ACT® · English: Argumentative Essays, Short Essays, and Whole-Passage Questions
The Narrative Essay and Its More Relaxed Style
A narrative essay is written in the voice of someone living through an experience, so it allows plain, concrete, first-person language that a formal essay would reject, but it still has to be precise and never wordy.
Every essay on the test has a type, and that type sets the style dial before any single word gets judged. A science essay explaining how a measurement works needs formal, impersonal language, because its job is to report facts clearly to anyone reading. A narrative essay has a different job: it recreates one person's experience, usually in first person, so it is built out of what the writer saw, felt, and understood in the moment. That's why a phrase like 'I had no idea what I was looking at' feels wrong in a science essay but exactly right in a narrative about a first dive on a reef. The essay's purpose decides what counts as good writing in it.
This doesn't mean a narrative gets a free pass. It still has to be precise and concise, the same two demands every essay faces. 'We drove and drove for what seemed like a very long time, going on and on down the same road' is loose and repetitive. 'We drove for hours down the same unchanging road' keeps the narrative voice, plain and personal, while cutting the padding. The style loosens; the standards for clarity don't.
This is why whole-essay questions and single-word choices on a narrative often reward the plain, concrete option over the stiff or formal one, and why a slang word can still be wrong even in a relaxed essay. Recognizing the essay's type first tells you which register to expect, then the usual precision rules apply inside it.
Key terms
- Narrative essay
- An essay written as a first-person account of a real or imagined experience.
- Register
- The level of formality a piece of writing uses, which shifts with the essay's purpose and audience.
- Precision
- Choosing the word that most exactly fits the meaning and situation, rather than one that is close but off.
- Concision
- Saying something in as few words as the meaning requires, without repetition or padding.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does an essay's writing type move the whole style dial before any sentence gets judged?
- Worked exampleWalk me through choosing a verb for a narrative about a first night shift when the formal option feels stiff.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a narrative essay exempt from the precision and concision rules?
Check yourself
End of topic.