How to Write a Narrative Essay or Speech

A narrative essay or speech is used to tell a story, often one that is based on personal experience. This genre of work comprises works of nonfiction that hew closely to the facts and follow a logical chronological progression of events. Writers often use anecdotes to relate their experiences and engage the reader. In doing so, you can give your narrative a level of emotional appeal. It can be serious or humorous, but this emotional appeal is essential if you want to  give your audience some way to connect with your story. The most successful narrative essays usually share these three basic traits:They make a central point.They contain  specific details  in  support  of that point.They are clearly  organized  in time. Constructing the Essay Magazines like the New Yorker and websites like Vice are known for the pages-long narrative essays they publish, sometimes called long-format journalism. But an effective narrative essay can be as short as five paragraphs. As with other kinds of essay writing, narratives follow the same basic outline: Introduction: This is the opening paragraph of your essay. It contains the hook, which is used to grab the readers attention, and the thesis or topic, which youll detail in the next section.Body: This is the heart of your essay, usually three to five paragraphs in length. Each paragraph should contain one example, such as a personal anecdote or noteworthy event, that supports your larger topic.Conclusion: This is the final paragraph of your essay. In it, youll sum up the main points of the body and bring your  narrative to an end. Writers sometimes embellish the conclusion with an epilogue or a takeaway. Narrative Essay Topics Choosing the topic for your essay may be the hardest part. What youre looking for is a particular incident that you can recount in a well-developed and clearly organized essay  or speech. We have a few ideas to help you brainstorm topics. Theyre quite broad, but something will surely spark an idea. An embarrassing experienceA memorable wedding or funeralAn exciting minute or two of a football game (or  another sporting event)Your first or last day at a job or new schoolA disastrous dateA memorable moment of failure or successAn encounter that changed your life or taught you a lessonAn experience that led to a renewed faithA strange or unexpected encounterAn experience of how technology is more trouble than its worthAn experience that left you disillusionedA frightening or dangerous experienceA memorable journeyAn encounter with someone you were in awe of or afraid ofAn occasion when you experienced rejectionYour first visit to the countryside (or to a large city)The circumstances that led to the breakup of a friendshipAn experience that showed that you should be careful of what you wish forA significant or comic misunderstandingAn experience that showed how appearances can be deceivingAn account of a difficult decision that you had to makeAn event that marked a turning point in your lifeAn experience that changed your viewpoint on a controversial issueA memorable encounter with someone in authorityAn act of heroism or cowardiceAn imaginary encounter with a real personA rebellious actA brush with greatness or deathA time that you took a stand on an important issueAn experience that altered your view of someoneA trip that you would like to takeA vacation trip from your childhoodAn account of a visit to a fictional place or timeYour first time away from homeTwo different versions of the same eventA day when everything went right or wrongAn experience that made you laugh until you criedThe experience of being lostSurviving a natural disasterAn important discoveryAn eyewitness account of an important eventAn experience that helped you grow upA description of your secret placeAn account of what it would be like to live as a particular animalYour dream job and what it would be likeAn invention youd like to createA time when you realized your parents were right An account of your earliest memoryYour reaction when you heard the best news of your lifeA description of the one thing you cant live without Other Types of Essays Narrative essays are one of the three major essay types. The others are: Argumentative: In these essays, the writer makes the case for a specific opinion on a topic, using research and analysis to persuade the reader.Descriptive: This kind of writing relies on detail to describe or define a person, place, thing, or experience. Writing may be either objective or subjective.Expository: Like argumentative essays, expository writing requires research and analysis in order to expound upon a subject. Unlike argumentative essays, the intention is not to change the readers  opinion but to inform the readers. Sources Angelli, Elizabeth; Baker, Jack; and Brizee, Allen. Essay Writing. Perdue.edu. 9 February 2018.Beck, Kate. Instructions to Write a Narrative Essay. SeattlePI.com.Santa Barbara City College staff. Structure of a Personal Narrative Essay. SBCC.edu.

Lena Horne - 9265 Words

Singer/actress Lena Hornes primary occupation was nightclub entertaining, a profession she pursued successfully around the world for more than 60 years, from the 1930s to the 1990s. In conjunction with her club work, she also maintained a recording career that stretched from 1936 to 2000 and brought her three Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989; she appeared in 16 feature films and several shorts between 1938 and 1978; she performed occasionally on Broadway, including in her own Tony-winning one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music in 1981-1982; and she sang and acted on radio and television. Adding to the challenge of maintaining such a career was her position as an African-American facing discrimination†¦show more content†¦Jones owed his job a clerk in the county coroners office to political patronage. It did not bring in much money, and in 1938, when Horne was approached by an agent with an offer to co-star in a low-budget all-black movie mu sical with a mere ten-day shooting schedule in Hollywood, she accepted. The film was The Duke Is Tops, released in July 1938. Later in the year, Horne was asked to take on a more time-consuming project, a part in a new mounting of producer Lew Leslies all-black musical revue Blackbirds. Again, she accepted in the name of increasing the family income, spending months in rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts before Lew Leslies Blackbirds of 1939 opened on Broadway on February 11, 1939. One of Hornes numbers was Youre So Indifferent, written by Sammy Fain and Mitchell Parish, a song she would keep in her repertoire. The show ran only nine performances, closing February 18. Horne returned to Pittsburgh, where she temporarily separated from her husband, then reconciled with him. She began taking singing engagements in the homes of wealthy families in the area. She also became pregnant again, and her son, Edwin Fletcher (Teddy) Jones, was born in February 1940. That fall, she made a final separation from her husband (they were formally divorced in June 1944) and moved to New York to restart her career. In December, she accepted an offer to join theShow MoreRelatedLena Mary Calhoun Horne : An Advocate For Civil Rights And The Abolition Of Segregation1065 Words   |  5 PagesIn 1919 at the tender age of two, Lena Horne made her first public appearance on the cover of the Branch Bulletin, a publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She was touted as the organization’s youngest member. Lena would go on to become a noted singer, dancer and sex symbol. Not content to revel in her fame, Lena became an advocate for ci vil rights and the abolishment of segregation. Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was born to a middle-class family in Brooklyn, NewRead More Lena Horne Essay1396 Words   |  6 PagesLena Horne Lena Horne was born on June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were Teddy and Edna Scottron Horne. After her father left her at the age of two in order to pursue his gambling career; her mother leaving soon after that to pursue her acting career; she went to live with her grandparents. Through her grandparents influence she became involved with organizations like the NAACP, at an early age. In 1924 she went back to live with her mother, traveling and being schooledRead MoreLena Horne : An American Icon3136 Words   |  13 Pages LENA HORNE: AN AMERICAN ICON Fela Langston MUSI 305 Section A Dr. Zigler 13 May 2015 Lena Horne: an American Icon Lena Horne, born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne in Brooklyn, New York was an American jazz vocalist, actress and civil rights activist who lived from June 30, 1917 to May 9, 2010. Although Horne’s beauty and her elegance received praise throughout her career, her talents and impact on American society are equally unforgettable. She was an eight timeRead More Frank Sinatra Essay example774 Words   |  4 PagesOther contributors to the album included Barbara Streisand, and Julio Iglesias. The album sequel Duets II (1994) won Sinatra his ninth Grammy Award in 1996. Duets II included collaborations with country-and-western star Willie Nelson, jazz singer Lena Horne, and popular singer and songwriter Neil Diamond. Frank Sinatra, the legendary leader of the Rat Pack and arguably the greatest entertainer of this century, died of a heart attack Thursday night, May 14, 1998, in Los Angeles at the ageRead MoreThe Way, Meet Vera Stark Essay2499 Words   |  10 PagesWhen thinking about black actresses in the 1930s through 1950s, a few names may come to mind like Nina McKinney, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Hattie McDaniel. However, many other black actresses have graced the big screen including Suzette Harbin, Theresa Hams, Ethel Moses, Mae Turner, and Hilda Simms just to name a few. Many of these talented actresses differ in their career paths, but they all endured some form of racism and sexism which made it laborious for them to thrive in their careersRead MoreI Am a Woman, Too: Feminism to the Black Woman966 Words   |  4 Pagesof some important black women that carry on the legacy of our past generations: Maya Angelou Josephine Baker Bessie Blount Marita Bonner Dorothy Dandridge Jessie Redmon Fauset Althea Gibson Billie Holiday Lena Horne Zora Neale Hurston Harriet Jacobs Mae Jemison Marjorie Stewart Joyner Nella Larsen Toni Morrison Rosa Parks Leontyne Price Condoleezza Rice Bessie Smith Maria Stewart So it is seen todayRead MoreI Am A Woman,Too: Feminism To The Black Woman Essay examples941 Words   |  4 Pagesof some important black women that carry on the legacy of our past generations: Maya Angelou Josephine Baker Bessie Blount Marita Bonner Dorothy Dandridge Jessie Redmon Fauset Althea Gibson Billie Holiday Lena Horne Zora Neale Hurston Harriet Jacobs Mae Jemison Marjorie Stewart Joyner Nella Larsen Toni Morrison Rosa Parks Leontyne Price Condoleezza Rice Bessie Smith Maria Stewart So it is seen todayRead MoreAnalysis Of Foucault And Queer Theory 1211 Words   |  5 Pagesall. Hooks’ exploration continues through the examination of the women idealised by the drag queens in Paris is Burning. It is primarily (upper-class) white women who are presented as the epitome of femininity rather than women of colour such as Lena Horne . This shows that the hegemonic discourses responsible for the creation of gender and sexuality categories incorporate multiple sites of privilege. By not looking at race the analysis of these categories is incomplete. Hooks then goes on to addressRead MoreA Brief Note On Irish Novelist And Non Fiction Writer Joseph O Neill Once Said1120 Words   |  5 Pagesconfident in who I am. I know that my culture, family influence, environment, friends and the need to know has influenced me. If you were to ask me to describe my identity, I would tell you, â€Å"My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.†- Lena Horne, and nothing or no one can take that away from me. Read MoreThe Red Scare of McCarthyism 576 Words   |  2 Pagesonly for influence. (Wisegeek.org) McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled. -Joseph R. McCarthy (Brainyquote.com) Known and accused Artists were Dashneill Hammett (author), Waldo Salt (screenwriter), Lillian Hellman (author of plays), Lena Horne (singer and actress), Pael Robeson (actor and singer), Elia Kazon (director, producer, writer and actor), Aaron Copland (composer), and Leonard Bernstein (Composer, conductor and author). Anyone could be accused including: screenwriters, actors

Review An Inconvenient Truth Free Essays

Review : An Inconvenient Truth An Inconvenient Truth is a provocative documentary on global warming by director Davis Guggenheim. The film, based on the multi-media presentation given by former Vice President Al Gore in over 1,000 cities around the world in recent years, presents a disturbing picture of the destruction that global warming is doing to the earth and the horrific future that we are facing if global warming is not addressed. Despite some serious weaknesses, anyone who is concerned about the future must see this film and join in discussion, debate, and action over what is needed to save the planet. We will write a custom essay sample on Review: An Inconvenient Truth or any similar topic only for you Order Now At a time when believing in scientific truth is under attack, and when the Bush administration is gagging government scientists from telling the truth, censoring official reports, and sabotaging international treaties, An Inconvenient Truth defends, popularizes and makes accessible to millions the basic science of global warming. Because of this, the film has come under attack. Right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck compared An Inconvenient Truth, to Nazi propaganda. Holman Jenkins wrote in the Wall Street Journal: â€Å"Mr. Gore’s narrative isn’t science, but science fiction. † The movie presents scientific concepts and evidence about global warming in a clear, concise and often entertaining way. It features great nature photography, graphs, and animation to visually express complex evidence. It even has a clip from Futurama. I can’t think of another movie in which the display of a graph elicited gasps of horror, but when the red lines showing the increasing rates of carbon-dioxide emissions and the corresponding rise in temperatures come on screen, the effect is jolting and chilling,† A. O. Scott writes in the New York Times review of the movie. In the movie Gore shows a graph that demonstrates a link between CO2 levels and temperature over the last 600,000 years as revealed by samples from polar ice cores. 1 During this entire period CO2 levels have varied between 180 and 280 parts per million (ppm). The level today is nearly 400 ppm, well above anything that has been seen in over a half million years. And Gore points out that the CO2 levels will rise to 600 ppm if something isn’t done quickly. Gore describes the dramatic changes taking place in the world as a result of global warming. He shows pictures taken 15 to 30 years ago of glaciers that have existed for the last 10,000 years or more and compares them to pictures taken in the last year or two. It is shocking to see the rate at which the glaciers are disappearing! The film shows the famous â€Å"snows of Kilimanjaro† in 1970. A picture from 2005 shows only a tiny sliver of ice remaining. The movie describes how many new scientific studies are confirming that warmer water in the top layer of the ocean caused by global warming is producing more powerful hurricanes. While it is not possible to attribute any specific storm, like Katrina, to the effects of global warming, an MIT study indicated that as a whole major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific since the 1970s have increased in duration and intensity about 50%. And all of this means hardship and suffering for the people. While in the world as a whole it appears that global warming has contributed to a 20 percent increase in rain over the last 100 years. However this increase in precipitation is not uniform, and some areas of the world have suffered from drought. It was striking to see the role this drought plays in the horrors now going on in Africa, which are general ly written off in the imperialist press as the inevitable nightmares of â€Å"uncivilized† people that the West has no responsibility for. Famine is killing many children and putting millions of lives at risk in the Niger area. In Darfur, a horrific genocide is being carried out. While the causes leading to the genocide and famine are complex, a contributing factor to these nightmare situations is changes brought on by global warming. Lake Chad, once the sixth largest lake in the world, which has shrunk to one-twentieth of its former size, with sand dunes covering its bed. The disappearance of the lake has led to collapsed fisheries, lack of irrigation and crop failures, and millions displaced by hunger. While the climate changes produced by global warming are beginning to show themselves today in shocking ways, these are just a glimmer of the changes that scientists predict may come about due to global warming: mass extinction of species, flooding in coastal areas due to melting polar ice, spread of infectious diseases, and the destruction of coral reefs caused by rising CO2 in the ocean’s water. The destruction of glaciers due to global warming does not mean only that our children may never be able to see a glacier. The Himalayan glaciers, which provide more than half of the drinking water for over 40% of the world’s population, are among the most affected by global warming. Within the next 50 years these people may face a massive drinking water shortage as well as food shortages due to lack of irrigation. This is a one scary movie, made all the more so because the threats it depicts are real. And, unlike so many summer blockbusters, no superhero is going to come to save the day. How to cite Review: An Inconvenient Truth, Essay examples

Coraline free essay sample

In response to the school board’s request for student feedback, I am writing to express my opinion about which should be used to teach about the Fantasy genre, Coraline the book or Coraline the movie. In my opinion, I believe that Coraline the movie should be used in schools to teach the Fantasy genre. This is because the sounds, animations, and new characters all show more elements and examples of the Fantasy genre than in the book. By the time you finish reading this, you will surely end up being persuaded that Coraline the movie has more elements and examples of Fantasy than in the book. The first detail that makes Coraline the movie have more elements of Fantasy is animation. The animations in the movie were cartoon people, which means the characters don’t necessarily have to do things real people can do. Another element of animation that makes the movie more fantastical is that you can see exactly what the character is doing but in the book it is just your imagination. We will write a custom essay sample on Coraline or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Also, in the movie, special effects can be added to make the scenes look more fantastical. Overall, the animations from the movie show more elements of fantasy than in the book. Secondly, the new and different characters in the movie make Coraline the movie have more elements of fantasy than the book. In the movie, the â€Å"other mother† turns the â€Å"other dad† into a pumpkin instead of a blob. This is more fantastical because pumpkins are plants and the fact that a pumpkin is alive and speaks is very fantastical. The second example of new and different characters is Wybie Lovat. He is a new character that is in the movie but not the book. He adds more fantasy because he finds a doll that looks just like Coraline and gives it to her. The new and different characters is the second detail that makes Coraline the movie have more elements of Fantasy. The third detail that makes Coraline the movie have more elements of Fantasy is sound. The sound from the movie can let you hear the characters tone of voice while speaking which lets you know if what they are saying sounds fantastical. The second thing is that you can hear background sounds and noise. This adds to Fantasy because it lets you hear strange sounds in the background that make it more fantastical. The third thing is that in the movie you can hear how loud the character is speaking. This can let you know how the character feels which adds on to the fantastical elements. I have now expressed my opinion on which to use to teach the Fantasy genre. Coraline the movie has many elements and examples of Fantasy. Coraline the movie should be used in schools to teach the Fantasy genre because the sounds, animations, and new or different characters all show more elements and examples of the Fantasy genre than in the book. Now that you have taken a look at many examples and elements of Fantasy in the movie, I hope that you consider using Coraline the movie to teach Fantasy in schools.