Aim for 4 or more paragraphs, at least 2 pages, and remember, a narrative is a story. This should be a TRUE story based on your own experience (personal) or something that really happened but not to you (impersonal). Try starting with a basic organization like this (you’ll have to modify to fit your own specific experience). Try to keep this basically chronological (in order of the events as they happened) because “narrative” is usually a story told as it happened.
Paragraphs
1: Introduction—the “before situation”: Set up the situation (like what was the situation like before this event, what you were doing, where/when this started). Then end the first paragraph with a sentence that states or hints at the main point or theme (like in the Berube sample essay, “I was wrong”).
2: Start of event. What was happening when this started? What was the initiating action? What did you think was happening? Then what happened?
3: First reaction. What was the immediate reaction here? What was the start of change? What did you (or others if this is not “personal” to you) feel about this?
4: The results: Then what happened as a result of the start of the event? What chain of events did this start? What did you or someone else do in response? What changed?
5: Conclusion: The change: What changed because of this experience? Is there a message or theme that you think this story illustrates or shows?