Narrative Essay Outline (+Example) - Learn to Write A+ Paper

What is a narrative essay? What is a narrative format? These are two very important questions that you should be asking yourself before you even consider starting working on your essay. Understanding the definition and the purpose of narrative essay is very important.

The narrative essay tells a story from your point of view. It can be written about anything, including your own personal experiences.

This is the definition narrative essay writers are looking for, but there is more. Interestingly, the narrative paper is very personal, which enables you to express yourself in a very creative way. You are basically the storyteller, so you will need to write in first person. It is definitely different from most other types of academic writing. Also, keep in mind that the narrative essay will test your ability to tell a story.

Now that you know what this essay is and what professors use it for, it’s time to talk about the narrative essay outline. This is what this blog post will be about. You will find all the information you need to write an outline on this page, along with an example. Ready? Let’s get started!

What Is a Narrative Outline?

Before you try to learn how to outline a story, you need to understand what a narrative outline is. Basically, the outline is perhaps the most important step of writing the essay. It is the blueprint of your paper. It is like a table of contents that organizes your essay in a logical manner and helps you stay focused on the main talking points. Here are some of the benefits of always starting your essay with an outline:

The outline helps you maintain a logical flow throughout the academic paper.

The outline helps you visualize the structure of the essay (and easily make changes where appropriate).

The outline keeps you focused on important ideas and keeps you from going off topic.

You can organize everything neatly right from the start, so you won’t need to perform extensive edits after you write the paper.

You will be able to connect all the information in a logical manner and visualize the different parts of your essay before actually starting to write them.

The Narrative Essay Structure

Now, let’s talk about the narrative essay structure. It is important to talk about this because you will need to keep it in mind while writing the outline. Keep in mind that your narrative essay needs to be a story. This means it needs to have the five important elements: plot, setting, character, conflict and theme. It’s a good idea to use the 5 paragraph essay structure for such an essay. Here is how the typical narrative paper will look like:

The exposition section. This is where you provide a bit of insight into the story and shows your readers the purpose of your work. Also, you need to make sure you include a “hook” at the beginning of this introduction. If you don’t know how to write a narrative essay introduction, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our expert writers and get some help.
The rising action section. This is the part where the tension grows, before the climax. Keep in mind that most of the story should be rising action.
The climax. As its name clearly suggests, the climax is the part where the conflict of the plot is resolved. It is the most important part of your story, so you should make sure you write it as nicely as you can. Use vivid details and choose your words carefully to deliver the impact it needs to deliver.
The falling action section. This is the part that deals with what happens towards the end of the story, after the climax.
The resolution. This is the part where you tell your readers what you’ve learned from the experience and/or how it has helped shape you as a person. It is just like a conclusion, written about you.

As you can imagine, the outline needs to follow these exact same steps. As we’ve told you earlier, the outline is like a table of contents; it should contain all the relevant sections of your paper.

Learn How to Write a Narrative Essay Outline

We are certain you want to learn how to write a narrative essay outline, so we will show you the basic steps you need to take to get it done correctly. Don’t worry too much about it; learning how to create an outline for an essay is not difficult. You don’t have to do more research than what is needed to write the narrative essay. So, here is what you need to do:

The first step is to organize your thoughts. This is necessary in order to have a clear picture of what you want to write about and what you want to achieve in your story. You can write down important ideas so you don’t forget them.
Next, start doing the research. If you are writing a personal essay outline, this shouldn’t be too difficult. However, you will need to include at least some information from other sources. Let’s say you want to talk about your first episode of binge eating. It would be a good idea to gather some information from authoritative sources about this disorder.
Organize your ideas in a logical manner. Your paper needs to have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Each one of these sections can have one or more paragraphs. In the outline, you will write the main idea of each paragraph so you don’t forget what you want to talk about in there.
If necessary, you can add subsections to each paragraph in each section. Perhaps you want to talk about the causes of the binge eating disorder. In this case, you will make a subsection for each cause.
Finally, analyze the outline to make sure it looks good. The ideas and talking points should be organizes logically, so it should be fairly easy to transition from one paragraph to the next. As you can see, making an outline isn’t that difficult.

Where Can I Find a Personal Narrative Outline Sample?

Looking to write a complex personal narrative outline? Don’t worry, it can be done in just one or two hours. However, the best way to figure out how your outline should look like is to get a good sample. But where could you find one? The sad reality is that finding well-written samples of personal narrative outlines can be tricky.

You could try the Internet. There are various websites that list examples of outlines and even research papers. However, these are usually not very well written. Also, they may not apply to your specific topic.

You could try asking for help on blogs and forums. In rare cases, somebody might actually help you with some valuable information. However, you won’t get much out of this most of the time.

The best and fastest way to get a good sample is to get in touch with an academic writing company. Why a company and not a freelance writer? Simple: because freelancers most often do not have academic writing experience. A company, on the other hand, has probably selected some of the best academic writers it could find. Also, you get the guarantee that you will actually receive something for the money you pay from a company.

To make things even easier for you, we will provide you with an example of how to outline a short story. You may use the template as it is, or you can ask our experts to make you a new one that better suits your needs.

Example: A 5 Paragraph Narrative Essay Outline

So, let’s see how a good narrative essay outline example looks like. We will be using a 5 paragraph narrative essay outline for this example. The topic will be (just like above) you first episode of binge eating. Here is how we would organize the outline for such a narrative essay:

Introduction
- 1.1 The hook. Idea: “Did you ever feel the urge to eat everything you see without being able to do anything about it?”
- 1.2 What is the binge eating disorder?
- 1.3 Thesis: “This is my first episode of binge eating, and it was terrifying.”
Body
1. What causes the binge eating disorder?
  - Genetics
  - Gender
  - Changes in the brain
  - Body image
2. The symptoms of the binge eating disorder
  - Eating rapidly
  - Feeling uncomfortably dull
  - Feelings of guilt
  - Eating without feeling hungry
3. Treatments for the binge eating disorder
  - Targeting binge eating habits
  - Weight loss therapy
  - Medication
Conclusion
- Why is the binge eating disorder so dangerous?
- What are the consequences of not getting the treatment I need?
- What have I learned from my first episode of binge eating?
- A call to action, if applicable. Idea: “If you find yourself in the same situation, I can give you the best advice right now: Get help before it is too late!”

This is how an outline would look like. After you have this structure, you will find it easy to write each paragraph. All you have to do is focus on the main idea and write about your experience. Of course, you can link to medical journals, articles from reputed publications and even to Wikipedia. We usually advise against using Wikipedia as a source for academic papers, but we can make an exception in this case because the narrative essay is a less formal type of academic writing.

Narrative Essay Outline Tips and Tricks

Whether you need to write a personal or a literacy narrative outline, you still need to learn everything you can about the narrative essay itself. Even making the best possible outline won’t help you if you don’t know how to write this paper. This is why we have put together a list of the most important tips and tricks that you can use to make sure you do a great job (and that you get a top grade, of course). Here is what you need to keep in mind when writing narrative papers:

Always write in first person. This is extremely important because your paper needs to be a story. You can’t narrate a story in second or third person, can you?

Research the topic adequately. Even if you are talking about a personal experience, you need to be able to support any claim you make with some hard facts.

The main purpose of the narrative paper is to tell a story or to inform an audience. You should not conduct tests and analyze results.

Very important: all information must be presented in chronological order. Failure to do so will result in severe penalties from your professor.

Each scene or person needs to be described in as much detail as possible. You need to be able to “show” your readers the scene, not just tell them about it.

Make sure you come up with a great hook in the introduction. This should entice your readers to read the entire paper, ideally.

Come up with an interesting, unique thesis statement. Think long and hard about what you want to demonstrate or achieve with your writing. What is the main purpose of your work? What do you want your audience to learn from your experience?

Need a Great Narrative Outline Template?

Don’t know how to outline a narrative essay? Getting a high grade in university, college or high school may not be as easy as you think. You may need at least some assistance with your narrative essays. Our experienced ENL writers are ready to create the best custom narrative outline template for you. This fantastic template will be tailored to your needs and will be 100% original. This means you can rely on it to write a top quality – and very well-structured – essay.

Every student can get exceptional essay writing help from our company. Our creative writers have extensive experience creating unique outlines for any type of essay you can imagine. Also, we can help you regardless of your academic level. And did you know that our experts can even tell your personal story if you need to write a personal essay? So what are you waiting for? Get an outline for a narrative essay fast and for a very low cost right here. Let’s discuss the specifics of your project and find the perfect solution together.