an incident when you had to remain silent even though you were aware of truth
Answers
The typical prompt or assignment for the narrative essay will ask you to describe an event that affected or changed your life. In other words, in the narrative essay prompt, you are being asked to tell a story. Because of the basic structure of this assignment, students are often fooled into thinking that the stories that take place in a narrative essay have to be true, which often becomes a source of anxiety. “How can I write about myself in a way that will interest my professor?” you might find yourself asking. “After all, nothing interesting has happened to me. And even if something interesting has happened to me, I’m not sure I want my prof. to know about it.”
The best way to address this concern and start writing a narrative essay is to forget about telling “the truth” or “the facts” of a story unless you already think those truths and facts are interesting. Along with telling a story, after all, you’re also being asked in the narrative essay to write vivid descriptions of persons and events. What if you don’t remember what one of your characters was wearing or looked like or smelled like on that fateful day when you decided to skip school, run away from home or sneak out of the house to meet up with a coterie of friends on an unforgettable evening; embellishment becomes a necessary disguise of the truth. You are, after all, telling a story, and stories – even autobiographical ones – are embellished with made up details, characters, and events all the time.