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Compositions or Essays have a significant weightage in English in Singapore schools. In order to score well in English, you have to be equipped with good writing skills and techniques. Many people have the misconception that if their command of English is lousy, they will be lousy writers. However, this is not totally true. In Singapore schools, essays are marked based on language and content. Therefore, do not be disheartened if your English is lousy. Score more in content and then build up your grammar and vocabulary as you go along.

Why Narrative Essays?
It is recommended that Secondary school students with average command of the language, should choose Narratives for their examinations. This is because, of the various types of Essays (Argumentative, Descriptive, etc), Narrative essays have the most basic structure and do not require too much descriptive words (which usually test your vocabulary).

In this tutorial, we will cover the topic of Narrative Essay as thorough as possible.

1. Choosing a title

Choosing a title may seem easy. Most people generally will pick the title that looks easiest to write. This should not be the case. In an examination, most people will choose the easiest essay, therefore, in order for you to score well in that essay, you will need to outsmart others by a good content and a good language. You are at an disadvantage. So, you may ask, do I choose the most difficult question instead? No. The correct question to choose is one that you are comfortable with. And this means that the story should be one that you have lived through or have experience on.

2. Analysing a title

After choosing a title, make sure that you analyse the question carefully.

For example, say your question is "The Old Shoe", you must write about an old shoe, and not just old, but its a single shoe.

Another example, "An incident that disrupted the neighbourhood", pay attention to an incident and neighbourhood. The incident must also be one that has enough power to cause a disruption to occur.

One way to make you remember to analyse the title is to always underline the keywords in a question.

3. Planning

There are various ways of planning, i.e. Mind-mapping, listing, etc. Use the planning method that you are most comfortable with. However, I would like to emphasise that your plan should always be referred back to the question and the keywords. Always ensure that you do not go out of point and lose unnecessary marks.

Every story should have a good introduction, followed by a progressive development to the climax and then down to conclusion. Picture it as a graph. The line goes up gradually and then reach a maximum point, not staying there for long, and drops.

A common way of planning is to follow the flow of the story, list the activities in various stages of your essay (Introduction, Body, Conclusion).

4. Introduction

Start your introduction in a way that is as unique as possible. Think out of the box. You need to capture the reader's attention right at the very start, so that they will still be willing to read on and find out more. There's no need for a powerful vocabulary at this moment. You simply have to create a good impression with a good start that few will start off with.

For the introduction, try not to write too much. The very maximum you should go is half a foolscap paper with no spacing in between lines. Write more only if you have the confidence of winning the reader's attention with great details. Write less for effective capture of attention since a long introduction can expose more of your errors and also dilute the richness of it.

5. Body

The Body is where you develop your story gradually to the climax (the most exciting portion, with the greatest tension, also known as the turning point of the story) before pulling it down to a conclusion.

Each point or stage of your story should occupy a paragraph on its own. Ensure that there is linkage between the Introduction and the Body, within the Body itself, and between the Body and the Conclusion. This way, your essay will be smooth and easily understood.

I want to bring your attention to the climax.
Devote at least a paragraph for the climax. At your climax, slow down every individual actions by using lots of descriptive words both on the actions and the feelings. "Slowing down" does not mean boring the reader but in actual fact, it increases the tension. Let me show you an example.

For "An incident that disrupted the neighbourhood", the climax could be:
... The monster is engulfing the whole of the fourth floor. "Bang!" made the toddlers weep and scream. The fire rescue team which just arrived, dare not act slowly. Within minutes, a few of the firemen dashed into the red zone. A sense of tension occured to us. Then, there was the sight of water. "Bang!" This time, everyone screamed...

As you "slow down" the actions and feelings in the climax, you actually notify the reader that the climax is here. Furthermore, you can use your imagination of small little activities that can capture the reader's attention, to leave a lasting impression on him/her.

6. Conclusion

The conclusion should be as short as possible. Your Introduction should link with the Conclusion to make your essay smooth-flowing. Likewise as your Introduction, you should make it as unique as possible. If possible, let the reader have enough thinking space after his/her read.

7. Post-writing checks

After writing, it is vital to check on your spelling and grammar. For spelling, if you are not certain about the exact spelling, try to substitute that word with another simpler word that you know how to spell. It is alright to use simpler words rather than get yourself penalised for spelling errors.

During your checks, you should also spot sentences or phrases that may sound confusing to the reader. Change them to simpler, straight to the point phrases if so.

All the Best for your Essay-writing! Knowing the technique is good, but you need to also brush up your command of the language along the way.

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