narrative essay about first love

Narrative Essay Sample: “My First Love”

Love is in the air, love is everywhere!

First feelings are always special, new, unexplored, coupled with childish innocence and a pure vision of the world.

It may sound ridiculous, but the fist time I felt that I’m alive, was the moment I felt in love for the first time. It was long time ago, at the village of my grandparents. I was 7-year-old boy and parents brought me to grandma for the whole summer. She was a 7-year-old girl, a granddaughter of my grandmother’s friend. We lived nearby and grandmothers often visited each other. The first time I saw her, I decided that she was the most perfect human being on the earth. The only presence of her nearby made my feel happy and delighted. Despite of my young age, I’ve understood that the world is made of love and it’s one of reasons that inspires mankind to live and create. I even have written my first poem:

The moment I wake up I think of love The purity and gloss About you and come across This light is you I love you!

We spent much time together, we had endless themes to talk about! In the garden we had a special place, where we dreamed and talked. One day I climbed on the biggest apple tree to pick ripe apples for her and cut out hearts on them. This basket of love apples should be my love confession. While I was doing this, I didn’t mention that she came and was sitting and watching me for a while. I felt that she hugged me from the back and we continued sitting side-by-side and eating those love apples. And at the end we kissed. It was funny and unusually. From those time we haven’t kissed, but kept warm relations. When I returned to my hometown, we wrote each other more than a year, but one day she didn’t answer.

I like to pick this memory from my pocket on a nasty day, and life turns bright. The memories are so deep and clear, as I’m still a little boy, hanging around the gardens and singing the beautiful song about love.

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Latest articles

First Love Stories: 8 People Share What Their First Love Felt Like

By Teen Vogue

Everyone says you'll never forget your first love , and it's absolutely true. There's nothing like the feeling of falling in love , and the first time you feel that spark, you're changed for good. It's sort of an indescribable thing — everyone has a different first love experience, but the essence of it is the same. People talk about magic, about fire, about everything falling into place. 

In honor of Valentine's Day, we asked eight people to share their first love stories. We got the heartwarming and the heartbreaking, and some funny stories along the way. 

The Fling Turned First Love

My first love felt like speaking a new language, one that only we knew. It took months for love to come — at first it was a fling, never meant to be shared outside my dirty Boston sublet where we shacked up all summer long. But when school started back up in the fall, we didn't part ways like we'd planned. Instead, we spent all our free time together, exploring the city and each other. They told me they loved me one night in my bed by tracing the letters on my palm. I guessed each letter as they wrote it, stringing them together to name the feeling we both shared. Somehow, we both knew our love wouldn't last forever, but it didn't stop us from reveling in the moment. We shared a beautiful, supportive, and thrilling love for two years before it dissolved. The end was painful, gut wrenching, and now we no longer talk — the language we wrote together is dead, but I still remember how to speak it.

The High School Sweetheart

My first love was my high school sweetheart. I was the new girl and he approached me at my locker to introduce himself. I became really close with his best friend and one day, while his friend and I were talking, I did a split. Eugene immediately excused himself from the conversation he was having with another girl and rushed over to say how that was amazing. He would walk me home (he lived a whole city away), cheer me on at my games, write me notes, talk about me wherever he was. Everyone knew Eugene loved and was with Darlene. I’ll never forget how one day I came home from my shift at the hospital and he messaged me to go downstairs and check the mailbox. Inside were 2 bags of my favorite candy. It meant the world to me. He would drive me around to the weirdest places just because I wanted to go. He paid attention to the small details about me and it’s something I’ve always loved. I'm so thankful for him being my first love because he’s shown me, for the most part, how I would like to be loved and that it’s possible. 

The Best Friend Love

We met when we were 15, and it was the most slow-burn friendship to falling in love with the whole of someone. Like finding your best friend and falling in love with them. And then it was paperclip rings, and quiet moments at the beach, and dramatic first kisses, and dancing. So much dancing. Like the electricity sh*t but not cringe. Like real and premature ventricular contractions, heart skipping beats. Like looking in someone’s eyes and knowing that they aren’t looking at you, they see you. Like they aren’t hearing, they’re listening . Where even the most ordinary moments feel extraordinary.  It’s like meeting someone’s brain and, even if they’re totally different, it just makes sense. Five years later, I still love him, and it’s magical. Just magic.

The Long Distance Lover

I met my first love at 11 years old when I was living in the Philippines. We got “together” (in the way pre-teens can get together) at 12, but then broke up when my family moved to Ireland. At 15, we wrote LETTERS to each other and got back together again and stayed together for the next five years! Not a happy ending, though. He ended up cheating on me. I also have to add that I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend because my parents were very strict, so it was a lot of sneaking around and asking my cousins for help so we could meet up.

The Check Yes Or No

My first love was a boy named John in elementary school. I thought he was the cutest boy in all of the fifth grade. I would try to play with him through recess and talk to him in class, but he just wouldn't give me the time of the day. One day, I was brave enough to write him a letter, literally a 'Dear John' letter. I asked one of his friends if they could give it to him and they did. I remember standing on the other side of the playground, waiting for him to read the letter, and I watched him take the letter and throw it in the garbage. I was devastated. My little 11-year-old heart was broken and I vowed to never speak or look at him ever again. Roughly 10 years later, a group of us contacted each other on Facebook and decided to meet up for a reunion. I saw John again for the first time after nearly a decade and we made up for lost time, catching up with each other and what we had been up to after high school. We dated briefly after that but it didn't work out. We were both in different places mentally. Although we are both parents now and just Facebook friends, I still consider him my first love and my first heartbreak.

The Brace-Locking Romance

My first love was this boy Josh who dated all my friends. It was a very PEN15 situation. Finally, it was my turn to be his girlfriend. So, one night when my father was sleeping, we snuck out to the roof of my apartment building and kissed — it was my first kiss. Of course, being that we were both 13 years old, when we kissed our braces locked and we couldn’t separate ourselves from each other. We were stuck together! By the time we separated, my dad and the super busted us on the rooftop. I was grounded for a week, but still snuck phone calls to my first love in the bathroom at night and sat with him at lunch until he dated someone else. I knew because he sent her a note in home room. Young love is hard! 

The Short King

My first love was named Joey, and he lived around the corner from me. We grew up together and we always had a mutual flirtation. When we started middle school, he asked me out on a date… Finally! I had a growth spurt really early on and by the time I was 13, I was really tall. He hadn’t had his yet, and was four inches shorter than me. But that didn’t matter to me. When we went out on our first date, the usher made me buy an adult movie ticket for myself and a child ticket for him. Now, the reason why they made me buy the ticket is because they thought that I was his mother or older sibling because I was so much taller than him. Anyway, I was totally humiliated because it ruined the vibe. But, that didn’t stop us from dating for the next two years.

By Sara Delgado

By Donya Momenian

The Spoiled Salad Love

I had a date with my crush in junior high school. We were going to hang out at the local arcade. Before I went, I was eating dinner with my family and I shook a container of salad dressing and the whole thing exploded all over my hair and my outfit. I tried to shower and change my clothes but I still smelled like Italian salad dressing. The whole time we were out he was asking me if I smelled what he was smelling — I said no. Needless to say, we never went out again because I smelled like a salad on our first date.

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By Aiyana Ishmael

Home — Essay Samples — Life — First Love — Life Lessons That the First Love Taught Me

Life Lessons that The First Love Taught Me

• Categories: First Love Life Lesson Love Story

About this sample

Words: 1219 |

Published: Jul 7, 2022

Words: 1219 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Table of contents

The true first love, my love story is not a common one.

• “How To Tell If You're In An Emotionally Abusive Relationship.” One Love Foundation, 21 Aug. 2019, https://www.joinonelove.org/learn/emotional_abuse/. 

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Lesson of the Day

Writing Narratives With ‘Tiny Love Stories’

This New York Times feature invites readers to tell love stories from their own lives in no more than 100 words. Let your students give it a try.

By Natalie Proulx

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

Lesson Overview

Featured Column: Tiny Love Stories

Tiny Love Stories began as a challenge from the editors of The New York Times’s popular Modern Love column: “What kind of love story can you share in two tweets, an Instagram caption or a Facebook post? Tell us a love story from your own life — happy or sad, capturing a moment or a lifetime — in no more than 100 words.”

Now they publish these sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, miniature reader stories weekly. Even though they’re short, they have all the essential elements of great narrative storytelling: character, conflict, resolution and a universal message about love.

In this lesson, we invite you to read several tiny love stories of your choosing and then write your own and share it with us in the comments.

Ideas for Teachers: This activity is a bite-size way to begin exploring narrative writing. You might use it as an introductory activity to get your students familiar with narrative structure before diving into longer texts. You can find more helpful resources for teaching narrative writing with The New York Times in our Narrative Writing Unit Plan .

Who or what do you love?

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

A relationship that has had a significant impact on my life is …

Keep in mind that this relationship can be with anyone or anything that is important to you: for example, your friends, your parents, your siblings, your grandparents, a romantic partner, a crush, a pet, your phone, a video game, a hobby, a team, a teacher, a country, a city or anything else. You might also consider those things that you once loved but left you heartbroken, like an old friend, a past love, a deceased pet or a sport you decided to quit.

First, choose at least three of the 16 tiny love stories in this PDF to read. If none of these inspire you, you can find many more in the Modern Love column .

You might read one together as a class, one with a partner and one on your own. As you read, respond to the questions below.

Questions for Writing and Discussion

As you read, annotate and take notes on what you notice about the way these pieces are written. Here are some questions to consider:

1. What do you notice about the types of relationships explored in the stories you read? In what ways are they all similar? In what ways are they different? How do they relate to the column’s theme of “modern love”?

2. Every narrative, no matter how short, has some kind of tension or conflict driving it. What is the conflict in one of the stories you read? See if you can identify a line that communicates the central problem.

3. Daniel Jones, the editor of Modern Love, suggests that stories, even ones as small as these, need to “unfold in a dramatic arc, with mystery and surprise.” Do the stories you read do this? Choose one and analyze how the author builds tension and suspense to keep you reading.

4. Take a look at the first lines of each of the stories you read. What do you notice about how these short essays begin? In what ways do they try to grab your attention as a reader?

5. Even though they are nonfiction, narratives often have “characters.” Who are the main characters in one of the stories you read? Circle or highlight words or lines that describe the characters. What do these tidbits reveal about their desires, hopes or fears? How does this information help drive the story forward?

6. Similarly, stories this short will often take place in a particular setting. What is the setting of one of the stories you read, if there is one? What role does the setting play in the story?

7. Which details stand out most to you in one of the stories you read? What did you find intriguing, funny, moving or meaningful about them? Underline or highlight your favorite line. Why did you love it?

8. Now, take a look at the last lines of each of the stories you read. What do you notice about how they end? How is the conflict or tension resolved? What message about love does each story convey?

9. Each of these writers has a different style of writing, or “writer’s voice.” Choose one story that you think has an interesting style. What do you appreciate about the way this author writes? What words, phrases, grammatical constructions or sentence structures help develop this writer’s unique voice?

10. Which “writer’s moves” from any of the stories that you read do you admire that you’d like to try in your own tiny love story?

Going Further

Now, it’s your turn: Write your own tiny love story of no more than 100 words. In the words of the Modern Love editors, it can be “happy or sad, capturing a moment or a lifetime.” But it must be true and about your own life.

You might choose to write about the relationship you focused on in the warm up, or you might come up with something completely different.

As you write, keep in mind the writer’s moves you noted during your annotations, and consider these tips from the editor of Modern Love:

“Don’t underestimate the power of a reader’s curiosity, whether you’re writing a short story or a personal essay … It needs to unfold in a dramatic arc, with mystery and surprise.”

“Without conflict, there’s no narrative.”

“That said, sometimes the conflict is resolved in a ‘happy’ way … for me, a happy ending is when the writer understands something he or she didn’t understand before.”

“A story can end sadly in that the storyteller doesn’t get what he or she wants, but those aren’t ‘depressing’ endings to me as long as the person learns and can express that beautifully.”

“As part of your revision process, try starting your essay a little later, in the midst of dialogue or events. Sometimes it’s more intriguing for us to be dropped into the action than to receive all the background information up front.”

“In many cases, the pretty good essay is stopped from being more by an ending that fails to boost it to another level. The ending is where a writer’s thinking and understanding and level of sophistication comes to full bloom. The ending is where the emotional impact remains flat or fizzles or soars. The ending, when done well, can feel simultaneously inevitable and surprising.”

When you are done, post your 100-word story in the comments. Or, if you like, submit it to the Modern Love column for a chance to be published.

About Lesson of the Day

• Find all our Lessons of the Day in this column . • Teachers, watch our on-demand webinar to learn how to use this feature in your classroom.

Natalie Proulx joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2017 after working as an English language arts teacher and curriculum writer. More about Natalie Proulx

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 3 great narrative essay examples + tips for writing.

General Education

A narrative essay is one of the most intimidating assignments you can be handed at any level of your education. Where you've previously written argumentative essays that make a point or analytic essays that dissect meaning, a narrative essay asks you to write what is effectively a story .

But unlike a simple work of creative fiction, your narrative essay must have a clear and concrete motif —a recurring theme or idea that you’ll explore throughout. Narrative essays are less rigid, more creative in expression, and therefore pretty different from most other essays you’ll be writing.

But not to fear—in this article, we’ll be covering what a narrative essay is, how to write a good one, and also analyzing some personal narrative essay examples to show you what a great one looks like.

What Is a Narrative Essay?

At first glance, a narrative essay might sound like you’re just writing a story. Like the stories you're used to reading, a narrative essay is generally (but not always) chronological, following a clear throughline from beginning to end. Even if the story jumps around in time, all the details will come back to one specific theme, demonstrated through your choice in motifs.

Unlike many creative stories, however, your narrative essay should be based in fact. That doesn’t mean that every detail needs to be pure and untainted by imagination, but rather that you shouldn’t wholly invent the events of your narrative essay. There’s nothing wrong with inventing a person’s words if you can’t remember them exactly, but you shouldn’t say they said something they weren’t even close to saying.

Another big difference between narrative essays and creative fiction—as well as other kinds of essays—is that narrative essays are based on motifs. A motif is a dominant idea or theme, one that you establish before writing the essay. As you’re crafting the narrative, it’ll feed back into your motif to create a comprehensive picture of whatever that motif is.

For example, say you want to write a narrative essay about how your first day in high school helped you establish your identity. You might discuss events like trying to figure out where to sit in the cafeteria, having to describe yourself in five words as an icebreaker in your math class, or being unsure what to do during your lunch break because it’s no longer acceptable to go outside and play during lunch. All of those ideas feed back into the central motif of establishing your identity.

The important thing to remember is that while a narrative essay is typically told chronologically and intended to read like a story, it is not purely for entertainment value. A narrative essay delivers its theme by deliberately weaving the motifs through the events, scenes, and details. While a narrative essay may be entertaining, its primary purpose is to tell a complete story based on a central meaning.

Unlike other essay forms, it is totally okay—even expected—to use first-person narration in narrative essays. If you’re writing a story about yourself, it’s natural to refer to yourself within the essay. It’s also okay to use other perspectives, such as third- or even second-person, but that should only be done if it better serves your motif. Generally speaking, your narrative essay should be in first-person perspective.

Though your motif choices may feel at times like you’re making a point the way you would in an argumentative essay, a narrative essay’s goal is to tell a story, not convince the reader of anything. Your reader should be able to tell what your motif is from reading, but you don’t have to change their mind about anything. If they don’t understand the point you are making, you should consider strengthening the delivery of the events and descriptions that support your motif.

Narrative essays also share some features with analytical essays, in which you derive meaning from a book, film, or other media. But narrative essays work differently—you’re not trying to draw meaning from an existing text, but rather using an event you’ve experienced to convey meaning. In an analytical essay, you examine narrative, whereas in a narrative essay you create narrative.

The structure of a narrative essay is also a bit different than other essays. You’ll generally be getting your point across chronologically as opposed to grouping together specific arguments in paragraphs or sections. To return to the example of an essay discussing your first day of high school and how it impacted the shaping of your identity, it would be weird to put the events out of order, even if not knowing what to do after lunch feels like a stronger idea than choosing where to sit. Instead of organizing to deliver your information based on maximum impact, you’ll be telling your story as it happened, using concrete details to reinforce your theme.

3 Great Narrative Essay Examples

One of the best ways to learn how to write a narrative essay is to look at a great narrative essay sample. Let’s take a look at some truly stellar narrative essay examples and dive into what exactly makes them work so well.

A Ticket to the Fair by David Foster Wallace

Today is Press Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, and I’m supposed to be at the fairgrounds by 9:00 A.M. to get my credentials. I imagine credentials to be a small white card in the band of a fedora. I’ve never been considered press before. My real interest in credentials is getting into rides and shows for free. I’m fresh in from the East Coast, for an East Coast magazine. Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish. I think they asked me to do this because I grew up here, just a couple hours’ drive from downstate Springfield. I never did go to the state fair, though—I pretty much topped out at the county fair level. Actually, I haven’t been back to Illinois for a long time, and I can’t say I’ve missed it.

Throughout this essay, David Foster Wallace recounts his experience as press at the Illinois State Fair. But it’s clear from this opening that he’s not just reporting on the events exactly as they happened—though that’s also true— but rather making a point about how the East Coast, where he lives and works, thinks about the Midwest.

In his opening paragraph, Wallace states that outright: “Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish.”

Not every motif needs to be stated this clearly , but in an essay as long as Wallace’s, particularly since the audience for such a piece may feel similarly and forget that such a large portion of the country exists, it’s important to make that point clear.

But Wallace doesn’t just rest on introducing his motif and telling the events exactly as they occurred from there. It’s clear that he selects events that remind us of that idea of East Coast cynicism , such as when he realizes that the Help Me Grow tent is standing on top of fake grass that is killing the real grass beneath, when he realizes the hypocrisy of craving a corn dog when faced with a real, suffering pig, when he’s upset for his friend even though he’s not the one being sexually harassed, and when he witnesses another East Coast person doing something he wouldn’t dare to do.

Wallace is literally telling the audience exactly what happened, complete with dates and timestamps for when each event occurred. But he’s also choosing those events with a purpose—he doesn’t focus on details that don’t serve his motif. That’s why he discusses the experiences of people, how the smells are unappealing to him, and how all the people he meets, in cowboy hats, overalls, or “black spandex that looks like cheesecake leotards,” feel almost alien to him.

All of these details feed back into the throughline of East Coast thinking that Wallace introduces in the first paragraph. He also refers back to it in the essay’s final paragraph, stating:

At last, an overarching theory blooms inside my head: megalopolitan East Coasters’ summer treats and breaks and literally ‘getaways,’ flights-from—from crowds, noise, heat, dirt, the stress of too many sensory choices….The East Coast existential treat is escape from confines and stimuli—quiet, rustic vistas that hold still, turn inward, turn away. Not so in the rural Midwest. Here you’re pretty much away all the time….Something in a Midwesterner sort of actuates , deep down, at a public event….The real spectacle that draws us here is us.

Throughout this journey, Wallace has tried to demonstrate how the East Coast thinks about the Midwest, ultimately concluding that they are captivated by the Midwest’s less stimuli-filled life, but that the real reason they are interested in events like the Illinois State Fair is that they are, in some ways, a means of looking at the East Coast in a new, estranging way.

The reason this works so well is that Wallace has carefully chosen his examples, outlined his motif and themes in the first paragraph, and eventually circled back to the original motif with a clearer understanding of his original point.

When outlining your own narrative essay, try to do the same. Start with a theme, build upon it with examples, and return to it in the end with an even deeper understanding of the original issue. You don’t need this much space to explore a theme, either—as we’ll see in the next example, a strong narrative essay can also be very short.

Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolf

After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.

In this essay, Virginia Woolf explains her encounter with a dying moth. On surface level, this essay is just a recounting of an afternoon in which she watched a moth die—it’s even established in the title. But there’s more to it than that. Though Woolf does not begin her essay with as clear a motif as Wallace, it’s not hard to pick out the evidence she uses to support her point, which is that the experience of this moth is also the human experience.

In the title, Woolf tells us this essay is about death. But in the first paragraph, she seems to mostly be discussing life—the moth is “content with life,” people are working in the fields, and birds are flying. However, she mentions that it is mid-September and that the fields were being plowed. It’s autumn and it’s time for the harvest; the time of year in which many things die.

In this short essay, she chronicles the experience of watching a moth seemingly embody life, then die. Though this essay is literally about a moth, it’s also about a whole lot more than that. After all, moths aren’t the only things that die—Woolf is also reflecting on her own mortality, as well as the mortality of everything around her.

At its core, the essay discusses the push and pull of life and death, not in a way that’s necessarily sad, but in a way that is accepting of both. Woolf begins by setting up the transitional fall season, often associated with things coming to an end, and raises the ideas of pleasure, vitality, and pity.

At one point, Woolf tries to help the dying moth, but reconsiders, as it would interfere with the natural order of the world. The moth’s death is part of the natural order of the world, just like fall, just like her own eventual death.

All these themes are set up in the beginning and explored throughout the essay’s narrative. Though Woolf doesn’t directly state her theme, she reinforces it by choosing a small, isolated event—watching a moth die—and illustrating her point through details.

With this essay, we can see that you don’t need a big, weird, exciting event to discuss an important meaning. Woolf is able to explore complicated ideas in a short essay by being deliberate about what details she includes, just as you can be in your own essays.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.

Like Woolf, Baldwin does not lay out his themes in concrete terms—unlike Wallace, there’s no clear sentence that explains what he’ll be talking about. However, you can see the motifs quite clearly: death, fatherhood, struggle, and race.

Throughout the narrative essay, Baldwin discusses the circumstances of his father’s death, including his complicated relationship with his father. By introducing those motifs in the first paragraph, the reader understands that everything discussed in the essay will come back to those core ideas. When Baldwin talks about his experience with a white teacher taking an interest in him and his father’s resistance to that, he is also talking about race and his father’s death. When he talks about his father’s death, he is also talking about his views on race. When he talks about his encounters with segregation and racism, he is talking, in part, about his father.

Because his father was a hard, uncompromising man, Baldwin struggles to reconcile the knowledge that his father was right about many things with his desire to not let that hardness consume him, as well.

Baldwin doesn’t explicitly state any of this, but his writing so often touches on the same motifs that it becomes clear he wants us to think about all these ideas in conversation with one another.

At the end of the essay, Baldwin makes it more clear:

This fight begins, however, in the heart and it had now been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.

Here, Baldwin ties together the themes and motifs into one clear statement: that he must continue to fight and recognize injustice, especially racial injustice, just as his father did. But unlike his father, he must do it beginning with himself—he must not let himself be closed off to the world as his father was. And yet, he still wishes he had his father for guidance, even as he establishes that he hopes to be a different man than his father.

In this essay, Baldwin loads the front of the essay with his motifs, and, through his narrative, weaves them together into a theme. In the end, he comes to a conclusion that connects all of those things together and leaves the reader with a lasting impression of completion—though the elements may have been initially disparate, in the end everything makes sense.

You can replicate this tactic of introducing seemingly unattached ideas and weaving them together in your own essays. By introducing those motifs, developing them throughout, and bringing them together in the end, you can demonstrate to your reader how all of them are related. However, it’s especially important to be sure that your motifs and clear and consistent throughout your essay so that the conclusion feels earned and consistent—if not, readers may feel mislead.

5 Key Tips for Writing Narrative Essays

Narrative essays can be a lot of fun to write since they’re so heavily based on creativity. But that can also feel intimidating—sometimes it’s easier to have strict guidelines than to have to make it all up yourself. Here are a few tips to keep your narrative essay feeling strong and fresh.

Develop Strong Motifs

Motifs are the foundation of a narrative essay . What are you trying to say? How can you say that using specific symbols or events? Those are your motifs.

In the same way that an argumentative essay’s body should support its thesis, the body of your narrative essay should include motifs that support your theme.

Try to avoid cliches, as these will feel tired to your readers. Instead of roses to symbolize love, try succulents. Instead of the ocean representing some vast, unknowable truth, try the depths of your brother’s bedroom. Keep your language and motifs fresh and your essay will be even stronger!

Use First-Person Perspective

In many essays, you’re expected to remove yourself so that your points stand on their own. Not so in a narrative essay—in this case, you want to make use of your own perspective.

Sometimes a different perspective can make your point even stronger. If you want someone to identify with your point of view, it may be tempting to choose a second-person perspective. However, be sure you really understand the function of second-person; it’s very easy to put a reader off if the narration isn’t expertly deployed.

If you want a little bit of distance, third-person perspective may be okay. But be careful—too much distance and your reader may feel like the narrative lacks truth.

That’s why first-person perspective is the standard. It keeps you, the writer, close to the narrative, reminding the reader that it really happened. And because you really know what happened and how, you’re free to inject your own opinion into the story without it detracting from your point, as it would in a different type of essay.

Stick to the Truth

Your essay should be true. However, this is a creative essay, and it’s okay to embellish a little. Rarely in life do we experience anything with a clear, concrete meaning the way somebody in a book might. If you flub the details a little, it’s okay—just don’t make them up entirely.

Also, nobody expects you to perfectly recall details that may have happened years ago. You may have to reconstruct dialog from your memory and your imagination. That’s okay, again, as long as you aren’t making it up entirely and assigning made-up statements to somebody.

Dialog is a powerful tool. A good conversation can add flavor and interest to a story, as we saw demonstrated in David Foster Wallace’s essay. As previously mentioned, it’s okay to flub it a little, especially because you’re likely writing about an experience you had without knowing that you’d be writing about it later.

However, don’t rely too much on it. Your narrative essay shouldn’t be told through people explaining things to one another; the motif comes through in the details. Dialog can be one of those details, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Use Sensory Descriptions

Because a narrative essay is a story, you can use sensory details to make your writing more interesting. If you’re describing a particular experience, you can go into detail about things like taste, smell, and hearing in a way that you probably wouldn’t do in any other essay style.

These details can tie into your overall motifs and further your point. Woolf describes in great detail what she sees while watching the moth, giving us the sense that we, too, are watching the moth. In Wallace’s essay, he discusses the sights, sounds, and smells of the Illinois State Fair to help emphasize his point about its strangeness. And in Baldwin’s essay, he describes shattered glass as a “wilderness,” and uses the feelings of his body to describe his mental state.

All these descriptions anchor us not only in the story, but in the motifs and themes as well. One of the tools of a writer is making the reader feel as you felt, and sensory details help you achieve that.

What’s Next?

Looking to brush up on your essay-writing capabilities before the ACT? This guide to ACT English will walk you through some of the best strategies and practice questions to get you prepared!

Part of practicing for the ACT is ensuring your word choice and diction are on point. Check out this guide to some of the most common errors on the ACT English section to be sure that you're not making these common mistakes!

A solid understanding of English principles will help you make an effective point in a narrative essay, and you can get that understanding through taking a rigorous assortment of high school English classes !

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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Narrative Essay

Narrative Essay Examples

10+ Interesting Narrative Essay Examples Plus Writing Tips!

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Narrative Essay - A Complete Writing Guide with Examples

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Best Narrative Essay Topics 2023 for Students

Crafting a Winning Narrative Essay Outline: A Step-by-Step Guide

Many students struggle with crafting engaging and impactful narrative essays. They often find it challenging to weave their personal experiences into coherent and compelling stories.

If you’re having a hard time, don't worry! 

We’ve compiled a range of narrative essay examples that will serve as helpful tools for you to get started. These examples will provide a clear path for crafting engaging and powerful narrative essays.

So, keep reading and find our expertly written examples!

• 1. Narrative Essay Definition
• 2. Narrative Essay Examples
• 3. Narrative Essay Examples for Students
• 4. Narrative Essay Topics
• 5. Narrative Essay Writing Tips

Narrative Essay Definition

Writing a narrative essay is a unique form of storytelling that revolves around personal experiences, aiming to immerse the reader in the author's world. It's a piece of writing that delves into the depths of thoughts and feelings. 

In a narrative essay, life experiences take center stage, serving as the main substance of the story. It's a powerful tool for writers to convey a personal journey, turning experiences into a captivating tale. This form of storytelling is an artful display of emotions intended to engage readers, leaving the reader feeling like they are a part of the story.

By focusing on a specific theme, event, emotions, and reflections, a narrative essay weaves a storyline that leads the reader through the author's experiences. 

The Essentials of Narrative Essays

Let's start with the basics. The four types of essays are argumentative essays , descriptive essays , expository essays , and narrative essays.

The goal of a narrative essay is to tell a compelling tale from one person's perspective. A narrative essay uses all components you’d find in a typical story, such as a beginning, middle, and conclusion, as well as plot, characters, setting, and climax.

The narrative essay's goal is the plot, which should be detailed enough to reach a climax. Here's how it works:

• It's usually presented in chronological order.
• It has a function. This is typically evident in the thesis statement's opening paragraph.
• It may include speech.
• It's told with sensory details and vivid language, drawing the reader in. All of these elements are connected to the writer's major argument in some way.

Before writing your essay, make sure you go through a sufficient number of narrative essay examples. These examples will help you in knowing the dos and don’ts of a good narrative essay.

It is always a better option to have some sense of direction before you start anything. Below, you can find important details and a bunch of narrative essay examples. These examples will also help you build your content according to the format. 

Here is a how to start a narrative essay example:

Sample Narrative Essay

The examples inform the readers about the writing style and structure of the narration. The essay below will help you understand how to create a story and build this type of essay in no time.

Here is another narrative essay examples 500 words:

Narrative Essay Examples for Students

Narrative essays offer students a platform to express their experiences and creativity. These examples show how to effectively structure and present personal stories for education.

Here are some helpful narrative essay examples:

Narrative Essay Examples Middle School

Narrative Essay Examples for Grade 7

Narrative Essay Examples for Grade 8

Grade 11 Narrative Essay Examples

Narrative Essay Example For High School

Narrative Essay Example For College

Personal Narrative Essay Example

Descriptive Narrative Essay Example

3rd Person Narrative Essay Example

Narrative Essay Topics

Here are some narrative essay topics to help you get started with your narrative essay writing.

• When I got my first bunny
• When I moved to Canada
• I haven’t experienced this freezing temperature ever before
• The moment I won the basketball finale
• A memorable day at the museum
• How I talk to my parrot
• The day I saw the death
• When I finally rebelled against my professor

Need more topics? Check out these extensive narrative essay topics to get creative ideas!

Narrative Essay Writing Tips

Narrative essays give you the freedom to be creative, but it can be tough to make yours special. Use these tips to make your story interesting:

• Share your story from a personal viewpoint, engaging the reader with your experiences.
• Use vivid descriptions to paint a clear picture of the setting, characters, and emotions involved.
• Organize events in chronological order for a smooth and understandable narrative.
• Bring characters to life through their actions, dialogue, and personalities.
• Employ dialogue sparingly to add realism and progression to the narrative.
• Engage readers by evoking emotions through your storytelling.
• End with reflection or a lesson learned from the experience, providing insight.

Now you have essay examples and tips to help you get started, you have a solid starting point for crafting compelling narrative essays.

However, if storytelling isn't your forte, you can always turn to our essay service for help.

Our writers are specialists who can tackle any type of essay with great skill. With their experience, you get a top-quality, 100% plagiarism-free essay everytime.

So, let our narrative essay writing service make sure your narrative essay stands out. Order now!

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Book Review: Memoirist Lilly Dancyger’s penetrating essays explore the power of female friendships

This cover image released by Dial Press shows “First Love” by Lilly Dancyger. (Dial Press via AP)

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Who means more to you — your friends or your lovers? In a vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays, Lilly Dancyger explores the powerful role that female friendships played in her chaotic upbringing marked by her parents’ heroin use and her father’s untimely death when she was only 12.

“First Love: Essays on Friendship” begins with a beautiful paean to her cousin Sabina, who was raped and murdered at age 20 on her way home from a club. As little kids, their older relatives used to call them Snow White and Rose Red after the Grimm’s fairy tale, “two sisters who are not rivals or foils, but simply love each other.”

That simple, uncomplicated love would become the template for a series of subsequent relationships with girls and women that helped her survive her self-destructive adolescence and provided unconditional support as she scrambled to create a new identity as a “hypercompetent” writer, teacher and editor. “It’s true that I’ve never been satisfied with friendships that stay on the surface. That my friends are my family, my truest beloveds, each relationship a world of its own,” she writes in the title essay “First Love.”

The collection stands out not just for its elegant, unadorned writing but also for the way she effortlessly pivots between personal history and spot-on cultural criticism that both comments on and critiques the way that girls and women have been portrayed — and have portrayed themselves — in the media, including on online platforms like Tumblr and Instagram.

For instance, she examines the 1994 Peter Jackson film, “Heavenly Creatures,” based on the true story of two teenage girls who bludgeoned to death one of their mothers. And in the essay “Sad Girls,” about the suicide of a close friend, she analyzes the allure of self-destructive figures like Sylvia Plath and Janis Joplin to a certain type of teen, including herself, who wallows in sadness and wants to make sure “the world knew we were in pain.”

In the last essay, “On Murder Memoirs,” Dancyger considers the runaway popularity of true crime stories as she tries to explain her decision not to attend the trial of the man charged with killing her cousin — even though she was trained as a journalist and wrote a well-regarded book about her late father that relied on investigative reporting. “When I finally sat down to write about Sabina, the story that came out was not about murder at all,” she says. “It was a love story.”

Readers can be thankful that it did.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews