http://www.ck12.org Chapter 2. Narrative Essay
Thus, it follows that the organization of the paper will also be more personal in nature. Unlike a narrative essay
based on another individual, an autobiographical narrative will always contain your personal thoughts, desires, and
motivations. While it is hard to know the motives of other individuals when writing a biographical narrative, unless
you know the individual well, you always have access to the motivations for your own personal development. Hence,
when you organize your autobiographical narrative you must format your essay around the events that promote your
personal growth and the feeling you experienced before, during, and after these events.
There are several ways to incorporate your thoughts, feelings, and motivations into the organization of your paper.
First, you can consider integrating your description of certain events with your motives and thoughts for the events.
This way, you present the events and your motivations both in chronological order and simultaneously. This means
that you are describing the events and your feelings as they occurred, or at the same time. Second, you can consider
blocking your description of your events and your feelings, providing a paragraph describing the event followed by
a paragraph describing your motivations. Also, you could also reverse this blocking format to first provide your
motivations and then the description of the event.
TABLE2.1: Below is a table containing examples of both table types.
Integrated description and motivations Blocked descriptive and motivations
My sixteenth birthday was when it all began. It was the
first girl-boy party I had ever had. I had had to beg my
parents for month to have that party. Once they said
yes, I had worried for weeks about what I was going
to wear. When the day came, I was so excited that my
crush Brandon was coming. As I sat next to him during
the movie, I could feel my heart race. We were sitting
side by side, close enough to touch. I slowly moved
my hand towards his, wondering if he wanted to hold
my hand like I wanted to hold his and fearing that he
didn’t.My sixteenth birthday was at my house on a Saturday
during the summer, and it would be a boy-girl party. I
had planned the whole day. First, we would swim in the
pool in my backyard while my dad and mom prepared
hamburgers. After we ate, we would watch a movie in
my living room. At the end of the night, we would have
cake, and I would open my presents.
Since it took me weeks to convince my parents to have
the party, I was very excited when it finally rolled
around. My crush Brandon was going to come, and I
hoped that he would finally make a move. I thought
that the movie would be a perfect chance to show him
that I wanted to be his girlfriend.How do these two examples compare? Although they both narrate the same event, is one more effective than the
other? Generally, the first organizational scheme (when you integrate description and motivations together) is the
most seamless. By incorporating the two together, you provide the reader with a more complete picture of the event
- as if the reader is experiencing the event as it unfolds in your narration. However, sometimes this formatting does
not work, specifically with complicated events. If you feel that the event you are narrating is too difficult to explain
or clarify, then you should consider breaking your description and thoughts into two separate paragraphs. Although,
you need to be aware of how this affects the story you are telling. Do you want the importance of the event to be
at the end? In doing so, you make the event seem more suspenseful, and you can make the reader more compelled
to finish your narrative. Nevertheless, organizing your paper in this way places more of a burden on you as a writer
because you must clearly connect the separate ideas in the paragraphs.
Regardless of the organizational scheme you choose, you must properly describe your personal growth. In order
to do so, you must organize your essay around one significant event or a collection of interrelated specific events.
Generally, the number of events you include defines the amount of detail you put into describing your events. If
your paper centers around one main event that helped shape your personal growth, the majority of the body would
describe the one event while the introduction and conclusion would include your thoughts and feelings from before