Start with the story that you wrote for class about an experience you once had that taught you something important. Most likely, you retell this story frequently because it helps you to introduce yourself to people or allow them to know you better. It may be that you feel the incident really shows people the kind of person you are or helps to explain why you are the way you are. Or maybe the story lets your listener know what kind of place you come from and how growing up there has hurt or helped you. Maybe the story is really about your parents or your extended family.
Turn your story into a narrative essay that has a point to make (a “thesis”) and uses the story to make that point. To do this, you will have to think about the story and decide why the incident was so memorable to you. Use your story to teach us what the experience recounted once taught you. Once you have come up with a thesis, you will need to mold the story so that it supports the thesis and doesn’t stray from it.
A narrative essay as short as this one works best when it tells about one main incident or a series of related incidents that happened within a short period of time. Your narrative must also have the characteristics of a good story: a clear setting, dialogue, concrete details about characters and action, and some sort of conflict: for example, between two people, between a family and a tornado, between a person’s self-confidence and self-doubts. Without these things, your story will not build suspense or keep your reader interested.
