- Hi, everyone. It's Racquel, your English tutor. Today's video is going to be all about a narrative essay and how to write a narrative essay. 

A narrative essay tells a story or describes a sequence of events. And let's look at that in detail just a little bit more. If you choose to write a narrative essay, you're going to tell a story. So you're going to be using words like "last week," or "yesterday." 

It also describes a sequence of events. Are you writing about the best day of your life? Are you writing about the worst day of your life? And the sequence of events must be in logical order. Don't forget that the story or the sequence of events has to be coherent and it must be expressed or written in a logical way. 

When you're writing a narrative essay, you can write it in the first person, or you can write it in the third person. OK, Racquel. What do you mean? What is the first person and what is the third person? 

When are you choosing to write in the first to the third person, it involves your pronouns. If you're going to write in the first person, you're going to use pronouns such as "I" or "we." So if you're telling a story and it's a personal story, you will refer to "I" or "we." "We did this" or "I did this." Or, "On the worst day of my life, I went to the beach," or "I decided to go to the beach." 

When it comes to writing in the third person, you're going to use completely different pronouns. And the pronouns you're going to use are "he," "she," "they," or "them." You are referring to other people. "He did this," or "She did this." Or "He explained," or "He expressed." 

in the narrative essay, don't be afraid to use dialogue, or direct speech. Because you are telling us what happens and you have characters, we're going to talk about characters in a little bit, don't be afraid to use the direct words of the particular character. Don't forget your quotes because it is direct speech. And you can also put in a dialogue. 

Now I'm going to give you three tips when you're writing a narrative essay. The first tip, introduce your characters, and also introduce the setting, where and when. Who was there? Who are the characters? 

Is it yourself? Is it your mom and your dad? Is it your friends? Is it your cousins? Is it somebody that you met? 

When the reader is reading, they want to know who's involved in the story. So make sure you introduce your characters. And we also want to know when did this happen? What time of day did it happen? Where did it happen? 

After you've introduced the setting and you've introduced your characters, the second tip is your plot. The plot is what actually happens. Make sure you make it as interesting as possible, because we want to know what happened to the characters. 

We want to on that day, what happened in the plot. Give us the story. And the third tip I want to give you is when you end off, or in your conclusion, wrap it up and end it off in a very, very nice, conclusive way that's still interesting to the reader. 

The fourth tip that I want to give you guys is describe. Use those adjectives. But what are you going to describe? Describe what things look like. Describe what things smell like. 

Use your adverbs and your adjectives that you've learned for so many years. These are really going to help give you, let's say, that meat and that bulk that really, really is going to make your marks go up. 

The fifth tip I want to give you is when it comes to your sentences, use a variety of sentences. It's also going to help with the flow and it's going to help really get the reader involved. 

Use some short sentences. Use some compound sentences. Use some longer sentences. Show variety in the way that you understand the language and how you're choosing to express it in sentences. 

The last tip I want to give you is use words that are really going to express time, like "early in the morning," or "late in the afternoon." It kind of gives the reader some type of visual as to which part of the day, you're talking about. 

I'm going to end this video off with the main features, or the main characteristics of a narrative essay. The first one is characters, and I briefly mentioned it. A narrative essay, one of the features is it has to have characters. These are the people in the essay. 

The second feature that it needs to have is the plot, what happens in the story, and the sequence of events. The third one is the setting. When did it happen and when did it happen? The fourth one is theme. 

If you are watching this video and you are doing academic English, or you are in university, theme is something that is very, very important. And you will find that every piece of writing has a theme to it. At grade 12 level, we won't get into it a bit much, but if you are in your first, second, or third year of academic writing, the theme must be introduced in your introduction. 

And that theme will follow right through the rest of your piece of writing as well. So what do I mean by theme at a grade 12 level? The theme is the main ideas that will be shown throughout the essays. An example of theme is love or tragedy. 

The fifth feature is structure. Structure is so important. Are your paragraphs clearly identifiable? Can I see that's an introduction? Can I see a main idea in each paragraph? 

So that is the fifth characteristic, or feature. And the last one is just creative use of writing. At this stage in your life, you know what is a simile. You know what is a metaphor. Use it. Add that creativity into your writing.