If you’ve ever been drawn in by a fascinating memoir or autobiography, you know the power that a personal narrative can have on readers. These stories can also give us a glimpse into an author’s thoughts, feelings, and ideas.
Because personal narratives allow an author to express and process emotions like pain and triumph, they can be powerful tools for helping readers connect with and process feelings that they may have themselves.
Writing a personal narrative is a great way to share important experiences that you believe can benefit other people.
What Is a Personal Narrative?
A personal narrative tells a story about yourself, describing an experience that the writer has had personally. Because of that, they should be written in the first person. The story may also include the writer’s personal thoughts and feelings about people they’ve met, books they’ve read, or any other area of life.
Personal narratives are often written as a school requirement, or as a nonfiction piece that can be published or simply shared with friends. They include essays that share the author’s reflection on a certain topic, such as a book or issue, and can even become bestselling memoirs.
In academia, a personal narrative essay may share an experience, anecdote, or personal lesson. The writer can express their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and feelings in an essay ranging from a few paragraphs to possibly hundreds of pages.
When not written as a school requirement, personal narratives can fall under narrative journalism or other nonfiction genres. For example, publications like The New York Times include sections specifically for personal narratives. In fact, The New Yorker is a publication dedicated wholly to this type of writing.
Usually, personal narratives have a focus on reflections, life lessons, and personal growth. Playing on our empathetic human nature, many readers enjoy these kinds of books, especially with the bite-sized pieces that they usually come in.
How Do You Write a Personal Narrative?
If you want to write a personal narrative, here are some tips to get you started:
1. Tell it as a story.
An important way to make your personal narrative engaging is to tell it as a story. This means you need to think of characters, setting, plot, an introduction, climax, an anti-climax if needed, and a logical conclusion.
The introduction will set the tone of your story, and then the main body of the text will share your key points. The conclusion can communicate what you’ve learned or how you’ve changed through the story you’ve just told.
2. Define the purpose of your personal narrative.
As you write your personal narrative, consider it your chance to share your unique perspectives on the events that you’re writing about. This means that you need to be clear about what your point of view of the situation is, as well as what you want your readers to take away from your story.
Deciding on the purpose of your writing from the very start will help you stay within one direction and not be scattered all over the place.
For example, if your goal through writing your personal narrative is to convince people it’s possible to manage depression and anxiety without medication, you should keep that focus from beginning to end.
3. Apply strong narrative techniques.
Just because you’re writing about a personal experience doesn’t exempt you from using strong storytelling techniques. Continue to apply important writing advice, such as:
- Show, don’t tell
- Use strong verbs
- Remove unnecessary filler words
4. Avoid overusing the pronoun “I.”
Although a personal narrative will take on the first person point of view (POV), starting too many sentences with the personal pronoun “I” can sound redundant, or worse yet, self-centered.
Instead of focusing solely on your perspective, you can vary it up with some paragraphs that add vivid descriptions of the scenery, or even dialogue.
5. Pay close attention to your tenses.
Because a personal narrative usually talks about something that happened in the past, you may need to use the past tense for most of the story. You can then differentiate your present-day narrating voice by using the present tense for those commentaries.
6. Offer a satisfying conclusion.
Work on tying everything up in a satisfying conclusion. Nothing’s more disappointing than a personal narrative that works up our excitement throughout the pages only to give us a ho-hum ending.
Although you may have ideas of what you want your readers to take away from your work, make sure that you don’t lecture your way toward the end. One way of doing this is to tell what changed or transformed in the way you do things, instead of just summarizing what you learned.
What Is an Example of a Personal Narrative?
To get a clearer picture of powerful personal narratives, here are some examples of books you may want to take a look at:
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
This classic book should be on everyone’s must-read pile, no matter what age you are. A 13-year-old Jewish girl wrote this diary while hiding inside a secret room of an old building when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands during World War II. What games do you prefer when you play at an online casino? Pokies? These casino games are easy to play and you don’t need to learn any difficult rules to do this. Is there any way to win on the pokies? Pokie machines are the games of a pure chance. The winning strategy doesn’t exist. The best thing is to choose pokies with the 99%, 98% return to player.
Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
In this personal narrative, David Goggins shares about his traumatic childhood and the challenges he faced before becoming a Navy SEAL, and how he continued to train his body to reach greater heights in several endurance events.
Educated by Tara Westover
Raised up by survivalist parents, Tara Westover did not get the chance to go to school, until she was already 17 years old. But by overcoming the odds, she was able to go to Harvard and Cambridge, an inspiring story for anyone struggling with seemingly insurmountable odds.
Writing a Personal Narrative
Writing a personal narrative can be a great way of making a difference in the lives of other people. Take a look at your life and see which life lessons made the biggest impact in your own life, and try to weave your story around those.
As you craft an engaging story that revolves around a set purpose, who knows, you may find that your story speaks volumes to a certain group of readers!
Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:
- Memoir vs. Autobiography: What’s the Difference?
- The 16 Best Memoirs to Read Right Now
- How to Write a Memoir: A Step by Step Guide
- How to Write a Book Outline: The Secret to Writing a Good Book Faster
Yen Cabag is the Blog Writer of TCK Publishing. She is also a homeschooling mom, family coach, and speaker for the Charlotte Mason method, an educational philosophy that places great emphasis on classic literature and the masterpieces in art and music. She has also written several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her passion is to see the next generation of children become lovers of reading and learning in the midst of short attention spans.
