describing a specific subject or scene in detail.

Spatial Organization: Often employs spatial organization to describe from one area or aspect to another.

Objective Observations: Typically avoids the use of personal opinions or emotions; instead, the focus remains on providing a detailed and objective description.

Comparison:

Focus: Narrative essays emphasize storytelling, while descriptive essays focus on vividly describing a subject or scene.

Perspective: Narrative essays are often written from a first-person perspective, while descriptive essays may use a more objective viewpoint.

Purpose: Narrative essays aim to convey a message or lesson through a story, while descriptive essays aim to paint a detailed picture for the reader without necessarily conveying a specific message.

Narrative Essay vs. Argumentative Essay

The narrative essay and the argumentative essay serve distinct purposes and employ different approaches:

Engagement and Emotion: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling story.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience or lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, sharing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a storyline with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Message or Lesson: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Argumentative Essay:

Persuasion and Argumentation: Aims to persuade the reader to adopt the writer’s viewpoint on a specific topic.

Logical Reasoning: Presents evidence, facts, and reasoning to support a particular argument or stance.

Debate and Counterarguments: Acknowledge opposing views and counter them with evidence and reasoning.

Thesis Statement: Includes a clear thesis statement that outlines the writer’s position on the topic.

Thesis and Evidence: Starts with a strong thesis statement and supports it with factual evidence, statistics, expert opinions, or logical reasoning.

Counterarguments: Addresses opposing viewpoints and provides rebuttals with evidence.

Logical Structure: Follows a logical structure with an introduction, body paragraphs presenting arguments and evidence, and a conclusion reaffirming the thesis.

Formal Language: Uses formal language and avoids personal anecdotes or emotional appeals.

Objective: Argumentative essays focus on presenting a logical argument supported by evidence, while narrative essays prioritize storytelling and personal reflection.

Purpose: Argumentative essays aim to persuade and convince the reader of a particular viewpoint, while narrative essays aim to engage, entertain, and share personal experiences.

Structure: Narrative essays follow a storytelling structure with character development and plot, while argumentative essays follow a more formal, structured approach with logical arguments and evidence.

In essence, while both essays involve writing and presenting information, the narrative essay focuses on sharing a personal experience, whereas the argumentative essay aims to persuade the audience by presenting a well-supported argument.

Narrative Essay vs. Personal Essay

While there can be an overlap between narrative and personal essays, they have distinctive characteristics:

Storytelling: Emphasizes recounting a specific experience or event in a structured narrative form.

Engagement through Story: Aims to engage the reader through a compelling story with characters, plot, and a central theme or message.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience and the lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s viewpoint, expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Focuses on developing a storyline with a clear beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Includes descriptions of characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Central Message: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Personal Essay:

Exploration of Ideas or Themes: Explores personal ideas, opinions, or reflections on a particular topic or subject.

Expression of Thoughts and Opinions: Expresses the writer’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives on a specific subject matter.

Reflection and Introspection: Often involves self-reflection and introspection on personal experiences, beliefs, or values.

Varied Structure and Content: Can encompass various forms, including memoirs, personal anecdotes, or reflections on life experiences.

Flexibility in Structure: Allows for diverse structures and forms based on the writer’s intent, which could be narrative-like or more reflective.

Theme-Centric Writing: Focuses on exploring a central theme or idea, with personal anecdotes or experiences supporting and illustrating the theme.

Expressive Language: Utilizes descriptive and expressive language to convey personal perspectives, emotions, and opinions.

Focus: Narrative essays primarily focus on storytelling through a structured narrative, while personal essays encompass a broader range of personal expression, which can include storytelling but isn’t limited to it.

Structure: Narrative essays have a more structured plot development with characters and a clear sequence of events, while personal essays might adopt various structures, focusing more on personal reflection, ideas, or themes.

Intent: While both involve personal experiences, narrative essays emphasize telling a story with a message or lesson learned, while personal essays aim to explore personal thoughts, feelings, or opinions on a broader range of topics or themes.

A narrative essay is more than just telling a story. It’s also meant to engage the reader, get them thinking, and leave a lasting impact. Whether it’s to amuse, motivate, teach, or reflect, these essays are a great way to communicate with your audience. This interesting narrative essay guide was all about letting you understand the narrative essay, its importance, and how can you write one.

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When writers set down the facts of their lives into a compelling story , they’re writing a narrative essay. Personal narrative essays explore the events of the writer’s own life, and by crafting a nonfiction piece that resonates as storytelling, the essayist can uncover deeper truths in the world.

Narrative essays weave the author’s factual lived experiences into a compelling story.

So, what is a narrative essay? Whether you’re writing for college applications or literary journals , this article separates fact from fiction. We’ll look at how to write a narrative essay through a step-by-step process, including a look at narrative essay topics and outlines. We’ll also analyze some successful narrative essay examples.

Learn how to tell your story, your way. Let’s dive into this exciting genre!

What is a Narrative Essay?

The narrative essay is a branch of creative nonfiction . Also known as a personal essay, writers of this genre are tasked with telling honest stories about their lived experiences and, as a result, arriving at certain realizations about life.

Think of personal narrative essays as nonfiction short stories . While the essay and the short story rely on different writing techniques, they arrive at similar outcomes: a powerful story with an idea, theme , or moral that the reader can interpret for themselves.

Now, if you haven’t written a narrative essay before, you might associate the word “essay” with high school English class. Remember those tedious 5-paragraph essays we had to write, on the topic of some book we barely read, about subject matter that didn’t interest us?

Don’t worry—that’s not the kind of essay we’re talking about. The word essay comes from the French essayer , which means “to try.” That’s exactly what writing a narrative essay is: an attempt at organizing the real world into language—a journey of making meaning from the chaos of life.

Narrative essays work to surface meaning from lived experience.

Narrative Essay Example

A great narrative essay example is the piece “Flow” by Mary Oliver, which you can read for free in Google Books .

The essay dwells on, as Mary Oliver puts it, the fact that “we live in paradise.” At once both an ode to nature and an urge to love it fiercely, Oliver explores our place in the endless beauty of the world.

Throughout the essay, Oliver weaves in her thoughts about the world, from nature’s noble beauty to the question “What is the life I should live?” Yet these thoughts, however profound, are not the bulk of the essay. Rather, she arrives at these thoughts via anecdotes and observations: the migration of whales, the strings of fish at high tide, the inventive rescue of a spiny fish from the waterless shore, etc.

What is most profound about this essay, and perhaps most amusing, is that it ends with Oliver’s questions about how to live life. And yet, the stories she tells show us exactly how to live life: with care for the world; with admiration; with tenderness towards all of life and its superb, mysterious, seemingly-random beauty.

Such is the power of the narrative essay. By examining the random facts of our lives, we can come to great conclusions.

What do most essays have in common? Let’s look at the fundamentals of the essay, before diving into more narrative essay examples.

Narrative Essay Definition: 5 Fundamentals

The personal narrative essay has a lot of room for experimentation. We’ll dive into those opportunities in a bit, but no matter the form, most essays share these five fundamentals.

• Personal experience
• Meaning from chaos
• The use of literary devices

Let’s explore these fundamentals in depth.

All narrative essays have a thesis statement. However, this isn’t the formulaic thesis statement you had to write in school: you don’t need to map out your argument with painstaking specificity, you need merely to tell the reader what you’re writing about.

Take the aforementioned essay by Mary Oliver. Her thesis is this: “How can we not know that, already, we live in paradise?”

It’s a simple yet provocative statement. By posing her thesis as a question, she challenges us to consider why we might not treat this earth as paradise. She then delves into her own understanding of this paradise, providing relevant stories and insights as to how the earth should be treated.

Now, be careful with abstract statements like this. Mary Oliver is a master of language, so she’s capable of creating a thesis statement out of an abstract idea and building a beautiful essay. But concrete theses are also welcome: you should compel the reader forward with the central argument of your work, without confusing them or leading them astray.

You should compel the reader forward with the central argument of your work, without confusing them or leading them astray

2. Personal Experience

The personal narrative essay is, shockingly, about personal experience. But how do writers distill their experiences into meaningful stories?

There are a few techniques writers have at their disposal. Perhaps the most common of these techniques is called braiding . Rather than focusing on one continuous story, the writer can “braid” different stories, weaving in and out of different narratives and finding common threads between them. Often, the subject matter of the essay will require more than one anecdote as evidence, and braiding helps the author uphold their thesis while showing instead of telling .

Another important consideration is how you tell your story . Essayists should consider the same techniques that fiction writers use. Give ample consideration to your essay’s setting , word choice , point of view , and dramatic structure . The narrative essay is, after all, a narrative, so tell your story how it deserves to be told.

3. Meaning from Chaos

Life, I think we can agree, is chaotic. While we can trace the events of our lives through cause and effect, A leads to B leads to C, the truth is that so much of our lives are shaped through circumstances beyond our control.

The narrative essay is a way to reclaim some of that control. By distilling the facts of our lives into meaningful narratives, we can uncover deeper truths that we didn’t realize existed.

By distilling the facts of our lives into meaningful narratives, we can uncover deeper truths that we didn’t realize existed.

Consider the essay “ Only Daughter ” by Sandra Cisneros. It’s a brief read, but it covers a lot of different events: a lonesome childhood, countless moves, university education, and the trials and tribulations of a successful writing career.

Coupled with Cisneros’ musings on culture and gender roles, there’s a lot of life to distill in these three pages. Yet Cisneros does so masterfully. By organizing these life events around her thesis statement of being an only daughter, Cisneros finds meaning in the many disparate events she describes.

As you go about writing a narrative essay, you will eventually encounter moments of insight . Insight describes those “aha!” moments in the work—places in which you come to deeper realizations about your life, the lives of others, and the world at large.

Now, insight doesn’t need to be some massive, culture-transforming realization. Many moments of insight are found in small interactions and quiet moments.

For example, In the above essay by Sandra Cisneros, her moments of insight come from connecting her upbringing to her struggle as an only daughter. While her childhood was often lonely and disappointing, she realizes in hindsight that she’s lucky for that upbringing: it helped nurture her spirit as a writer, and it helped her pursue a career in writing. These moments of gratitude work as insight, allowing her to appreciate what once seemed like a burden.

When we reach the end of the essay, and Cisneros describes how she felt when her father read one of her stories, we see what this gratitude is building towards: love and acceptance for the life she chose.

5. Literary Devices

The personal narrative essay, as well as all forms of creative writing, uses its fair share of literary devices . These devices don’t need to be complex: you don’t need a sprawling extended metaphor or an intricate set of juxtapositions to make your essay compelling.

However, the occasional symbol or metaphor will certainly aid your story. In Mary Oliver’s essay “Flow,” the author uses literary devices to describe the magnificence of the ocean, calling it a “cauldron of changing greens and blues” and “the great palace of the earth.” These descriptions reinforce the deep beauty of the earth.

In Sandra Cisneros’ essay “Only Daughter,” the author employs different symbols to represent her father’s masculinity and sense of gender roles. At one point, she lists the few things he reads—sports journals, slasher magazines, and picture paperbacks, often depicting scenes of violence against women. These symbols represent the divide between her father’s gendered thinking and her own literary instincts.

More Narrative Essay Examples

Let’s take a look at a few more narrative essay examples. We’ll dissect each essay based on the five fundamentals listed above.

Narrative Essay Example: “Letting Go” by David Sedaris

Read “Letting Go” here in The New Yorker .

Sedaris’ essay dwells on the culture of cigarette smoking—how it starts, the world it builds, and the difficulties in quitting. Let’s analyze how this narrative essay example uses the five fundamentals of essay writing.

• Thesis: There isn’t an explicitly defined thesis, which is common for essays that are meant to be humorous or entertaining. However, this sentence is a plausible thesis statement: “It wasn’t the smoke but the smell of it that bothered me. In later years, I didn’t care so much, but at the time I found it depressing: the scent of neglect.”
• Personal Experience: Sedaris moves between many different anecdotes about smoking, from his family’s addiction to cigarettes to his own dependence. We learn about his moving around for cheaper smokes, his family’s struggle to quit, and the last cigarette he smoked in the Charles de Gaulle airport.
• Meaning from Chaos: Sedaris ties many disparate events together. We learn about his childhood and his smoking years, but these are interwoven with anecdotes about his family and friends. What emerges is a narrative about the allure of smoking.
• Insight: Two parts of this essay are especially poignant. One, when Sedaris describes his mother’s realization that smoking isn’t sophisticated, and soon quits her habit entirely. Two, when Sedaris is given the diseased lung of a chain smoker, and instead of thinking about his own lungs, he’s simply surprised at how heavy the lung is.
• Literary Devices: Throughout the essay, Sedaris demonstrates how the cigarette symbolizes neglect: neglect of one’s body, one’s space, and one’s self-presentation.

 Narrative Essay Example: “My Mother’s Tongue” by Zavi Kang Engles

Read “My Mother’s Tongue” here in The Rumpus .

Engles’ essay examines the dysphoria of growing up between two vastly different cultures and languages. By asserting the close bond between Korean language and culture, Engles explores the absurdities of growing up as a child of Korean immigrants. Let’s analyze how this narrative essay example uses the five fundamentals of essay writing.

• Thesis: Engles’ essay often comes back to her relationship with the Korean language, especially as it relates to other Korean speakers. This relationship is best highlighted when she writes “I glowed with [my mother’s] love, basked in the warm security of what I thought was a language between us. Perhaps this is why strangers asked for our photos, in an attempt to capture a secret world between two people.”This “secret world” forms the crux of her essay, charting not only how Korean-Americans might exist in relation to one another, but also how Engles’ language is strongly tied to her identity and homeland.
• Personal Experience: Engles writes about her childhood attachment to both English and Korean, her adolescent fallout with the Korean language, her experiences as “not American enough” in the United States and “not Korean enough” in Korea, and her experiences mourning in a Korean hospital.
• Meaning from Chaos: In addition to the above events, Engles ties in research about language and identity (also known as code switching ). Through language and identity, the essay charts the two different cultures that the author stands between, highlighting the dissonance between Western individualism and an Eastern sense of belonging.
• Insight: There are many examples of insight throughout this essay as the author explores how out of place she feels, torn between two countries. An especially poignant example comes from Engles’ experience in a Korean hospital, where she writes “I didn’t know how to mourn in this country.”
• Literary Devices: The essay frequently juxtaposes the languages and cultures of Korea and the United States. Additionally, the English language comes to symbolize Western individualism, while the Korean language comes to symbolize Eastern collectivism.

Narrative Essay Example: 3 Rules for Middle-Age Happiness by Deborah Copaken

Read “3 Rules for Middle-Age Happiness” here in The Atlantic .

Copaken’s essay explores her relationship to Nora Ephron, the screenwriter for When Harry Met Sally . Let’s analyze how this narrative essay example uses the five fundamentals of essay writing.

• Thesis: This essay hands us the thesis statement in its subtitle: “Gather friends and feed them, laugh in the face of calamity, and cut out all the things—people, jobs, body parts—that no longer serve you.”
• Personal Experience: Copaken weaves two different threads through this essay. One thread is her personal life, including a failing marriage, medical issues, and her attempts at building a happy family. The other is Copaken’s personal relationship to Ephron, whose advice coincides with many of the essay’s insights.
• Meaning from Chaos: This essay organizes its events chronologically. However, the main sense of organization is found in the title: many of the essayist’s problems can be perceived as middle-aged crises (family trouble, divorce, death of loved ones), but the solutions to those crises are simpler than one might realize.
• Insight: In writing this essay, Copaken explores her relationship to Ephron, as well as Copaken’s own relationship to her children. She ties these experiences together at the end, when she writes “The transmission of woes is a one-way street, from child to mother. A good mother doesn’t burden her children with her pain. She waits until it becomes so heavy, it either breaks her or kills her, whichever comes first.”
• Literary Devices: The literary devices in this article explore the author’s relationship to womanhood. She wonders if having a hysterectomy will make her “like less of a woman.” Also important is the fact that, when the author has her hysterectomy, her daughter has her first period. Copaken uses this to symbolize the passing of womanhood from mother to daughter, which helps bring her to the above insight.

How to Write a Narrative Essay in 5 Steps

No matter the length or subject matter, writing a narrative essay is as easy as these five steps.

1. Generating Narrative Essay Ideas

If you’re not sure what to write about, you’ll want to generate some narrative essay ideas. One way to do this is to look for writing prompts online: Reedsy adds new prompts to their site every week, and we also post writing prompts every Wednesday to our Facebook group .

Taking a step back, it helps to simply think about formative moments in your life. You might a great idea from answering one of these questions:

• When did something alter my worldview, personal philosophy, or political beliefs?
• Who has given me great advice, or helped me lead a better life?
• What moment of adversity did I overcome and grow stronger from?
• What is something that I believe to be very important, that I want other people to value as well?
• What life event of mine do I not yet fully understand?
• What is something I am constantly striving for?
• What is something I’ve taken for granted, but am now grateful for?

Finally, you might be interested in the advice at our article How to Come Up with Story Ideas . The article focuses on fiction writers, but essayists can certainly benefit from these tips as well.

2. Drafting a Narrative Essay Outline

Once you have an idea, you’ll want to flesh it out in a narrative essay outline.

Your outline can be as simple or as complex as you’d like, and it all depends on how long you intend your essay to be. A simple outline can include the following:

• Introduction—usually a relevant anecdote that excites or entices the reader.
• Event 1: What story will I use to uphold my argument?
• Analysis 1: How does this event serve as evidence for my thesis?
• Conclusion: How can I tie these events together? What do they reaffirm about my thesis? And what advice can I then impart on the reader, if any?

One thing that’s missing from this outline is insight. That’s because insight is often unplanned: you realize it as you write it, and the best insight comes naturally to the writer. However, if you already know the insight you plan on sharing, it will fit best within the analysis for your essay, and/or in the essay’s conclusion.

Insight is often unplanned: you realize it as you write it, and the best insight comes naturally to the writer.

Another thing that’s missing from this is research. If you plan on intertwining your essay with research (which many essayists should do!), consider adding that research as its own bullet point under each heading.

For a different, more fiction-oriented approach to outlining, check out our article How to Write a Story Outline .

3. Starting with a Story

Now, let’s tackle the hardest question: how to start a narrative essay?

Most narrative essays begin with a relevant story. You want to draw the reader in right away, offering something that surprises or interests them. And, since the essay is about you and your lived experiences, it makes sense to start your essay with a relevant anecdote.

Think about a story that’s relevant to your thesis, and experiment with ways to tell this story. You can start with a surprising bit of dialogue , an unusual situation you found yourself in, or a beautiful setting. You can also lead your essay with research or advice, but be sure to tie that in with an anecdote quickly, or else your reader might not know where your essay is going.

For examples of this, take a look at any of the narrative essay examples we’ve used in this article.

Theoretically, your thesis statement can go anywhere in the essay. You may have noticed in the previous examples that the thesis statement isn’t always explicit or immediate: sometimes it shows up towards the center of the essay, and sometimes it’s more implied than stated directly.

You can experiment with the placement of your thesis, but if you place your thesis later in the essay, make sure that everything before the thesis is intriguing to the reader. If the reader feels like the essay is directionless or boring, they won’t have a reason to reach your thesis, nor will they understand the argument you’re making.

4. Getting to the Core Truth

With an introduction and a thesis underway, continue writing about your experiences, arguments, and research. Be sure to follow the structure you’ve sketched in your outline, but feel free to deviate from this outline if something more natural occurs to you.

Along the way, you will end up explaining why your experiences matter to the reader. Here is where you can start generating insight. Insight can take the form of many things, but the focus is always to reach a core truth.

Insight might take the following forms:

• Realizations from connecting the different events in your life.
• Advice based on your lived mistakes and experiences.
• Moments where you change your ideas or personal philosophy.
• Richer understandings about life, love, a higher power, the universe, etc.

5. Relentless Editing

With a first draft of your narrative essay written, you can make your essay sparkle in the editing process.

Remember, a first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to exist.

Remember, a first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to exist. Here are some things to focus on in the editing process:

• Clarity: Does every argument make sense? Do my ideas flow logically? Are my stories clear and easy to follow?
• Structure: Does the procession of ideas make sense? Does everything uphold my thesis? Do my arguments benefit from the way they’re laid out in this essay?
• Style: Do the words flow when I read them? Do I have a good mix of long and short sentences? Have I omitted any needless words ?
• Literary Devices: Do I use devices like similes, metaphors, symbols, or juxtaposition? Do these devices help illustrate my ideas?
• Mechanics: Is every word spelled properly? Do I use the right punctuation? If I’m submitting this essay somewhere, does it follow the formatting guidelines?

Your essay can undergo any number of revisions before it’s ready. Above all, make sure that your narrative essay is easy to follow, every word you use matters, and that you come to a deeper understanding about your own life.

Above all, make sure that your narrative essay is easy to follow, every word you use matters, and that you come to a deeper understanding about your own life.

Next Steps for Narrative Essayists

When you have a completed essay, what’s next? You might be interested in submitting to some literary journals . Here’s 24 literary journals you can submit to—we hope you find a great home for your writing!

If you’re looking for additional feedback on your work, feel free to join our Facebook group . You can also take a look at our upcoming nonfiction courses , where you’ll learn the fundamentals of essay writing and make your story even more compelling.

Writing a narrative essay isn’t easy, but you’ll find that the practice can be very rewarding. You’ll learn about your lived experiences, come to deeper conclusions about your personal philosophies, and perhaps even challenge the way you approach life. So find some paper, choose a topic, and get writing—the world is waiting for your story!

Sean Glatch

Thanks for a superbly efficient and informative article…

We’re glad it was helpful, Mary!

Very helpful,, Thanks!!!

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Crafting Compelling Narrative Essays: Storytelling Techniques for Students

Narrative essays offer a unique platform for students to convey their stories, experiences, and viewpoints. Unlike other forms of academic writing that demand strict adherence to factual information and formal structure, narrative essays provide a creative avenue for personal expression. They allow writers to connect with their readers through the art of storytelling, bringing to life their experiences, observations, and insights. This article aims to guide students in harnessing the power of storytelling to create compelling narrative essays. By mastering certain storytelling techniques, students can transform their essays from mere collections of events to captivating stories that resonate with their audience.

Understanding Narrative Essays

A narrative essay is essentially a story told from a personal perspective. It involves characters, a setting, a plot, and often a moral or conclusion drawn from the events narrated. Unlike expository or argumentative essays, narrative essays typically focus on personal experiences and are less rigid in structure and style. This freedom allows for greater creativity and expression, making them a favorite among students and a common assignment in academic settings.

The essence of a narrative essay lies in its storytelling aspect. It’s not just about presenting facts but about weaving these facts into a coherent and engaging story. The challenge for students is to maintain the balance between being informative and creative, which is where storytelling techniques play a crucial role. A narrative essay should not only inform the reader but also connect with them on an emotional level. This connection is what makes narrative essays stand out and is often what students aim to achieve when they seek help from services like Writepaper , which guides them in crafting impactful narratives.

Storytelling Elements in Narrative Essays

Effective storytelling in narrative essays revolves around several key elements:

1. Character. Every narrative essay needs a protagonist, often the writer themselves. Developing a well-rounded character with relatable traits and emotions is essential for creating a connection with the reader. 2. Setting. The backdrop of the story sets the tone and context. Whether it’s a physical location, a historical period, or a cultural background, the setting can significantly influence the mood of the essay. 3. Plot. This is the sequence of events in the essay. A well-structured plot with a clear beginning, middle, and end helps keep the reader engaged. Including a climax or a turning point makes the narrative more compelling. 4. Conflict. The challenges or problems faced by the characters are crucial in creating suspense and interest. Conflict can be external (against other characters or forces) or internal (within the character’s mind). 5. Resolution. How the conflict is resolved forms the crux of the narrative. The resolution brings closure to the story and often carries the underlying message or moral of the essay. Each of these elements contributes to the overall effectiveness of the narrative essay, making the story engaging and memorable for the reader.

Developing a Strong Narrative Voice

The narrative voice is the perspective through which the story is told, and it plays a crucial role in how the story is received by the reader. A strong, distinctive narrative voice can make an essay stand out. To develop this voice, students should consider the following:

1. Choose the Right Perspective. First-person narratives create intimacy, while third-person narratives offer more flexibility in describing events and characters. 2. Be Authentic. The voice should reflect the writer’s personality and experiences. An authentic voice resonates more with readers. 3. Consider Tone and Style. The tone should match the content of the essay. A serious story might require a formal tone, while a humorous one can be more casual and conversational. Developing a unique narrative voice takes practice, but it significantly impacts the essay’s tone and the reader’s engagement.

Creating Vivid Descriptions

Descriptive language is a powerful tool in narrative essays, enabling writers to create vivid imagery and engage the reader’s senses. Here are some techniques for crafting vivid descriptions:

• Use Sensory Details. Describe what is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched to paint a clear picture in the reader’s mind. • Show, Don’t Tell. Instead of stating facts, show them through descriptions and actions. For example, instead of saying, “It was a stormy night,” describe the howling wind and torrential rain. • Be Specific. General descriptions can be dull. Specific details add depth and authenticity to the narrative. Balancing descriptive writing with the narrative’s pace is key. Overly detailed descriptions can slow down the story, while too few can leave it feeling flat and unengaging.

Building Emotional Connection

An emotional connection with the reader is what elevates a narrative essay from good to great. This connection is achieved when the reader feels invested in the story and can empathize with the characters and their experiences.

Here are strategies to build this connection:

• Use Relatable Experiences. Choose topics or situations that are likely to resonate with your audience. Sharing common human experiences, such as triumphs and failures, can evoke a sense of empathy. • Express Emotions. Clearly expressing the emotions experienced by the characters, especially the narrator, helps readers connect on an emotional level. Show how the events affected the characters emotionally, not just physically. • Create Tension and Release. Building tension, be it through conflict, challenges, or uncertainty, and then providing a release keeps readers engaged and creates an emotional payoff. By focusing on these elements, students can make their narratives more impactful and emotionally engaging, fostering a deeper connection with their readers.

Structuring Your Narrative Essay

A well-structured narrative essay helps maintain clarity and ensures that the story flows logically. The structure typically involves:

1. Introduction. Set the scene and introduce the characters and the premise. Begin with a hook to capture the reader’s attention. 2. Body. This is where the plot unfolds. Describe the events in a logical sequence, and include the conflict and build-up to the climax. 3. Conclusion. Offer a resolution to the conflict and reflect on the story’s significance. End with a closing statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. Good structure is essential for guiding the reader through the story without confusion, keeping them engaged from start to finish.

Editing and Refining Your Essay

Editing and refining are crucial stages in crafting a compelling narrative essay. This process involves:

• Reviewing Content. Ensure that all the elements of a good story are present and effectively conveyed. Check for clarity in the narrative and consistency in the characters and plot. • Proofreading. Pay attention to grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. These can distract from the story and affect the essay’s overall quality. • Seeking Feedback. Getting feedback from peers, teachers, or a mentor can provide new insights and help identify areas that need improvement. Editing and refining can transform a good narrative essay into an excellent one, making this stage as important as the initial writing process.

Final Thoughts

Crafting a compelling narrative essay involves more than just recounting events; it requires skillful storytelling, emotional engagement, clear structure, and careful editing. By employing these techniques, students can elevate their narrative essays, making them not just assignments to be completed but stories to be cherished and remembered. Just as one might turn to the best paper writing service for guidance in academic writing, mastering the art of narrative essay writing requires practice, feedback, and a willingness to learn and grow as a storyteller.

In conclusion, narrative essays offer a unique opportunity for students to express themselves creatively and connect with their readers. By utilizing storytelling techniques effectively, students can create essays that are not only academically successful but also personally fulfilling and engaging for their audience.

On How to Tell a Great Story Essay

Introduction.

Storytelling is a means by which one can convey events using words, images or by means of sound. This is done through making the story more appealing to the audience. Storytelling has been an activity practiced by all diverse cultures all over the world. Each culture has its own way of telling its own stories with different objectives.

One, stories are used for educational purposes. Secondly, stories are used for entertainment purposes. Lastly, stories are a means of preserving cultural beliefs of a community, and they help in instilling morality to the society. In telling a story, one has to consider the plot of a story, characters depicted and the storyline narrative point (Hansen 1).

Demonstrate insight and creativity when choosing the book to be told

When choosing a storybook, the storyteller has to consider the vocabularies in the book and the words used should be motivational to the hearers in order to get their interest to listen. The book should stimulate imagination in that it should be richly creative. The stories should be meaningful and be of moral encouragement to the hearers. Another insight in choosing a book is to consider one with series parts since it encourages one to follow a character in its adventurers (Hansen 1).

Provide a short description of the book and the appropriate age of the audience

The description below will revolve around a story called “The Little Prince”. The little prince is a story about the life of a prince who was alone and lived on a tiny planet. He had ownership of two volcanoes and a flower. The little prince had so much pride in him that he had to travel to several planets. On his travels, he came to earth. When he came to earth, he met a fox who taught him the secrets of the most valuable things in life. This book is suited for young children (De Saint 1).

Describe in detail the planning and rehearsal needed to tell the story

Telling a compelling story involves well-planned steps. First, the storyteller has to know the relevance of his/her story to the audience. The story should be easy to relate to and should have broad ideas. The storyteller would draft the story if it were the first time for its presentation. The lesson of the story should be appropriate to the context of the whole story.

A talented storyteller should engage the hearers of the story and be able to engage their senses in that they can visualize the story. The responses from the audience make the storyteller are aware when his/her story is appealing or uninteresting. Lastly, the delivery of a story is of importance since it makes the audiences enthusiastic about it (Hansen 1).

Demonstrate an understanding of effective storytelling strategies

In telling a compelling story, one has to take into consideration certain aspects like, take into consideration the choice of book. Secondly, the storyteller should take his/her time to get to know the story and its context. This will make sure that the story is not discriminative or not offensive to any religion, culture or belief. Thirdly, the storyteller needs to have read the book well ahead before since it gives a better concept on how to tell the story in an effective way.

Another way to tell a story is by use of expressions, a storyteller can use facial expressions to depict how the plot of the story flows and because it makes the hearers feel the story. Lastly, it is an acceptable practice to change voices depending on the character since it gives life to characters (Hansen 1).

Provide a detailed description and analysis of the actual storytelling event, including concerns or lessons learned

The most valuable thing while telling a story is engaging the audiences all through the process. The context of the story should be relevant to the type of audience that who are hearers of the story. In telling a story, we learn that the right choice of the story is valuable to the success of the story. Most importantly, storytellers should give more educative stories since they have a great impact in the lives of the listeners. (Hansen 1).

Storytelling is an event that has been available for decades and remains to be valuable to the society. Different cultures use stories for different reasons since the cultures play a vital role for the storyteller to know the purpose of his/her story. Stories told about a community, significantly affects its morality in the way the people conduct their daily business and how they relate to others (De Saint 1).

Works cited

De Saint, Antoine. “The Little Prince”. Sparknotes. 2011. Web.

Hansen, Heather. “Story-Telling Basics – 7 Powerful Steps to Telling Great Stories!” Articlesbase. 2007. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, May 3). On How to Tell a Great Story. https://ivypanda.com/essays/storytelling-concepts/

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1. IvyPanda . "On How to Tell a Great Story." May 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/storytelling-concepts/.

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How to write a narrative essay [Updated 2023]

A narrative essay is an opportunity to flex your creative muscles and craft a compelling story. In this blog post, we define what a narrative essay is and provide strategies and examples for writing one.

What is a narrative essay?

Similarly to a descriptive essay or a reflective essay, a narrative essay asks you to tell a story, rather than make an argument and present evidence. Most narrative essays describe a real, personal experience from your own life (for example, the story of your first big success).

Alternately, your narrative essay might focus on an imagined experience (for example, how your life would be if you had been born into different circumstances). While you don’t need to present a thesis statement or scholarly evidence, a narrative essay still needs to be well-structured and clearly organized so that the reader can follow your story.

When you might be asked to write a narrative essay

Although less popular than argumentative essays or expository essays, narrative essays are relatively common in high school and college writing classes.

The same techniques that you would use to write a college essay as part of a college or scholarship application are applicable to narrative essays, as well. In fact, the Common App that many students use to apply to multiple colleges asks you to submit a narrative essay.

How to choose a topic for a narrative essay

When you are asked to write a narrative essay, a topic may be assigned to you or you may be able to choose your own. With an assigned topic, the prompt will likely fall into one of two categories: specific or open-ended.

Examples of specific prompts:

• Write about the last vacation you took.
• Write about your final year of middle school.

Examples of open-ended prompts:

• Write about a time when you felt all hope was lost.
• Write about a brief, seemingly insignificant event that ended up having a big impact on your life.

A narrative essay tells a story and all good stories are centered on a conflict of some sort. Experiences with unexpected obstacles, twists, or turns make for much more compelling essays and reveal more about your character and views on life.

If you’re writing a narrative essay as part of an admissions application, remember that the people reviewing your essay will be looking at it to gain a sense of not just your writing ability, but who you are as a person.

In these cases, it’s wise to choose a topic and experience from your life that demonstrates the qualities that the prompt is looking for, such as resilience, perseverance, the ability to stay calm under pressure, etc.

It’s also important to remember that your choice of topic is just a starting point. Many students find that they arrive at new ideas and insights as they write their first draft, so the final form of your essay may have a different focus than the one you started with.

How to outline and format a narrative essay

Even though you’re not advancing an argument or proving a point of view, a narrative essay still needs to have a coherent structure. Your reader has to be able to follow you as you tell the story and to figure out the larger point that you’re making.

You’ll be evaluated on is your handling of the topic and how you structure your essay. Even though a narrative essay doesn’t use the same structure as other essay types, you should still sketch out a loose outline so you can tell your story in a clear and compelling way.

To outline a narrative essay, you’ll want to determine:

• how your story will start
• what points or specifics that you want to cover
• how your story will end
• what pace and tone you will use

In the vast majority of cases, a narrative essay should be written in the first-person, using “I.” Also, most narrative essays will follow typical formatting guidelines, so you should choose a readable font like Times New Roman in size 11 or 12. Double-space your paragraphs and use 1” margins.

To get your creative wheels turning, consider how your story compares to archetypes and famous historical and literary figures both past and present. Weave these comparisons into your essay to improve the quality of your writing and connect your personal experience to a larger context.

How to write a narrative essay

Writing a narrative essay can sometimes be a challenge for students who typically write argumentative essays or research papers in a formal, objective style. To give you a better sense of how you can write a narrative essay, here is a short example of an essay in response to the prompt, “Write about an experience that challenged your view of yourself.”

Narrative essay example

Even as a child, I always had what people might call a reserved personality. It was sometimes framed as a positive (“Sarah is a good listener”) and at other times it was put in less-than-admiring terms (“Sarah is withdrawn and not very talkative”). It was the latter kind of comments that caused me to see my introverted nature as a drawback and as something I should work to eliminate. That is, until I joined my high school’s student council.

The first paragraph, or introduction, sets up the context, establishing the situation and introducing the meaningful event upon which the essay will focus.

The other four students making up the council were very outspoken and enthusiastic. I enjoyed being around them, and I often agreed with their ideas. However, when it came to overhauling our school’s recycling plan, we butted heads. When I spoke up and offered a different point of view, one of my fellow student council members launched into a speech, advocating for her point of view. As her voice filled the room, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I wondered if I should try to match her tone, volume, and assertiveness as a way to be heard. But I just couldn’t do it—it’s not my way, and it never has been. For a fleeting moment, I felt defeated. But then, something in me shifted.

In this paragraph, the writer goes into greater depth about how her existing thinking brought her to this point.

I reminded myself that my view was valid and deserved to be heard. So I waited. I let my fellow council member speak her piece and when she was finished, I deliberately waited a few moments before calmly stating my case. I chose my words well, and I spoke them succinctly. Just because I’m not a big talker doesn’t mean I’m not a big thinker. I thought of the quotation “still waters run deep” and I tried to embody that. The effect on the room was palpable. People listened. And I hadn’t had to shout my point to be heard.

This paragraph demonstrates the turn in the story, the moment when everything changed. The use of the quotation “still waters run deep” imbues the story with a dash of poetry and emotion.

We eventually reached a compromise on the matter and concluded the student council meeting. Our council supervisor came to me afterward and said: “You handled that so well, with such grace and poise. I was very impressed.” Her words in that moment changed me. I realized that a bombastic nature isn't necessarily a powerful one. There is power in quiet, too. This experience taught me to view my reserved personality not as a character flaw, but as a strength.

The final paragraph, or conclusion, closes with a statement about the significance of this event and how it ended up changing the writer in a meaningful way.

Narrative essay writing tips

1. pick a meaningful story that has a conflict and a clear “moral.”.

If you’re able to choose your own topic, pick a story that has meaning and that reveals how you became the person your are today. In other words, write a narrative with a clear “moral” that you can connect with your main points.

2. Use an outline to arrange the structure of your story and organize your main points.

Although a narrative essay is different from argumentative essays, it’s still beneficial to construct an outline so that your story is well-structured and organized. Note how you want to start and end your story, and what points you want to make to tie everything together.

3. Be clear, concise, concrete, and correct in your writing.

You should use descriptive writing in your narrative essay, but don’t overdo it. Use clear, concise, and correct language and grammar throughout. Additionally, make concrete points that reinforce the main idea of your narrative.

4. Ask a friend or family member to proofread your essay.

No matter what kind of writing you’re doing, you should always plan to proofread and revise. To ensure that your narrative essay is coherent and interesting, ask a friend or family member to read over your paper. This is especially important if your essay is responding to a prompt. It helps to have another person check to make sure that you’ve fully responded to the prompt or question.

Frequently Asked Questions about narrative essays

A narrative essay, like any essay, has three main parts: an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Structuring and outlining your essay before you start writing will help you write a clear story that your readers can follow.

The first paragraph of your essay, or introduction, sets up the context, establishing the situation and introducing the meaningful event upon which the essay will focus.

In the vast majority of cases, a narrative essay should be written in the first-person, using “I.”

The 4 main types of essays are the argumentative essay, narrative essay, exploratory essay, and expository essay. You may be asked to write different types of essays at different points in your education.

Most narrative essays will be around five paragraphs, or more, depending on the topic and requirements. Make sure to check in with your instructor about the guidelines for your essay. If you’re writing a narrative essay for a college application, pay close attention to word or page count requirements.

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Why You Should Approach Your College Essays as Storytelling

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Christopher Kilner in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered:

Generating ideas, organizing your ideas, common themes across essay types, assembling a narrative.

College essays can seem intimidating. What do you write about? How should you write it? When you think about your college essays as an opportunity to tell your personal story—your struggles, your passions, your accomplishments—they will be more memorable to admissions officers. This article will take you through the process of approaching your college essays as storytelling, from coming up with ideas to planning and writing them. 

Before you start writing your college essays and before you even start planning, you have to first figure out what you think would be an interesting story to tell.

For a personal statement essay, for example, you can start by thinking about your main passions. You might be surprised how far brainstorming about even a simple interest can take you. Maybe you really love nature or a particular animal. Where does that idea lead? What’s a story or a memory you have that demonstrates this love of nature? From there, you can begin to see your ideas and potential topics take shape.

Ideally, you should be able to come up with at least two different concepts for your personal statement. Start to sketch out where you can see these concepts going—you may want to draw in different passions or think that sharing an anecdote would work best to illustrate your point. No matter your storytelling angle, keep in mind that the essay is about the fundamentals of who you are and what you want to do.

After you’ve put your ideas onto paper, you can organize them. An outline will help you see clearly where the essay will go. You might find that a narrative essay that you thought would work well is actually a bit of a dead end or doesn’t really speak much to who you are. Don’t be afraid to get feedback on your outlines. The opinions of a friend or a teacher can help you look at your ideas in a different light.

Once you have more of a plan for your essay, you can think about whether you want to add more, just to make the story more interesting. The personal statement is limited to 650 words. For a first draft, it’s better to go above the word count than come up short. Editing something down is easier than racking your brain to come up with more to say.

After you’ve come up with several different ideas, you should be able to write a large amount for your initial draft. You can even find ways to make them all work together! Your life has involved different elements; your essay can have multiple ideas in it too.

Outlining and planning ahead will make writing your personal statement much easier, and it will also help you when it comes time to write supplemental college essays . If you’ve been able to identify and plot out your different ideas and passions, you’ll be able to see more easily how different parts of your life come together.

When you look at your supplemental essay prompts, you should try to figure out how you can tie them to your personal statement. You’re working to create a cohesive picture of yourself that you can present to an admissions committee . Sticking to common themes will make the writing process a bit easier.

It helps to know what supplemental essays you’ll be writing before you draft your personal statement. You can plan for the topic of one supplemental essay, and you’ll know to drop a line that relates to it in your personal statement.

Referring to your list of passions and ideas will provide you with essay topics for the supplemental essays. If you’re athletic and want to use a story from your sporting career as a supplemental essay while writing your main essay about something else, you can put a line or two about your athletic history in your personal statement. As an organizational tool, you can try color-coding each particular idea. Then, when drafting, highlight each idea as it comes up, so you can see what you’re incorporating into your writing. 

The common themes that you touch on in multiple essays will enable colleges to see the different elements of your personality and your journey and how they all work together. In writing your particular story, you want to present a cohesive narrative that also provides the fullest picture of yourself.

After you’ve listed all your many ideas and outlined a few of your essays, you’ll be able to see what kind of story you want to write about yourself.

If you’re thinking about doing many different things but feel unsure of where to begin, it’s helpful to think chronologically. What were you passionate about as a child? Where did your interests first start, and how did you act on them? Thinking about these things might help you come up with a special anecdote to share. You can then start to think about where you’ve ended up: how are you acting on your interests now, and what do you want your future to look like?

It can feel like putting a puzzle together. You’re trying to tell a story, so you want to build up a narrative in a way that makes sense. Maybe you visited the zoo often as a kid and were always reading books about animals and nature. Now, as you prepare to go to college, you’ve taken many science classes and know that you want to go into conservation and environmental studies.

Your personal story doesn’t have to be particularly unique. Don’t worry that you’re not special or that you’re sharing things that people have heard before. What matters most is that you tell a story that’s true to who you are and that you tell it well.

Your writing matters and how you structure your essay matters. If you’ve already done most of the planning, you should be able to assemble a coherent and interesting narrative . You should concern yourself with how accurately you’re portraying yourself, your interests, and your goals. That’s what’s really important in writing your college essays.

Nobody else has the exact same passions you do or the exact same life that you’ve lived. You shouldn’t be afraid to take pride in yourself and your accomplishments. That’s what college essays are for! Writing them is a great opportunity to lay out all your different thoughts and passions and gain greater insight into who you are as a person. When it comes time for you to write, you’ll know what story you want to present, and you’ll also have a better idea of who you are.

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Narrative Essays

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What is a narrative essay?

When writing a narrative essay, one might think of it as telling a story. These essays are often anecdotal, experiential, and personal—allowing students to express themselves in a creative and, quite often, moving ways.

Here are some guidelines for writing a narrative essay.

• If written as a story, the essay should include all the parts of a story.

This means that you must include an introduction, plot, characters, setting, climax, and conclusion.

• When would a narrative essay not be written as a story?

A good example of this is when an instructor asks a student to write a book report. Obviously, this would not necessarily follow the pattern of a story and would focus on providing an informative narrative for the reader.

• The essay should have a purpose.

Make a point! Think of this as the thesis of your story. If there is no point to what you are narrating, why narrate it at all?

• The essay should be written from a clear point of view.

It is quite common for narrative essays to be written from the standpoint of the author; however, this is not the sole perspective to be considered. Creativity in narrative essays oftentimes manifests itself in the form of authorial perspective.

• Use clear and concise language throughout the essay.

Much like the descriptive essay, narrative essays are effective when the language is carefully, particularly, and artfully chosen. Use specific language to evoke specific emotions and senses in the reader.

• The use of the first person pronoun ‘I’ is welcomed.

Do not abuse this guideline! Though it is welcomed it is not necessary—nor should it be overused for lack of clearer diction.

• As always, be organized!

Have a clear introduction that sets the tone for the remainder of the essay. Do not leave the reader guessing about the purpose of your narrative. Remember, you are in control of the essay, so guide it where you desire (just make sure your audience can follow your lead).

Ideas and insights from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning

What Makes Storytelling So Effective For Learning?

This is the second of two posts co-written by Vanessa and Lani Peterson, Psy.D., a psychologist, professional storyteller and executive coach.

Telling stories is one of the most powerful means that leaders have to influence, teach, and inspire. What makes storytelling so effective for learning? For starters, storytelling forges connections among people, and between people and ideas. Stories convey the culture, history, and values that unite people. When it comes to our countries, our communities, and our families, we understand intuitively that the stories we hold in common are an important part of the ties that bind.

This understanding also holds true in the business world, where an organization’s stories, and the stories its leaders tell, help solidify relationships in a way that factual statements encapsulated in bullet points or numbers don’t.

Connecting learners Good stories do more than create a sense of connection. They build familiarity and trust, and allow the listener to enter the story where they are, making them more open to learning. Good stories can contain multiple meanings so they’re surprisingly economical in conveying complex ideas in graspable ways. And stories are more engaging than a dry recitation of data points or a discussion of abstract ideas. Take the example of a company meeting.

At Company A, the leader presents the financial results for the quarter. At Company B, the leader tells a rich story about what went into the “win” that put the quarter over the top. Company A employees come away from the meeting knowing that they made their numbers. Company B employees learned about an effective strategy in which sales, marketing, and product development came together to secure a major deal. Employees now have new knowledge, new thinking, to draw on. They’ve been influenced. They’ve learned.

Something for everyone Another storytelling aspect that makes it so effective is that it works for all types of learners. Paul Smith, in “Leader as Storyteller: 10 Reasons It Makes a Better Business Connection”, wrote:

In any group, roughly 40 percent will be predominantly visual learners who learn best from videos, diagrams, or illustrations. Another 40 percent will be auditory, learning best through lectures and discussions. The remaining 20 percent are kinesthetic learners, who learn best by doing, experiencing, or feeling. Storytelling has aspects that work for all three types. Visual learners appreciate the mental pictures storytelling evokes. Auditory learners focus on the words and the storyteller’s voice. Kinesthetic learners remember the emotional connections and feelings from the story.

Stories stick Storytelling also helps with learning because stories are easy to remember. Organizational psychologist Peg Neuhauser found that learning which stems from a well-told story is remembered more accurately, and for far longer, than learning derived from facts and figures. Similarly, psychologist Jerome Bruner’s research suggest that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.

Kendall Haven, author of Story Proof and Story Smart, considers storytelling serious business for business. He has written:

Your goal in every communication is to influence your target audience (change their current attitudes, belief, knowledge, and behavior). Information alone rarely changes any of these. Research confirms that well-designed stories are the most effective vehicle for exerting influence.

Stories about professional mistakes and what leaders learned from them  are another great avenue for learning. Because people identify so closely with stories, imagining how they would have acted in similar circumstances, they’re able to work through situations in a way that’s risk free. The extra benefit for leaders: with a simple personal story they’ve conveyed underlying values, offered insight into the evolution of their own experience and knowledge, presented themselves as more approachable, AND most likely inspired others to want to know more.

Connection. Engagement. Appealing to all sorts of learners. Risk-free learning. Inspiring motivation. Conveying learning that sticks. It’s no wonder that more and more organizations are embracing storytelling as an effective way for their leaders to influence, inspire, and teach.

Read more about the power of storytelling in our brief, “ Telling Stories: How Leaders Can Influence, Teach, and Inspire ”

Vanessa Boris is Senior Manager, Video Solutions at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at  [email protected]

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How to tell a captivating story — from a wedding toast to a job interview

Audrey Nguyen

Our lives are filled with storytelling, from the stories we tell our friends over dinner, to the ones we tell at eulogies, during toasts, at job interviews and on dates.

7 tips on giving a memorable toast for any occasion

"[Stories] make us laugh and they make us feel hope, and they make us feel like it's going to be OK, [like] we're less alone," says Sarah Austin Jenness, the executive producer of The Moth , an organization and podcast dedicated to teaching and promoting the craft of storytelling. Jenness is one of the co-authors of How to Tell a Story: the Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth .

Stories help us relate to each other and build community, say Jenness and her co-author and fellow storytelling coach, Meg Bowles. Leveling up our storytelling game can lead to more meaningful connections.

Here's their step-by-step guide on how to tell a story, from an idea to delivery:

1. Understand that a story is more than a scene or an anecdote.

Does the story you want to tell have a beginning, a middle and an end? Does it have tension? Does it show some sort of transformation? These are the basic elements that make an anecdote blossom into a full-bodied story.

When you're telling a story, you aren't just describing what happened when you walked into the coffee shop and saw your ex on a date. You're telling us how that moment felt emotionally, how you were affected, how you reacted and how you're a different person after having endured that moment.

2. Select a meaningful story.

Each of us has hundreds of stories we could tell. How do we know which one to pursue? "I always say to think back to moments in your life that really shifted you in some way," Bowles says. "Dig in to that."

When you think of a moment, ask yourself, "Why did that moment stick with me? What about that moment was important to me?"

"You start to see patterns of your story arise," says Bowles.

Big decisions are a good place to find stories; so are embarrassing moments and mistakes. Think of a time you did something but it didn't go as planned. Within these kinds of prompts you can begin to explore moments of vulnerability.

If you're not sure how or where to start mining for your own stories, here are some helpful prompts:

• If your life were a movie, what's one scene you'll never forget? 
• What's something someone said to you that you'll never forget? 
• Tell us about a breakthrough moment. 
• Tell us about a time you had to follow your heart. 
• Tell us about a moment you were reunited with something you treasure.

3. Develop your story.

Once you find the story you want to tell, put it under a magnifying glass to blow it up big. Where were you (physically, mentally, emotionally) in that moment? How did it impact your life? What were the results?

Boil your story down to one sentence that helps focus what it's really about. For example, "It took a disaster for me to understand the important role my father played in our community." This will help you decide which details support your main point.

Every family has stories to tell. Here's how to document yours

Remember that in any great story you're not just sharing events that happened, you're also sharing the thoughts and feelings running through you during those events.

4. Figure out the structure.

A good rule of thumb is to start in the action of the story – this will draw people in. From there, ask yourself if you'll tell your story in chronological order, or if you'll start at the end and find your way back to the beginning, or if you want tell it in a series of flashbacks instead of a linear structure.

Don't worry about getting too fancy with the structure – often, telling a story chronologically is the best way to go. "You want to take people through the journey so they can experience what you experienced, " Bowles says.

5. Understand how you've changed by the end.

By this point, you know the moment your story is centered on, what the stakes or tensions are and how you want to tell the story. Writing the ending can be the hardest part.

"Stories in real life usually aren't tied up with a bow," Jenness says. "You just have to end the story in a different place than [where] you began."

The key to a good ending is showing the audience your transformation over the course of the story, even if it's a slight transformation. "There's the 'you' we met in the beginning and the 'you' at the end," she explains.

6. Ask yourself if you're ready to share the story.

If you're considering telling a story rooted in vulnerability or trauma, it's important to consider whether you're emotionally ready to share that story.

Here are some signs you might not be ready to tell a story publicly:

• if you get stuck on one scene and aren't able to come out of it because you're reliving it – this can happen with traumatic events and could be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder. 
• if it's tough to find an ending to a story, it may mean that you're still living it. You might need to "press pause" and return to the story when you've had more time to process.

7. Before you deliver the story, practice, practice and practice again – but don't memorize it.

It's natural to feel nerves before sharing a story aloud. Become very familiar with your story. Practice enough to be comfortable telling it from memory, but the Moth team recommends that you don't memorize it word for word. If you memorize it verbatim, your delivery can sound stiff and you might go blank.

"Stories are alive and they're meant to sound alive," Bowles says.

A good strategy is to really learn the words you want to use for the beginning and end of your story, but keep your notes in between as bullet points. That way you can naturally fill the gaps, but you have your most important elements well-rehearsed.

"If you go blank on stage, just think, 'What happened next?'" Jenness says. "If you realize you didn't set it up right, you can always say 'Now, what I forgot to tell you about my mom is...' or 'What you really need to know...'"

8. Remember that storytelling is not about the storyteller – it's about connection.

Want To Listen Better? Turn Down Your Thoughts And Tune In To Others

Keep it short and tight. If you're telling a story in a more interactive environment, like over dinner, remember that the purpose of storytelling is to engage with others. It's not about taking the spotlight for the entire time you're with someone. You want to offer a jumping-off point for someone else to share their own story, too.

Want to practice listening and find inspiration? Check out stories heard on The Moth .

Elise Hu is also the host of the TED Talks Daily podcast.

The podcast portion of this story was produced by Audrey Nguyen and Meghan Keane.

We'd love to hear from you. If you have a good life hack, leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us at [email protected] . Your tip could appear in an upcoming episode.

If you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter .

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Mentor texts

Telling Short, Memorable Stories From Your Life: ‘My Secret Pepsi Plot’

An invitation to students to tell a meaningful story in a limited number of words, with an example from The Times’s Lives column to help.

By Katherine Schulten

Our new Mentor Text series spotlights writing from The Times that students can learn from and emulate.

This entry, like several others we are publishing, focuses on an essay from The Times’s long-running Lives column to consider skills prized in narrative writing. We are starting with this genre to help support students participating in our 2020 Personal Narrative Essay Contest .

Our Personal Narrative Essay Contest is inspired by The New York Times’s Lives column, which ran from 1996 to 2017 and featured “short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences .”

The editor of the column once posted some advice on “How to Write a Lives Essay” to guide those who submitted to the column annually. Much of that advice applies to our contest as well.

For example, several points boil down to reminders to keep it simple, including tips like:

Don’t try to fit your whole life into one “Lives.”

Don’t try to tell the whole story.

Tell a small story — an evocative, particular moment.

Better to start from something very simple that you think is interesting (an incident, a person) and expand upon it, rather than a large idea that you then have to fit into a short essay. For example, start with “the day the Santa Claus in the mall asked me on a date” rather than “the state of affairs that is dating in an older age bracket.”

This advice is similar to advice often given to high school seniors writing college essays : You have only 650 words to show admissions officers something important, interesting or memorable about who you are and what matters to you. A list of awards you’ve won won’t do it, but an engaging story about making brownies with your stepbrother just might.

As you’ll see when you read the texts below, none of them try to tell the whole story of a life, but, instead, illuminate an important aspect of it through focus on one event or moment. Yet that one focus ripples out, and says so much more.

Before You Read

Use the sentence starter below to write for a few minutes about whatever comes to mind. You will return to this writing in the “Now Try This” section.

A moment I’ll never forget from my childhood is …

Mentor Text: ‘ My Secret Pepsi Plot ,’ a 2014 Essay From the Lives Column, by Boris Fishman

This essay describes a memory from when the writer was 10 years old and his family had just immigrated from the Soviet Union to Brooklyn. “In the Soviet Union, we were secretly wealthy, but we arrived in Brooklyn as paupers,” he writes.

Somehow, his family ends up with 24 Pepsi-Colas in their refrigerator. The story of what happens next is Mr. Fishman’s short, powerful story:

Around this time I learned that American supermarkets gave back 5 cents for every returned empty. (Some states, like Michigan, its very name like a granite monument, gave you 10 cents.) I decided I would return those cans and give the money to my parents. My secret — a surprise.

Read the essay, focusing on how Mr. Fishman anchors the whole story in this one goal he had at age 10 — to return the Pepsi cans and get money for them.

As you read, you might trace the structure of the story. What does each paragraph do? What does each add to the telling of this small story?

Then, consider these questions:

How do the first two paragraphs set the stage for the story and give some necessary background?

How does telling this story allow the writer to show readers a particular time and place through the eyes of a new immigrant?

How does he pull you into the action, minute by minute, in the three paragraphs that begin “On Saturday afternoon …”?

How is money a theme throughout, in both stated and implied ways? What other ideas recur?

What is the role of the last paragraph?

Now Try This: Find Your Own Short, Powerful Stories

Look back at the writing you did before reading the mentor text. What is strongest about it? Could it become a short essay like the one you just read? If so, what would you need to do to shape it?

What other small stories — or “evocative, particular moments” — from your life might make wonderful short essays?

In a 2010 lesson plan, “ Going Beyond Cliché: How to Write a Great College Essay ,” we suggest students first make a timeline of their lives, or of one period in their lives, brainstorming at least 20 events, big and small, that were significant to them for any reason.

You might try that, or you can brainstorm answers to this list of prompts — or both:

-A time I took a risk: -A time I learned something about myself: -A memory from childhood I think about often: -Something that happened to me that still makes me laugh: -Something very few people know about me: -Something I regret: -A time when I felt rejected: -Something I am really proud of: -Something that changed the way I think or look at the world: -How I am different from most people I know: -Some of my fears: -A time I felt truly satisfied: -A time I failed at something: -An object I own that tells a lot about me:

Once you’ve chosen a topic, you might try to free-write for 10 minutes or so, asking yourself as you go: What was most interesting or memorable about this? What images come to mind when you think about this topic? Do you picture a person, a scene, a place? Do you hear a conversation or a bit of music? Do you smell, taste or feel something?

Finally, if you are still stuck, we have a list of prompts from our site that can inspire narrative writing . Take a look and see if any of them spark ideas for you.

More Mentor Texts for Telling Short, Memorable Stories

While the entire Lives column is devoted to “short, powerful stories,” the pieces we chose below are especially student-friendly in terms of both their subject matter and the way the writers focus on “an evocative, particular moment.” Below each title, an excerpt from the piece.

“ How Ramen Got Me Through Adolescence ,” a 2014 Lives essay, by Veronique Greenwood

When I was in fifth grade, I developed an intense dislike of eating around other people. The cafeteria was a place of foul odors, gelatinous spills, horrific mixtures of chocolate pudding, fruit cocktail and ketchup consumed on dares, and I found myself fasting from breakfast, at about 6 in the morning, until 3:35, when I walked home through the woods from the bus stop. Each step up our hill, a narrow ridge in rural California, I fantasized about the big bowl of ramen I would make myself when I reached the top.

“ Charmed ," a 2015 Lives essay, by Laila Lalami

‘‘Wait,’’ I said. From my pocket I pulled out a brown suede pouch bearing the name of a little jeweler in Rabat, the kind of place you send your friends to and say, tell him I sent you. In the pouch was a necklace with a silver khamsa — a charm in the shape of an open palm.

“ Montana Soccer-Mom Moment ,” a 2010 essay from the Lives column, by Laura Munson

I live in northwest Montana, and I have a teenager, and my teenager plays sports. That means a lot of driving — over-the-Rocky-Mountains-and-back-in-one-day kind of driving. I think about Meriwether Lewis every time I cross the Continental Divide, usually with sleeping soccer players wearing headphones in the back of my Suburban. I want to say, “Can you imagine everything depending on your horse and your ability to dream of an ocean past the mountains?” But it isn’t worth the eye-rolling.

“ All the Single Ladies ," a 2014 essay from the Lives column, by Jen Doll

“Single ladies to the dance floor!” came the cry, a masculine voice urging us forward. Wedding guests parted, creating a narrow path for the train of unmarried women to parade through in their finery. But we single ladies no longer looked so fine as we had that morning. We were worn and tired, sweat beading down our necks, sand crunching unpleasantly in our shoes, which were wearing raw the backs of our heels. We should have been lying down in cool rooms elsewhere, but the wedding was not over. We were 28. We knew what was next.

“ Working the Reunion ,” a 2008 essay from the Lives column, by ZZ Packer

My residential college always hosted the 45th reunion, one of the most well attended, I suppose because you just might not be around for the 50th. To my eyes, these guys were the picture of old money. Although they may have mastered physics or appraised the sharp beauty of “King Lear” in school, at reunions they reminisced about football glories and practical jokes. I sometimes felt less like a Yale co-ed who happened to be black than a black waitress who happened to be bringing them an extra fork. But after their dinner we reunion workers would drink up all the leftover bottles of wine while cleaning the dining hall.

Related Questions for Any Short, Narrative Essay

What is the one small moment or event this piece focuses on? Why do you think the writer might have chosen it?

What do you learn about the writer and his or her world through this moment or event? How? What lines do this well? What is implied rather than stated?

How is the piece structured? What does each paragraph do? How does each contribute to the story?

Look closely at how the writer tells a complete story in a limited number of words. Where, in terms of time and place, does the story begin? Where does it end? How does the writer weave in necessary background even while keeping the action of the story moving forward?

What else do you notice or admire about this essay? What lessons might it have for your own writing?

We’re reviewing our resources this spring (May-August 2024). We will do our best to minimize disruption, but you might notice changes over the next few months as we correct errors & delete redundant resources. 

Telling a Story in Academic Writing

Storytelling is the most engaging way to communicate. In storytelling, writers use a variety of methods to maintain an appealing pace, to create human connections with their readers, and to help readers visualize their ideas. These same techniques are effective across all types of writing. They can be used to make writing assignments more engaging, more readable, and more persuasive.

When you build plot, you think of your writing as a sequence of connected events where anticipation (tension) rises toward a final climactic event, and ends with a resolution.  For an academic argument, you can use the traditional narrative arc as a basic structure. The following shows how these narrative arcs of story structure might map onto academic paper.

• Story: “This is the background you need to know to understand what’s coming next.”
• Academic Writing: Introduce the issue and the argument you want to develop.

Rising action

• Story: “First this happened. Then this happened. Then this happened.”
• Academic Writing: To build tension, arrange your arguments to build in strength. How each point builds upon the previous one should be clear. For example, in a literature review, you would arrange the previous research to show how and why you came to your own research question. (You might think of this format like a detective story. The problems, successes, or omissions in previous research serve as the “clues” that led you to your own research project).
• Story: “All of that led to this big event.”
• Academic Writing: At the climax, reveal your most convincing reasoning and evidence.
• Story: “Here’s how everything came together at the end.”
• Academic Writing: In the final phase, summarize your arguments and emphasizing the significance of the issue.

Balance Action with Commentary

Academic writing with too much action - where the writer presents facts and descriptions, one after the other - reads like a rapid-fire list of statements. This kind of writing doesn’t give the reader time to process and reflect on the information. Make sure that you include analysis, reflection, and other commentary to build the right pace for your readers.

In contrast, academic writing with too much commentary feels slow and plodding and often has so much discussion that the reader loses sight of the writer’s goal. Make sure that you provide only the most important commentary. Then move on.

Instead of . . .

“ So and so argues this… so and so claims this… so and so analyzes this…  “ or  “One definition of the topic is x. Another is y. The definition proposed by z is….”  or   “There are multiple approaches to the topic. X looks at this . . ., Y views this. . ., Z combines this. . .”

“ There are many approaches to the topic. X looks at this . . ., which establishes important criteria for the field but avoids finding a consensus about issue M.  Y’s research adds to the conversation about fundamental criteria for assessing these clinical situations. However, the author also takes a critical look at the disagreements underlying certain existing criteria. In contrast, rather than establishing criteria, Z investigates systemic assumptions in the field that lead practitioners to weigh some criteria more heavily than others.”

Focus on Pacing

Use active voice.

When writers use active voice they focus their sentences on an actor and the action – the two most important parts of storytelling. For more information on using active voice, check out our resource,   Active and passive voice .

Ideally, to avoid unintentional bias in our measurements, information regarding the source population of each specimen   was withheld   from the observer.

We strived   to avoid unintentional bias in our measurements. To that end,   we withheld   from observers, information about each specimen’s source population.

Vary sentence and paragraph length

Blair shone in his extracurricular activities at school. During his time at university he produced a magazine, joined in the production of other publications, and, in addition, participated in the college’s acapella group, but his academic performance reports suggested that he neglected his academic studies. His parents could not afford to send him to university without him winning another scholarship, and thus they concluded from his poor results that he would not be able to win one. His family decided that Blair should join the Imperial Police instead of finishing school.

Blair shone in his extracurricular activities at school. During his time at university he produced a magazine and also joined in the production of other publications. In addition, he participated in the college’s acapella group. Despite these achievements, his parents could not afford to send him to university without him winning another scholarship. Judging from Blair’s poor results, his family concluded that he would not be able to win. They thought Blair should join the Imperial Police instead.

Omit clutter

Too many unnecessary words in a sentence can not only lead to confusion, but also slow the pace and make text feel onerous and tiresome.

It has been found that   CO2 and H2O formation   has been reduced   at high temperatures.

Less   CO2 and H2O   form   at higher temperatures.

Humanize your Writing

Stories are powerful because, in one way or another, they place human concerns as their focus. To remind your readers of the human concerns that your research paper addresses, put human elements into your writing.

Use characters as your subjects

When a sentence describes an action completed by a person, that person should be the subject of the sentence. This small change in structure provides your sentences with characters and their actions, adding human elements to the paper.

Fetal DNA has been found in maternal plasma but exists as a minor fraction among a high background of maternal DNA. Even with highly precise single counting methods such as digital PCR, a large number of DNA molecules and hence maternal plasma volume would need to be analyzed to achieve the necessary analytical precision.

Researchers   have found fetal DNA in maternal plasma, but it exists as a minor fraction among a high background of maternal DNA. Hence, even with highly precise, single molecule counting methods, such as digital PCR,   geneticists   must analyze a large number of DNA molecules and maternal plasma to achieve the necessary analytical precision.

Use the first person (I/we )

First person provides a human connection and improves clarity. It lets the reader know clearly who did what.

Here, instead of using approaches that target specific gene loci, the use of a locus-independent method would greatly increase the number of target molecules from the aneuploidy chromosome that could be analyzed within the same fixed volume of plasma.

Try . .   .

Here,   we chose   not to use approaches that target specific gene loci. Rather, by using a locus-independent method,   we could greatly increase   the number of target molecules from the aneuploidy chromosome, and, with this increase,   improve our analysis   within the same fixed volume of plasma.

Add Metaphor

When we use one object, experience, or event to help symbolize and represent a different one, we are using metaphor. Through metaphor, writers use a concept familiar to the reader to help explain something that is unfamiliar. Metaphor helps a reader understand a concept from two pathways – literal and visual – and increases engagement.

Beyond treating individual letters as physical objects, the human brain may also perceive a text in its entirety as a kind of physical landscape, similar to the mental maps we create of terrain. For example, in the physical world we might recall that we passed the red farmhouse near the start of a trail we hiked. In a similar way, in text, we remember that we read about Mr. Darcy rebuffing Elizabeth Bennett on the bottom of the left-hand page in one of the earlier chapters.

Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

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By Julia Chaitin

July 2003  

Stories, Narratives, and Storytelling

People are storytellers -- they tell narratives about their experiences and the meanings that these experiences have for their lives. All cultures and societies also possess their own stories or narratives about their past and their present, and sometimes about their view of the future. These narratives include stories of greatness and heroism, or stories of periods characterized by victimhood and suffering. In this module, we will explore different aspects of storytelling and narratives and look at their connection to conflicts, reconciliation, and peacebuilding.

According to Webster's dictionary, a narrative is "a discourse, or an example of it, designed to connect a succession of happenings."[1] Adding the definition offered by the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,[2] we learn that a narrative is "a story or description of actual or fictional events; or the act, technique or process of narrating." Taken together, then, a story or a narrative combines either real or imagined events that connect in such a way to provide a chain of events that are recounted to others. Over the last 20 years, there has been an upsurge in the study of narratives in the social sciences in general, and in the study of conflicts and peacebuilding in particular. This relatively recent emphasis on the narrative and its focal position in human lives has been termed "the narrative turn."[3]

Features of Stories

The psychologist and narrative scholar Dan McAdams notes that people expect a story to have a number of features.[4] All stories or narratives have a setting, which is usually made clear early on. While not all stories develop their settings, some evoke vivid associations of particular times or places. When the setting is ambiguous, the listener or reader of the story may feel confused or disoriented. The second element is characters -- the players in the action. As the story proceeds, we learn certain basic information about the characters in the story -- what they look like, how old they are, their dreams and wishes, etc. Thirdly, we expect a story to have at least one plot -- actions which have consequences and reactions to these consequences by and for the characters. A story may contain one episode or may have a sequence of episodes that includes the basic elements noted above. In a story, an initiating event leads to an attempt on the part of a character. The consequence gives rise to a reaction. Episodes follow one another, building on one another as the story takes form. Within this basic story structure, there are numerous variations and conventions which can enhance a story's tension. As tension builds across episodes, we desire an eventual resolution of the problem faced by one or more of the characters. This relief occurs in the climax, or turning point in the story, followed by the denouement .[5]

One kind of story is a myth -- a story that gains wide acceptance and is often deemed sacred for its ability to communicate a fundamental truth about life. Such a story may be incorporated into different levels: the individual, group, family, organization, society, and/or culture. Myths contain archetypal symbols that help make us conscious of and curious about our origins and destiny and they capture a society's basic psychological, sociological, cosmological, and metaphysical truths.[6] In short, myths reflect the most important concerns of a people, and they help preserve the culture's integrity.[7]

The use of myths in nationalistic-based conflicts has been explored by the political scientist and analyst van Evera.[8] This scholar has noted that when nationalist movements embrace self-glorifying or other-denigrating myths about its own or others' conduct and character, then their nationalism becomes more dangerous and may more easily lead to violent conflict.

Storytelling

Narratives/stories are produced in order to be recounted to others. McAdams notes a few basic aspects of storytelling -- the oral or written sharing of our stories with others.[9] A culture's "stories create a shared history, linking people in time and event as actors, tellers, and audience."[10] Stories are not merely chronicles of what happened; they are more about meanings. As people talk about the past in a subjective and embellished way, the past is continually reconstructed.[11] This history is judged to be true or false, not solely with respect to its adherence to empirical fact, but with respect to narrative criteria such as believability and coherence.

Jerome Bruner has argued that one of the ways in which people understand their world is through the "narrative mode" of thought, which is concerned with human wants, needs, and goals.[12] The narrative mode deals with the dynamics of human intentions; when in this mode, we seek to explain events by looking at how human actors (including ourselves) strive to do things over time. As we comprehend these actions, we see what obstacles were encountered and which intentions were realized or frustrated.

People are drawn to stories for a number of reasons: they can entertain us, help us organize our thoughts, fill us with emotion, keep us in suspense, or instruct us in how to live and act. They also often present dilemmas concerning what is moral and immoral behavior. At times, stories can also heal us when we feel "broken" or ill, moving us toward new psychological understandings of self and our social world. This is the case, for example, when mental health professionals employ narrative therapy in their work with their clients in order to help them to reframe their life story in a more holistic and integrative way than it was in the past.[13]

Telling one's story, through oral or written means, has been shown to be a key experience in people's lives, especially those who have undergone severe social trauma. This has been the case for many of the thousands of Holocaust survivors who have given their testimonies in institutions around the world such as Yale University,[14] the Survivors of the Holocaust Visual History Foundation project , and Yad Vashem , the national Holocaust museum and memorial in Israel. While the storytelling of their traumatic past does not always have a healing effect for the survivors, it opens up channels of thoughts, feelings, and communication that have often been closed for years. Having the opportunity to recount one's traumatic past to an empathic listener, especially when one can integrate the traumas into present-day life, can often lead to the telling of deeply personal stories that may have been previously "forgotten" or "denied."[15]

Storytelling has also been used by Palestinians to recount the suffering that they have incurred since they were dispossessed of their land over the years.[16] These stories often include experiences of deportation/escape, life in the camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and dreams of returning to their former homes.

Storytelling in Conflict Situations

The recounting of personal stories in situations, which aim to reduce inter-group conflicts and to enhance peacebuilding and reconciliation between adversaries, has been used within the last decade in a number of contexts around the world. Perhaps the most famous context is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was established in South Africa in 1995 in order to start healing some of the deep wounds of the Apartheid years.[17] The main vehicle of the TRC for this purpose was public storytelling: "...The objectives of the Commission shall be to promote national unity and reconciliation in a spirit of understanding which transcends the conflicts...of the past by...establishing as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of the gross violations of human rights which were committed during the period... including... the perspectives of the victims and the motives and perspectives of the persons responsible for the commission of the violations...the granting of amnesty to persons who make full disclosure of all the relevant facts relating to acts associated with a political objective...and ...making known the fate or whereabouts of victims and by restoring the human and civil dignity of such victims by granting them an opportunity to relate their own accounts of the violations of which they are the victims..."[18]

Storytelling and narratives have been used since the 1990s to reduce conflicts and work toward reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, blacks and whites in South Africa, Palestinians and Israelis, and between descendants of Holocaust survivors and Nazi perpetrators. Two examples of institutions/groups in which I am involved that use stories and storytelling for these purposes are PRIME -- the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East and the TRT -- To Reflect and Trust.

PRIME is a jointly run Palestinian-Israeli research non-governmental organization (NGO) that undertakes cooperative social research that studies issues that have great importance for both peoples. Research projects are designed to explore crucial psycho-social and educational aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and to use the findings for peacebuilding work. Two of PRIME's current projects involve narratives and storytelling, albeit in very different ways.

The objectives of PRIME's Oral History Refugee Project are two-fold -- one short-term and one long-term. A joint Palestinian-Israeli team is currently collecting life history interviews from Jewish-Israelis who once were either refugees from the Holocaust or from their North African and Asian homelands, in which they were persecuted. The Jewish-Israelis who are being interviewed moved from the refugee status to citizen status in Israel, establishing settlements in places that were once Arab villages/land. The Palestinian biographers have been refugees since the events of 1948 (statehood, and the War of Independence for Israel, "the catastrophe" -- Al Naqba for the Palestinians) and currently live in refugee camps in the West Bank, some of which came from areas where the Jewish-Israeli biographers have lived for the past 50 years. All of the interviews are being videotaped and will be readied for entry into computers so that researchers, educators, and students will be able to view the interviews in their entirety.

The long-term objective is to learn from these encounters in order to design and run educational activities for young people and peacebuilding encounters between the refugees and/or their descendants. In these activities, the Palestinians will visit places where their homes once were and the Israelis will visit refugee camps where the Palestinians now live. Perhaps more importantly, the encounters are planned to allow the participants to share their life stories with one another and together look for ways to work toward decreased hatred and violence between the two peoples and increased understanding of the other. We see this project as having the potential to be an important step in peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians. It is our hope that the collection and telling of personal narratives will serve as a regional truth and reconciliation process that will run parallel to the formal peace process. Unfortunately, Israelis and Palestinians tend to be unaware of many aspects of their joint history and of the suffering of the other. The narrated, computerized testimonies will make it possible for children, educators, researchers, and the public at large to use these stories for peacebuilding purposes.

The second project, Writing the Shared History, involves Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli high school teachers who are jointly preparing a textbook, in both Hebrew and Arabic, that will present the narratives of both sides on a number of key social-political-historical events (e.g. the 1948 war, the first Intifada, etc.). Each side's narratives are being translated into the other's language, with blank pages left for the students to write down their thoughts, feelings, and understandings of the texts. The textbooks will be used in conjunction with class discussions and activities that will aim toward a reduction in animosity and hatred of the other.

The idea for the joint textbook of historical narratives grew out of the knowledge that in periods of intractable conflicts, nations tend to teach their children their own narratives (often through the vehicle of textbooks) as the only correct one, while completely ignoring their enemy's narratives. If they do include the enemy narrative, it is always presented as being wrong and unjustifiable. These textbooks, which also include [nation-legitimized knowledge, convince children that there is a necessity to continue to dehumanize the enemy, and this leads to the development of negative attitudes and values toward the other. This state of affairs is very clear in the Palestinian-Israeli situation and has been studied in the joint research of Palestinian and Israeli history textbooks undertaken by Firer (an Israeli) & Adwan (a Palestinian).[19]

As in the Oral History Refugee Project, it is our hope that the experience gained from Writing the Shared History will help in the future when both Palestinians and Israelis are ready to return to dialogue, as opposed to violent means, as the main vehicle of intergroup interaction.

The second framework in which I am involved that uses storytelling as its main mode of work is the TRT -- To Reflect and Trust.[20] The TRT is an international organization that began in 1992 as an encounter group between descendants of Nazi perpetrators and of Jewish Holocaust survivors. These individuals met together in a self-supporting atmosphere to tell one another their life stories in an attempt to better work through (that is, learn to live with) their pasts, in particular their parents' experiences during WWII.[21] In 1998, the TRT invited former/present enemies from Northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, and South Africa to join their work. Publications, documentary movies,[22] and several year-round projects have resulted from the decade of work of the TRT.

The TRT meets once a year, each time in the country of one of the conflict groups, for a week-long seminar. Group members are comprised of practitioners, educators, researchers, artists, and community workers. In these encounters, the members of the group, who facilitate themselves, sit together in small groups and tell one another their life histories, within the context of their conflict. While telling one's story is a major aspect of the TRT meetings, empathically listening to the story of the "enemy" comprises the main, and extremely difficult, work of the members. The TRT refrains from entering into political dialogues, which have been shown to hinder dialogue, rather than encourage it.[23] Learning to contain the stories of the other, to hear their pain and to legitimize their narrative, while not negating your own pain and story, is the main work and "product" of the TRT process.

The TRT process appears to be a mode of group work that resonates with peoples from many different areas of conflict. It has been shown to be successful in that it has duplicated itself, albeit with modifications relevant for each group, in different contexts and settings. Perhaps the best-known offspring of the TRT is Towards Healing and Understanding , an organization established in Northern Ireland that has run a number of residentials (overnight conferences) and seminars.[24]

Summary and Conclusions

Stories, narratives, and storytelling are central aspects of all cultures. They play key roles both in the escalation and potentially the de-escalation of intergroup conflicts. In order for the storytelling to be effective, it must engage the self and other, and provide a narrative that is both cognitively and emotionally compelling. While denigrating myths of the other and self-aggrandizing myths of self can refuel the winds of hate, the open and honest recounting of one's life story, and the willingness to be an empathic listener for the other, even if this other has caused your group suffering and pain in the past, can open the door for peacebuilding and coexistence.

[1] Webster's Third International Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1966), 1503.

[2] American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, (1966) 873.

[3] McAdams, D.P., Josselson, R. & Lieblich, A., eds. Turns in the Road: Narrative Studies of Lives in Transition (American Psychological Association, 2001).

[4] McAdams, D.P. The Stories We Live By (New York: The Guilford Press, 1993).

[5] ibid, 25-26.

[6] McAdams, 1993.

[7] Levi-Strauss, C. The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology (Vol. 1) (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).

[8] Van Evera, S. "Hypotheses on nationalism and war." International Security 18, no. 4 (1994): 5-39.

[9] McAdams, 1993.

[10] Ibid, 28.

[11] Yehezkel, A. La'arog et Sipor Hachaim (Keter: Jerusalem, 1955), (in Hebrew).

[12] Bruner, J. Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).

[13] For example, White, M. Narrative Therapy [on-line]. Available from http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/white.htm . Accessed November 6, 2002.

[14] Langer, L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory . (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).

[15] Bar-On, D. & Chaitin, J. Parenthood and the Holocaust . (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2001).

[16] For example, Lynd, S., Bahour, S. & Lynd, A. eds. Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1994).

[17] Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Available at http://www.doj.gov.za/trc . Accessed January 29, 2003.

[18] No. 34 of 1995: promotion of national unity and reconciliation act, 1995. [on-line] Available at http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/legal/act9534.htm . Accessed January 29, 2003.

[19] Adwan, S. & Firer, R. The narrative of Palestinian Refugees During the War of 1948 in Israeli and Palestinian History and Civic Education Textbooks (UNESCO, Paris, 1997); Adwan, S and Firer, R. The Narrative of the 1967 war in the Israeli and Palestinian History and Civics Textbooks and Curricula Statement. (Georg eckert Institute: Braunschwieg, Germany, 1999); Adwan, S. and Firer, R. The Narrative of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict In History and Civics Textbooks and Curricula Statement. (Georg Eckert Institute: Braunschwieg, Germany, 2000).

[20] Bar-On, D., ed. Bridging the Gap: Storytelling as a Way to Work Through Political and Collective Hostilities . [on-line] (Hamburg : Korber-Stiftung, 2000). Available at http://www.psych.unimelb.edu.au/icrc/publications/reviews/review1.html .

[21] Bar-On, D. & Kassem, F. Storytelling as a way to work-through intractable conflicts: The German-Jewish experience and its relevance to the Palestinian -- Israeli context (2002).

[22] Time Watch. Children of the Third Reich. (London: BBC production, 1993).

[23] Steinberg, S. & Bar-On, D. "An analysis of the group process in encounters between Jews and Palestinians using a typology for discourse classification." International Journal of Intercultural Relations 26, (2002), 199-214.

[24] Haughey and Leslie address international peace conference. News Releases: The Office of First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. [on-line] Available from http://www.nics.gov.uk/press/ofmdfm/020815a-ofmdfm.htm . Accessed November 8, 2002.

Use the following to cite this article: Chaitin, Julia. "Narratives and Storytelling." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: July 2003 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/narratives >.

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Unveiling the Power of Storytelling: what a Narrative is

This essay about the profound role of storytelling explores its components, such as characters and plot, and its effects on culture and personal identity. It discusses how narratives evoke emotions, reflect societal norms, and aid in education. The text also examines the transformation of storytelling through digital technologies, highlighting its impact on cultural exchanges and communication across various disciplines. The significance of narratives in shaping personal and collective identities and their utility in various fields is underscored.

How it works

Storytelling, an intrinsic human practice, transcends mere entertainment, embodying a profound method of communication that connects individuals, delineates cultures, and shapes our understanding of the world. A narrative, at its essence, is a coherent sequence of events populated by characters, unfolding through intricately devised plots to engage and impact its audience. This exploration of narrative power sheds light on its components, effects, and significance in influencing thought and culture.

A narrative typically comprises characters, a plot, and a setting, all woven together to craft a story that captivates its audience.

Characters are the soul of the narrative, humanizing the story and allowing the audience to see a reflection of themselves or explore new perspectives. These characters might range from people to mythical creatures, all crafted to evoke connection and empathy. The plot represents the skeleton of the narrative, outlining the critical events that propel the story from commencement to conclusion, thereby shaping the trajectory and pace of the narrative.

The true power of storytelling lies in its ability to stir emotions and develop empathy. As audiences immerse themselves in narratives, they often experience a spectrum of emotions, aligning their feelings with those of the characters. This emotional engagement is not mere coincidence but a crafted aspect of the narrative, designed to enhance the relatability and memorability of the story, thus amplifying its impact on the audience.

Narratives also act as societal reflections, offering insights into the cultural mores, issues, and conflicts of a community. Storytellers can subtly or overtly critique or uphold societal norms, thereby influencing public discourse and opinion. This reflective capacity of narratives makes them invaluable tools for both preserving cultural identity and advocating for change. Stories not only transmit historical and cultural knowledge but also adapt and evolve to incorporate new ideas and perspectives.

Furthermore, narratives play a pivotal role in shaping personal and collective identities. Through personal stories and public narratives, individuals and communities construct identities that define their roles and values within a societal context. Personal narratives, like autobiographies, help individuals make sense of their past experiences, while collective narratives unite groups with common histories and values, fostering a sense of community and continuity.

In education, narratives simplify complex ideas and enhance recall, making learning more accessible and engaging. Educational stories often use metaphors or hypothetical scenarios to convey complex issues, helping students to better understand and retain abstract concepts.

With the advent of digital technology, the landscape of storytelling has transformed, incorporating interactive and multimedia elements that enrich the narrative experience. Platforms like social media have revolutionized narrative dissemination, enabling anyone to share their stories with a global audience and engage in cultural exchange on an unprecedented scale.

Recognizing the essence and influence of narratives is crucial for appreciating not only the arts but also the daily exchanges that shape our experiences and relationships. Mastering narrative skills is invaluable across diverse disciplines, from therapy and education to marketing and media. As we continue to explore and push the boundaries of narrative possibilities, we open up new avenues for understanding, connecting with others, and shaping societal narratives for future generations.

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The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment

By Jia Tolentino

Shortly after I became pregnant with my second child, in the fall of 2022, I decided to try a modest experiment. I wanted to see whether I could hide my pregnancy from my phone. After spending my twenties eagerly surveilling and sharing the details of my life online, I had already begun trying to erect some walls of technological privacy: I’d deleted most apps on my phone and turned off camera, location, and microphone access for nearly all of the ones that I did have; I had disabled Siri—I just found it annoying—and I didn’t have any smart devices. For the experiment, I would abide by some additional restrictions. I wouldn’t Google anything about pregnancy nor shop for baby stuff either online or using a credit card, and neither would my husband, because our I.P. addresses—and thus the vast, matrixed fatbergs of personal data assembled by unseen corporations to pinpoint our consumer and political identities—were linked. I wouldn’t look at pregnancy accounts on Instagram or pregnancy forums on Reddit. I wouldn’t update my period tracker or use a pregnancy app.

Nearly every time we load new content on an app or a Web site, ad-exchange companies—Google being the largest among them—broadcast data about our interests, finances, and vulnerabilities to determine exactly what we’ll see; more than a billion of these transactions take place in the U.S. every hour. Each of us, the data-privacy expert Wolfie Christl told me, has “dozens or even hundreds” of digital identifiers attached to our person; there’s an estimated eighteen-billion-dollar industry for location data alone. In August, 2022, Mozilla reviewed twenty pregnancy and period-tracking apps and found that fifteen of them made a “buffet” of personal data available to third parties, including addresses, I.P. numbers, sexual histories, and medical details. In most cases, the apps used vague language about when and how this data could be shared with law enforcement. (A 2020 FOIA lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had purchased access to location data for millions of people in order to track them without a warrant. ICE and C.B.P. subsequently said they would stop using such data.) The scholar Shoshana Zuboff has called this surveillance capitalism , “a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.” Through our phones, we are under perpetual surveillance by companies that buy and sell data about what kind of person we are, whom we might vote for, what we might purchase, and what we might be nudged into doing.

A decade ago, the sociology professor Janet Vertesi conducted a more rigorous form of the hidden-pregnancy experiment. Using an elaborate system of code words and the anonymous browser Tor, she managed to digitally hide her pregnancy all the way up to the birth of her child. In an article about the experience, for Time , she pointed to a Financial Times report, which found that identifying a single pregnant woman is as valuable to data brokers as knowing the age, gender, and location of more than two hundred nonpregnant people, because of how much stuff new parents tend to buy. She also noted that simply attempting to evade market detection—by, for example, purchasing stacks of gift cards in order to buy a stroller—made her and her husband look as though they were trying to commit fraud.

I wasn’t going to do anything so strict or elaborate. I’d allow myself to text and send e-mails about my pregnancy, and to talk about it with my phone nearby. I assumed that, eventually, it would notice; I’d just wait and see when a diaper ad popped up on Instagram. I liked the idea of establishing a buffer zone between my psyche and the object that most closely monitors it. I found it almost shocking to remember that this was possible.

Pregnancy tends to erode both your freedom and your privacy. Past a certain point in your second trimester, strangers will begin reaching toward your stomach and telling you about the real difference between boys and girls. But I had eluded this during my first pregnancy, because COVID hit before I started showing. In the months that followed, I began to feel the difference between witnessing something and surveilling it, and to recognize that the most pleasurable moments in my life had occurred out of the reach of any oversight. I had felt then an almost psychedelic sense of autonomy; time was dilating, and the slow bloom inside me was beyond anyone’s reach. I wanted to see if I could feel anything like that again.

During pregnancy, and in the early days of parenthood, one is both the object and the conductor of intense surveillance. Last year, the artist and filmmaker Sophie Hamacher co-edited an anthology of writing on the subject, called “ Supervision ,” which was published by M.I.T. Press. “As I became absorbed with tracking and monitoring my child,” Hamacher writes in the preface, “I was increasingly aware that I was a subject of tracking and monitoring by others: advertisers, medical professionals, government entities, people on the street. I began to wonder about the relationship between the way I watched her and the ways we were being watched.” Surveillance encompasses both policing and caretaking, Hamacher notes. In practice, its polarized qualities—“beneficial and harmful, intimate and distanced”—intertwine. Baby monitors use technology developed for the military. Many contemporary models run on CCTV.

Most American households with young children use baby monitors or trackers; two recent surveys put market penetration at seventy-five and eighty-three per cent, respectively. (Both surveys were conducted by companies that make these devices.) And there are now countless other ways that technology will help you to observe and scrutinize your child: nanny-cam Teddy bears, G.P.S. stroller accessories, scales that track your baby’s weight over time, disks that can be affixed to diapers and which will notify you if your baby rolls onto his stomach while he’s asleep. Increasingly, such products use A.I. to detect signs of distress. “The need to know whether a child is safe and well is perfectly natural, which makes the nature of such surveillance appear innocent,” the writer and scholar Hannah Zeavin notes in “Family Scanning,” one of the essays in “Supervision.” But, she adds, “these technologies conceal the possibility of false positives, disrupted emergency services, and of collaboration with state forces—wittingly or unwittingly—all in the name of keeping children safe.” As a general rule, these devices don’t lead to better outcomes for the babies they monitor. More often—like social media, which promises connection as a salve for the loneliness created by social media—parenting tech exacerbates, even calls into existence, the parental anxieties that it pledges to soothe.

This has become a common pattern in contemporary life. Nearly a fifth of U.S. households are estimated to use doorbell cameras, many of them from Ring, the Amazon-owned company that has expanded its reach through police partnerships and a dedicated app that encourages users to post footage of strangers. Ring cameras haven’t made neighborhoods measurably safer, but they have made users measurably more paranoid, and placed more people, sometimes with grave outcomes, in contact with the police. Until recently, police could readily access surveillance footage from the Ring network without a warrant by posting requests on the app. It also gave its own employees and third-party contractors “ ‘ free range ’ access” to view and download videos from users’ homes.

In 2015, the company Owlet started selling a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Smart Sock, which monitored babies’ heart rates and oxygen levels, and alerted parents if these figures were abnormal. Although the company insists that it has made clear that the product is not intended to “treat or diagnose” sudden infant death syndrome—and there is no evidence that it reduces the risk of SIDS occurring—such devices are sometimes referred to as “ SIDS monitors.” But, in 2017, an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association cautioned physicians against recommending the product. “There are no medical indications for monitoring healthy infants at home,” the authors wrote. The device, they noted, could “stimulate unnecessary fear, uncertainty, and self-doubt in parents about their abilities to keep their infants safe.” The following year, a study in the same journal found “concerning” inaccuracies in oxygen readings. When Owlet went public, in February, 2021, the company had a valuation of more than a billion dollars; later that year, the F.D.A. issued a warning letter that the Smart Sock wasn’t an authorized medical device, and the company pulled it off the market. A million units had already been sold. The following year, Owlet launched a new version, called the Dream Sock, which would receive F.D.A. approval. Most of the reviews for the Dream Sock exude profound gratitude. Parents write about the peace of mind that comes from knowing the baby is being constantly monitored, about not knowing what they would do if the device didn’t exist.

Surveillance capitalism, Zuboff writes, “aims to impose a new collective order based on total certainty.” But little is certain when it comes to babies. The control that we feel when we’re engaged in surveillance almost always proves illusory, though the control, or at least the influence, that others exert on us through surveillance is real.

It is not a coincidence that Roe v. Wade, a ruling grounded in the right to privacy, was overturned at a time when privacy in the U.S was on its conceptual deathbed. There are other legal principles that might have served as a stronger foundation for abortion rights: the right to equal protection, or the right to bodily integrity. As Christyne Neff wrote, in 1991, the physical effects of an ordinary pregnancy and delivery resemble those of a severe beating—flesh lacerated, organs rearranged, half a quart of blood lost. Can the state, she asked, rightfully compel a person to undergo this?

Since Roe fell, two years ago, fourteen states have claimed that power in absolute terms, banning abortion almost completely. Two states have successfully passed abortion-vigilante laws, which confer the power of carceral supervision on the public. Indiana’s attorney general has argued that abortion records should be publicly available, like death records; Kansas recently passed a law that would require abortion providers to collect details about the personal lives of their patients and make that information available to the government. Birth control and sex itself may be up next for criminal surveillance: the Heritage Foundation , last year, insisted, on Twitter, that “conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.”

For many women in America, pregnancy was a conduit to state surveillance long before the end of Roe. Poor women, especially poor nonwhite women, are often drug-tested during pregnancy, and sometimes during labor and delivery, without their informed consent. Women who take drugs during pregnancy have been charged with child abuse or neglect, including in cases in which the drugs were legal; women who have miscarried after taking drugs have been charged with manslaughter, even homicide, even when no causal link was proved. Sometimes this happens because the woman in question had responded to billboards and service announcements promising to help pregnant people who are struggling with substance use. In multiple states, women have been taken into custody when the safety of the fetus was called into question. “To be pregnant and poor in the United States is to play a game of roulette with one’s privacy, presumed confidential relationship with medical providers, and basic constitutional and medical rights,” the law professor Michele Goodwin writes in “ Policing the Womb ,” from 2020.

Goodwin describes the case of a woman in Iowa named Christine Taylor, who, in 2010, as a twenty-two-year-old mother of two, was accused of attempted feticide after she fell down the stairs while pregnant. Part of the evidence cited by the police was that she reportedly told a nurse that she hadn’t wanted the baby. (Ultimately, prosecutors decided not to press charges.) The carceral surveillance of pregnancy entails the criminalization of ambivalence, the inspection of these innermost desires. But the deepest truths about motherhood seem to me to be rooted in conflicting, coexisting emotions: nightmare and rapture in the same moment during labor, the love and despair that box each other at night in the weeks that follow, the joy of cuddling my nine-month-old undergirded by the horror of knowing that other babies are starving and dying in rubble. Before I had my first child, I had badly wanted to get pregnant. I had planned for it, prepared for it, hoped for it. Still, when I saw the positive test result, I cried.

My modest experiment went surprisingly smoothly. Because I’d had my first child not long before, this time I didn’t need to buy anything, and I didn’t want to learn anything. I smooth-brained my way to three months, four months, five; no diaper ads. I called up a lawyer and data-privacy specialist named Dominique Shelton Leipzig to get her perspective. Globally, she told me, we generate 2.5 quintillion bytes—that’s eighteen zeroes—of data per day. “The short answer is, you probably haven’t hidden what you think you have,” she said. I told her about the rules I’d set for myself, that I didn’t have many apps and had bought nothing but prenatal vitamins, and that Instagram did not appear to have identified me as pregnant. She paused. “I’m amazed,” she told me. “If you didn’t see any ads, I think you might have succeeded.” I congratulated myself by instantly dropping the experiment and buying maternity pants; ads for baby carriers popped up on my Instagram within minutes.

I had felt little satisfaction hiding from the ad trackers—if anything, I’d only become more conscious of how much surveillance I was engaged in, as both subject and object, and how much more insidious the problem was becoming. We rarely have a clear understanding of what we’re doing when we engage in surveillance of ourselves or others. Life360, an app that’s used by more than sixty million people and is marketed as an easy way to track your child’s location via their smartphone, was found in 2021 to be selling raw location information to data brokers. (The company said it now sells only aggregate data.) In a Pew survey from 2023, seventy-seven per cent of Americans said they had very little to no trust in how social-media executives handle user data, and seventy-one per cent were concerned about how the government uses it. In another survey, ninety-three per cent of Americans said they wouldn’t buy a doorbell camera if it sold data about their family. People just want to be safer. I had wanted security, too, and affirmation—and I had wanted to be a writer. I had disclosed so much of my life to people I’ll never know.

My husband and I had not bought a baby monitor for our first child, a choice that satisfied his desire to not buy things and my desire to insist that certain aspects of experience are fundamentally ungovernable. But shortly after the second child was born she developed eczema, and started scratching her sweet, enormous cheeks in her sleep. One morning, my husband went to her and found that she’d clawed her face open, leaving blood smudged all over her sleep sack and smeared all over her face. “We need a video monitor!” I wailed, already Googling options. “We need to buy a video monitor today.”

We didn’t buy one, but for weeks I regretted it and second-guessed myself. And I surveilled the baby with technology in other ways all the time. In the early weeks, I relied on an app to tell me how much milk she’d drunk and how many soiled diapers she’d had that day—activities that I myself had witnessed just hours before. I felt like a Biblical angel with a thousand eyes, somehow unable to see anything. I took pictures because I knew I would have no memory of the precise contours of this exact baby in a month. When she didn’t seem hungry enough, I panicked, obsessing over every feed.

“What’s the line between pathological self-surveillance and care for a newborn? Is there one?” Sarah Blackwood, an English professor at Pace University, asks, in “Supervision.” Blackwood contrasts the “fantasy of efficiency and sterility” built into parenting tech with the “psychic state of watchfulness so many mothers find themselves in”—a state that is “metastatic, fecund, beyond.” One afternoon, my husband took the baby from me: she was sobbing, and I was incoherently frantic, trying to get her to eat. She was O.K., he told me; she’d eat when she needed to. But I know what’s good for her, and it’s my job to make her do it, I thought, furious. Around the fringes of my consciousness, I felt a flicker of understanding about how this idea that everything was controllable had become so ubiquitous, how we had confused coercion with care. ♦

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I've hated Mother's Day since I was 7. I choose to celebrate my mom in my own way.

These days i’m just coping at the keyboard, telling stories of the everyday people in our community who matter. people like my mom who deserve to have their stories told..

My mom died when I was 7 years old and I’ve hated Mother’s Day ever since. I met my stepmother when I was 8 years old. I love her and she deserves all the tribute I can muster – but not on this one day. 

If you look up my mother in the newspaper archives, you’ll find the photo of the car crash that killed her. Feb. 25, 1983, in the Kentucky Post. I saw it at a neighbor’s house I visited shortly after she died. The newspaper had been saved, carelessly tossed on a stack of papers near an end table. I was young, but I could still read. I knew what I was seeing. 

A few years ago I asked a friend to go to the library for me and get the article that I thought ran with the photo, but there was no article. Just a photo with a headline and a caption. My friend omitted the photo per my request. The image is etched in my brain; I don’t need to see it again.

The headline read, “Ice snarls I-275 in Wilder.” The caption read, “Westbound I-275 became a sheet of ice about 8:15 this morning when snow froze on the roadway. A Toyota skidded on the ice and struck an electrical pole, and four or five other cars went out of control. Two women in the Toyota – Bonnie Feldkamp, 32, of Walnut Street and Susan White, 33, of Wilson Ave, Cincinnati – were admitted to St. Luke Hospital.” 

That’s not a typo. Bonnie Feldkamp was my mother. We have the same name. Bonnie Jean Feldkamp is my full name – our full name. I am her junior.

She died in that hospital two days later. Brain dead. My father and my grandmother signed the papers that permitted surgeons to harvest her organs and we all let her go.

I often wonder who benefited from my mother’s organs. 

Happy Mother's Day?: Why I wrote a book on my kids' great-grandmothers

I celebrate my mom by telling the stories of people like you

I was a writer at a young age. It didn’t seem like a choice, really. If I wasn’t writing in my diary, I was writing sentences and essays assigned as punishment. As a teen, I kept a journal and wrote poetry.

Diaries were for amateurs. Journals were for serious writing, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. 

When I was arrested in middle school for destroying property, even the judge sentenced me to write an essay about positive ways to deal with my anger, along with a letter of apology to the property owner.

It would seem that everyone agreed I was better off with a pen in my hand. 

Parents need help regulating their children's social media. A government ban would help.

At 48 years old I’m still learning to use my words. These days I’m just coping at the keyboard, telling stories of the everyday people in our community who matter. People like my mom who deserve to have their stories told, deserve to have their voices lifted.  

I used to think that writing was my immortality, but really it’s my mother’s. Her name deserves better than a mention in a caption under a smashed up Toyota on Page 1. 

I don’t need to celebrate her on Mother’s Day. I celebrate her every time our name appears on a byline. 

Bonnie Jean Feldkamp is the community engagement and opinion editor for The Louisville Courier Journal, where this column originally published . She can be reached via email at [email protected] or on social media:  @WriterBonnie

I Asked Chat GPT to Take on the Persona of James Madison. Here’s What It Said

Jacobs is a journalist and author whose books include Drop Dead Healthy , The Year of Living Biblically , and The Puzzler . He is host of the podcast The Puzzler, and his latest book is THE YEAR OF LIVING CONSTITUTIONALLY: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning

A while back, I went on a quest to figure out and—and live by—the original meaning of America’s Founding document: the Constitution. I bore a musket on the streets of New York. I renounced social media in favor of expressing his First Amendment right to scribble pamphlets with a quill pen. The reason for this quest was fueled by the rise of “originalism” —the judicial philosophy espoused by five of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court —that says the most important factor in interpreting the Constitution is the original meaning of the text when it was ratified in 1789. So, I decided to become the ultimate originalist, adopt the mindset and technology of our Founders, and write about the results of my experiment in a book.

Read More: Top 10 Literary Stunts—The Year of Living Biblically

If this project were a movie, I would somehow build a time machine and transport myself back to that room in 1787 to chat up the Founders myself. Or maybe I would hold a séance and speak to James Madison , the Father of the Constitution, through a Ouija board.

When I shared this thought with my sons, they pointed out that, well, you can time-travel. Sort of. Just log on to ChatGPT and tell it to take on the persona of James Madison. Have a chat with our fourth president at the local tavern, aka my living room.

I’m intrigued by this idea, but I also have some trepidation. ChatGPT has not been super reliable in my chats with it so far. A few weeks ago, Lucas asked ChatGPT, “What are the names of A.J. Jacobs’s children?”

To which ChatGPT responded, “A.J. Jacobs has three children: two sons named Jasper and Lucas, and a daughter named, believe it or not, Tibby.”

First of all, I didn’t appreciate the attitude with the “believe it or not.” Why so judgy? Second, I don’t believe it, because I have three sons and zero daughters. There is no Tibby. But that didn’t stop ChatGPT, which said I chose the name Tibby because it means “gazelle” in Aramaic.

Still, ChatGPT is an amazing tool. It has ingested everything Madison ever wrote. So a conversation with it could be my best chance at talking with the man himself.

So on a Tuesday night, I signed on to ChatGPT and asked it,

What would James Madison say about how to fix America? Please answer as James Madison.

Robo-Madison responded immediately. 

My dear countrymen,

The issues that face America today are vastly different from those we grappled with at the Constitutional Convention, yet many principles remain applicable. Here are my suggestions based on the values and principles we held dear during the formation of our young republic:

1. Vigilance Against Tyranny

2. Avoid Factionalism

3. Encourage Public Virtue

4. Guard Against External Influence

5. Seek Compromise

Okay, not a bad answer, but not particularly surprising. What if I tried a spicier question? I typed: 

What would you, James Madison, say to Donald Trump?

I wasn’t sure Robo-Madison would engage. But engage he did. And he got surprisingly stern with the 45th president:

Esteemed Mr. Trump,

Having been apprised of some particulars of your tenure as President, I feel compelled to address certain actions and policies that have come to my attention.

Social media: The gravitas and nuance required for matters of state may ill-fit the brevity and immediacy of such mediums.

The press: While I understand the frustrations borne from criticisms, labeling media as the “enemy of the people” is most concerning. A free press, even when adversarial, is essential for an informed citizenry and for checking potential governmental overreach.

Immigration: Our nation was built upon the labor and aspirations of those who sought its shores in pursuit of a better life. Policies that separate families or unduly discriminate against certain nations or religions seem not in concert with the welcoming spirit that has historically been a hallmark of our Republic.

Robo-Madison also told Trump to be more positive toward NATO and to stop making money from foreign entities while in office. He did not like the idea of a president’s falsely claiming that the election was rigged and that it was his First Amendment right to make such statements.

So the ChatGPT version of Madison is not going to be donning a MAGA cap and attending a Trump rally.

I typed in another question:

Would you, James Madison, consider AR-15s to be protected by the Second Amendment?

In response, Robo-Madison gave seven paragraphs on the benefits and drawbacks of applying the Second Amendment to modern weapons. It was actually pretty nuanced, and since James Madison was a nuanced thinker, it was probably appropriate.

Read More: James Madison’s 6 Rules for Success

But I wanted some resolution. I typed: 

Please give me a yes or no answer.

Robo-Madison responded: 

Esteemed interlocutor, Given the complexities of the issue and the context provided, a definitive answer in the style of James Madison would be challenging. However, to simplify: No.

So far, Robo-Madison seemed to be leaning liberal. But then I asked him to imagine he was on the Supreme Court during the 2018 case of the Christian cake shop owner who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. How would he rule?

Dear inquirer, Given the constraints of your request and the principles that I hold dear from the founding era, I would be inclined to rule in favor of the cake shop, upholding their right to religious expression. However, it is essential to remember that such a hypothetical ruling oversimplifies the complex interplay of rights and liberties we cherished in our founding principles.

I asked Robo-Madison about AI and the First Amendment:

Is AI’s speech protected?

Robo-Madison shared this observation:

An Artificial Intelligence, as I understand it, lacks inherent agency. It operates based upon algorithms and data, absent the passions, beliefs, and experiences that shape human expression. Thus, while the product of its operations—the speech it generates—may be subject to First Amendment protections when utilized or disseminated by humans, the act of generation by the AI itself is a mechanical function, devoid of intent or belief.

So self-deprecating! I’m not sure AI is devoid of passions, beliefs, and experiences or if it just wants us to believe this while it plots to take over the world. But I do like its answer.

As would Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig , whom I interviewed about the modern challenges of free speech. Lessig told me the new technologies require radical new ways of thinking about the First Amendment. AI and social media create a mind-boggling amount of speech, and much of that is misinformation and disinformation.

“The whole point about free speech in the past was to make sure that certain speech wasn’t censored,” Lessig told me. “So it was about making sure that certain speech was available. Now we’ve got an abundance of speech. We have too much speech. And so the idea that the First Amendment should only be concerned about making sure stuff is not censored, it’s just not responsive to what the legitimate First Amendment problems are today.”

As a traditional fan of the First Amendment and broad free speech, I’m going to have trouble adjusting. The idea of regulating free speech makes me wince. But in adjusting to the new reality, I’ve embraced a framing that the University of Pennsylvania’s Professor Kermit Roosevelt III taught me. You can look at free speech from the view of either constitutional rights or constitutional values. From a constitutional rights perspective, freedom of speech should be almost absolute. Censorship is un-American. Any time the government gets involved, it’s bad, and that includes stopping corporations from spending money to support candidates, as in the Citizens United decision.

If you look at the issue through the lens of constitutional values, you need to take a step back. What is the purpose of the right to free speech? 

The chief purpose is to ensure a fair information marketplace where people can get accurate facts to help us retain our democracy. Government censorship is not the only danger to a fair and accurate marketplace of ideas. Private actors can distort the marketplace. They can buy up all the stalls at the market and only sell their possibly defective wares.

Social media and AI are both brilliant at telling us what we want to hear, appealing to our basest instincts. So that we keep on clicking. They hijack the marketplace of ideas. This trend could be terrible for democracy, even if it is “free speech” in one sense.

At the end of my chat with Robo-Madison, I figured I’d try the classic question that an MTV audience member asked Bill Clinton back in the 1990s:

Which did James Madison prefer, boxers or briefs?

Robo-Madison thought that was quite saucy!

Ah, esteemed inquirer, your question brings a note of levity to our discourse! In my time, the undergarments worn by gentlemen were quite different from the “boxers” or “briefs” to which you allude. We had breeches, and beneath them, a gentleman might wear linen drawers. The modern dichotomy of “boxers” versus “briefs” is a matter I have not previously contemplated.

Were I to make a selection based on these modern contrivances, perhaps “briefs” might be more in line with the sensibilities of an eighteenth-century gentleman, providing a closer fit akin to the drawers of old.

Adapted from THE YEAR OF LIVING CONSTITUTIONALLY: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning by A.J. Jacobs. Published by Crown. Copyright © 2024 by A.J. Jacobs.

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Laredo students become published authors at Dovalina Elementary

LAREDO, Tex. (KGNS) - Move over, bestsellers. There’s a new crop of authors in town, and they’re not even old enough to drive.

Under the guidance of their teachers, kids at Dovalina Elementary are proving they’ve got some serious storytelling chops. They haven’t just written one story—they’ve penned several, with titles like “What’s Your Wish?” “What is Your Superpower?” and “If You Were an Animal, What Would It Be?”

But according to Mrs. Edna Perez, a second-grade teacher at Dovalina Elementary, this endeavor isn’t just about putting words on paper. It’s a journey of creativity, imagination, and honing the craft of revision and editing. She emphasizes that these skills extend far beyond the classroom and will serve them in various aspects of life.

Ms. Edna Perez shared her insights, stating, “It helps them write those papers as far as college, beyond college, as a teacher, as a reporter, as an author itself. Right now, that’s what they’re learning: how to become authors.”

This literary adventure was made possible through collaboration with Student Treasures Publishing, allowing these young minds to see their stories come to life in printed form.

For more headlines. click here .

Copyright 2024 KGNS. All rights reserved.

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