What is a personal narrative?
A personal narrative is a story you’ve experienced. As the author, you will convey a thought-provoking, heartfelt story about a moment in your life. These moments can be big, life-changing moments with lasting impacts or repercussions or they can be smaller moments where you learned a lesson, were reminded of an important event or person, or learned a cliche lesson along the way.
Strong personal narratives focus on how you’ve learned a lesson. The events can take place over a few hours, a few days or they can span years. The main focus of the narrative explains how you learned a valuable lesson that has meant a great deal to you.
Think about the format like this:
Explain the event/memory/challenging time in your life, then explain how you felt and struggled with this challenging moment.
In the end, explain how the struggle made you grow or realize a new perspective.
Explain how this has had a positive impact on your life and the lesson you’ve learned from this tough experience.
A personal narrative is not a creative story that never happened. Do not include elements of fantasy, science fiction, or other fictitious situations/settings.
To begin, create an idea web, or a list. Tell when one of the given topics impacted your own life. Explain what happened. Tell how it made you feel. What did you decide to do after the event? What lesson did you learn? How has this event changed your life or your views on certain experiences?
Idea Web Generators for Brainstorming:
The personal narrative will:
It should include an introduction, a thesis, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Every piece of narrative writing should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
use strong verbs and intentional word choice. Avoid “be verbs”: am, is, are, was, were. Instead, use active verbs that communicate ideas and movement.
Use sensory details to show your readers your story, rather than tell them. Paint a picture with your words.
Use very few adverbs and qualifiers. Avoid words like really, very, sort of, kind of, etc. Say what you want to say as simply and strongly as possible.
Important events should appear in the story as they happen, rather than being vaguely referred to in later parts of the story.
Writing should be organized. Your writing can be organized chronologically, spatially, or in order of importance.
The essay should have a clear purpose that offers value to the reader as well as the narrator.
The verb tense stays consistent throughout. If you are talking about the past, stay in the past. If you are talking in the present, stay in the present.
Use 1st person point of view
Adhere to the chosen topic.
Tell about a personal experience, a challenge overcome, or a lesson learned.
Be well organized in chronological order of events happening.
Show your creative use of tone, voice, word choice, dialogue, use of sensory words in descriptions, expression, and sentence structure.