narrative essay job interview

Write an A+ Interview Paper Using Our Tips and Examples

06 September, 2021

13 minutes read

Author:  Josh Carlyle

You will quickly find yourself with your back to the wall once your teacher assigns you an interview paper. Studying is often a headache by itself, and now you have to conduct interviews. Worse yet, you probably have no idea how you can do this. Luckily, we will tell you how to write an interview paper step by step in this comprehensive guide. So prepare your favorite drink and learn how to write a top-notch interview paper.

What is an Interview Paper?

An interview paper provides an expert opinion on a specific issue. In essence, it is an interview transcript inserted somewhere between the introduction and conclusion of an academic piece.

How long should it be? It depends on the topic and the length of your interview, but most papers are within the length of 2,000 – 5,000 words. What things should you consider before writing an interview paper in the first place? Let’s check them out below.

General Aspects of Writing an Interview Paper

Academic papers require you to provide arguments based on studies, research pieces, statistics, etc. But an interview paper is different – for this type of essay, you will develop assumptions around an expert’s opinion.

Let’s imagine your essay question reads the following: “Should we ban abortions?” If you write an interview paper, you should ask someone high-powered for their consideration. Let them be an executive director of the American Gynecological & Obstetrical Society.

You would reach them via email or phone or whatever communication channel you prefer and conduct an interview. Afterward, you would put all your findings on paper.

But in practice, writing an interview paper involves many more complexities and challenges, like planning, topic research , drafting, etc.

Let’s speak straight facts: nobody will reschedule their week to meet you because you need to do some homework. You’re one of the millions of students, and the local governor or a famous scientist won’t give you an interview nine times out of ten.

So you would want to target someone less busy, like professors from other faculties of your college or some researchers within your academic environment. Hunting a bigger fish is pointless unless you’re a well-established journalist working for a popular media channel. If you struggle to find someone within your college/university, you can contact people from your circle.

Writing Outline and Structure of an Interview Paper

 As you know, a typical paper consists of three parts:

• Introduction. This part includes background information, the hook, the thesis statement, and the transition.
• Body. It is the longest part of the paper consisting of several paragraphs. It should contain the actual interview.
• Conclusion. The final part summarizes the considerations and insights of your essay.

The question is: ‘where should you put an interview transcript and how do you do this?’

To answer this question, you need to come up with the interview papers format in the first place. There are several of them:

The narrative format implies that you can use either direct or indirect speech when referring to your interviewee. If you choose this path, you can stick to a 5-paragraph essay structure, retell the considerations of your interviewee, and cite their words here and there at your discretion.

You can also choose this format if you contact several people. Check what a narrative interview paper structure looks like when you reach out to several people:

• Introduction.
• Paragraph #1 – the first interviewee’s perspective.
• Paragraph #2 – the second interviewee’s opinion.
• Paragraph #3 – the third interviewee’s thoughts.
• Conclusion.

Alternatively, you can dedicate each paragraph to a particular idea of one person.

“Question and answer” will suit your needs perfectly if you interview one person. It is the simplest format used in online magazines, news reports, and other media. Your interview paper outline will look like this:

• Introduction
• Question #1 – Answer #1
• Question #2 – Answer #2
• Question #3 – Answer #3
• Question #4/5/6/etc. – Answer #4/5/6/etc.
• Interview analysis. You may include your thoughts on the subject matter.

Conversational

Conversational style is informal, and you can use either first-person or second-person narrative and follow a typical 5-paragraph paper structure. But writing interview papers in this lousy style might be perplexing, especially if you deal with this task for the first time.

We advise you to try the Q&A format because it’s the simplest one and takes the least time. Just imagine how much time your paper writing will take if you decide to interview three or five people.

How to Start an Interview Paper?

If you have no idea how to start an interview paper, choose the topic first. Selecting a topic for your interview paper is not a big deal, but you should keep in mind that you may not find appropriate interviewees for it.

Let’s imagine you want to explore whether the government should force people to get vaccines. This topic implies that you need to contact authorities. It might be a local lawyer, governor, or executive director of a local hospital. Well, the chances are these people will politely refuse to give an interview for your homework.

But if you choose to investigate how lockdown impacts intellectual workers, you can contact your friends or family members who work at home. In other words, it’s better to choose topics that reflect the experiences of ordinary people rather than the opinions of untouchable experts.

Asking people for their opinion about well-known facts like the Earth’s shape is a bad idea. You would want to choose high-profile debatable topics you can actually discuss.

Establish the Goal of Your Interview Essay

You have to establish the goal of your essay before researching the topic. For this, ask yourself: “What message should your interview essay deliver?” Sometimes, a topic of your choice might already explain the purpose of your essay.

Conduct Research

Interviewing someone implies that you should ask questions. But you will fail to do so if you know little to nothing about your topic. So read some case studies, news, articles, etc. Once you get the picture of your subject matter, you will come up with dozens of interview questions.

Get to Know Your Interviewee

A good interviewer always refers to the life and experience of their interviewee. If you’re lucky to work with someone you can read about on the Internet, find out as much information about them as possible. If your interviewee publishes any books, articles, or studies, you will better know them as well.

The more you know about the person, the more interview questions you can come up with. You can ask them whether the Internet tells their true story: “Is it true that you, Mr. Interviewee, support flat earthers?”

Draft Your Interview Questions

If you want a person to share their in-depth vision of the topic, you need to ask both open-ended and close-ended (“yes/no”) questions. However, you may struggle to prepare interview questions. Many students get stuck during this stage. To overcome this block, you need to learn some types of interview questions:

• Opinion – What do you think of this topic?
• Behavioral – What would you do in this situation?
• Experience and knowledge – What do you know about the subject?
• Background – How are you connected to the subject? What is your age, occupation, etc?
• Emotional – How do you feel about the subject?
• Sensory – What does the subject taste and feel like?

You can also think of the questions following the interviewee’s “yes” and “no” answers.

Tips for Conducting a Successful Interview

These four tips will help you conduct a productive interview on the first try:

1. Plan Your Meeting

Note that you want to interview a person in a quiet place so that nobody will distract you. This might be some cozy book store or a café. Or, you can arrange an online meeting. Make sure you have at least one hour for the interview.

2. Rehearse a bit

If you will conduct your first-ever interview, you want to practice with your friends/significant other/ family in the first place. This approach will help you identify what stage of your upcoming interview may challenge you the most.

3. Record Your Interview

You will forget about 50% of the information within an hour once you finish the interview. So don’t rely on your memory − bring a recorder instead. Why not take notes? You wouldn’t want to go red while asking your interviewee to repeat what they have just said or wait until you write down their answers.

4. Talk to Your Interviewee for a While Before You Begin

Speaking to someone you don’t know might be uncomfortable. You don’t have to attack them with your interview questions straightaway. Instead, you can exchange some casual phrases or discuss the weather. This will help you relieve stress and get comfortable with each other.

5. Explain Your Interview Protocol

It’s better to explain to your interviewee how you will conduct your interview. Tell them that you will use a recorder and introduce the discussion topic.

Interview Papers Format

In academic writing, you have to explain the purpose of your interview and introduce your interviewee in a specific “scholarly” format. The APA format interview paper has the following requirements:

• Use 12-point Times New Roman.
• Write a title page.
• Use double spacing.
• Introduce your interviewee and provide the background information – explain why this person is suitable for the interview. Mention their name and qualifications.
• Use direct quotes if you cite some facts provided by the interviewee.
• Use block quotes for citations longer than 40 words.

How to Write a Title Page?

The title of your paper must include your name, your institution, department, the course name and number, the teacher’s name, and the assignment date. The rules of writing the title page are the following:

• The title page must be numbered.
• Capitalize all major words in your title and make it bold.
• Place the title of the essay three or four lines down the top of the page.
• There must be one empty line before the student’s name.

Interview Papers Examples

If you’re searching for an interview essay example – check several samples below:

• A narrative interview essay .
• A Q&A interview format paper.
• An interview with a scientist.

Interview Papers Writing Tips

The following writing tips will help you deliver the first-class interview paper:

• Write the introduction at the end. Once you finish your essay, you will likely reconsider some ideas you had before you began. They will help you frame your interview essay with a captivating introduction and conclusion.
• Give yourself a break after finishing your final draft. This will help you look at your paper with a fresh pair of eyes once you start editing.
• Edit one type of error at a time. For example, you can reduce logical errors first and switch to grammatical mistakes afterward.
• Use an active voice. If active voice makes your sentence shorter, use it without hesitation.
• Check for any sample interview paper to decide on the interview questions. Perhaps, some pieces will spark your interest.

Writing Help by Handmadewriting

An interview paper doesn’t seem that intimidating once you learn how to write it step by step. First, you have to choose the subject that allows you to interview ordinary people rather than hard-to-reach ones. Then, you need to research your topic, conduct an interview, and write a paper.

You can get an A+ for this assignment with enough effort and dedication. But a doable task doesn’t necessarily mean that you must do it by yourself. If you have plenty of other assignments to do, you can ask our essay writers to craft an exemplary interview paper for you. For this, you can place an order on our website, and we will do all the dirty work.

A life lesson in Romeo and Juliet taught by death

Due to human nature, we draw conclusions only when life gives us a lesson since the experience of others is not so effective and powerful. Therefore, when analyzing and sorting out common problems we face, we may trace a parallel with well-known book characters or real historical figures. Moreover, we often compare our situations with […]

Ethical Research Paper Topics

Writing a research paper on ethics is not an easy task, especially if you do not possess excellent writing skills and do not like to contemplate controversial questions. But an ethics course is obligatory in all higher education institutions, and students have to look for a way out and be creative. When you find an […]

Art Research Paper Topics

Students obtaining degrees in fine art and art & design programs most commonly need to write a paper on art topics. However, this subject is becoming more popular in educational institutions for expanding students’ horizons. Thus, both groups of receivers of education: those who are into arts and those who only get acquainted with art […]

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game New
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications
• College University and Postgraduate
• Academic Writing

How to Write an Interview Essay

Last Updated: March 11, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Diane Stubbs . Diane Stubbs is a Secondary English Teacher with over 22 years of experience teaching all high school grade levels and AP courses. She specializes in secondary education, classroom management, and educational technology. Diane earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Delaware and a Master of Education from Wesley College. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 459,482 times.

An interview essay is designed to give the reader a general impression of the interview subject and to present their thoughts on a select group of topics. It also offers the opportunity to develop deeper insights by analyzing the interviewee's responses within a larger context. Interview essays are a common school assignment, and provide useful skills for those interested in journalism, or just being good writers in general. There are several formats that fit into the category, but a good interview essay of whatever type can make the reader feel as though they were asking the questions.

Interviewing for an Essay

• If your essay is to be a factual piece, you'll want to interview someone who has expertise in the subject matter you'll be addressing. If your paper is about a science topic, you'll want to interview a scientist in that field. If your paper is about a period of history, you'll want to interview either a historian or someone who's lived through that period of history.
• If you plan to make your essay an opinion piece, you'll likely want to interview someone who has a strong opinion about the topic covered in your essay. Ideally, you want someone who can express opinions articulately, and who also has credentials in the area you plan to write about.
• If your piece will have a narrow perspective, you'll need to interview only one or two people. If your piece will present a general consensus, you'll need to interview more people, probably with varying expertise and credentials.

• When available, read works about and works written by your subject, both in print and online. At the same time, research the topic associated with your subject. The more you know about both, the more intelligent questions you can ask.
• Look for previous interviews your subject has given, as well. These will give you an idea of what questions the person has been asked before, so you can decide on appropriate subjects for your own questions, including questions that no one else has asked.
• Questions that require "yes" or "no" answers are good for gathering specific factual information; open-ended "how," "why," and "tell me about" questions are great for gathering additional background material not found in your research.
• Draw up a list of the questions you are prepared to ask. Have more questions ready than you will likely use, so that you can make adjustments as the interview takes place. (For instance, your subject may begin focusing on what you thought was a side topic, but turns out to be the key part of your interview.) Rank your questions in order of importance to make sure you ask your best ones, or list them all in the order you'd ask them and color-code the most important ones.

• Choose a quiet place with few distractions for your interview site. A library, restaurant, or campus location if you're doing this for a college writing class would be suitable.
• You may want to get the interviewee's consent to use their comments in your essay in writing, as well as permission to record those comments during the interview. By law, if you are recording an interview conducted over the phone, you must obtain written permission. [4] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source
• It's helpful to have a backup interviewee in case the person you plan to interview can't make it.
• Be on time at the place you've agreed to meet for the interview.

• Using a recording device (with permission) is almost always advisable, as it permits you to save your note-taking for jotting down your insights on contexts, themes, how your subject approaches the questions, his/her comfort level, and so on.
• Be patient and respectful as you ask your questions and wait for responses. Give the interviewee time to reflect, and you will likely be rewarded with more insightful answers. A few deeper responses are usually better than many superficial ones.
• Immediately after the interview, write down your thoughts and impressions about the interview and interviewee. They may help you shape the essay.
• Always end the interview by thanking the person.

Writing the Essay

• Narrative format. This form allows paraphrasing of some information the interviewee says, along with direct quotes for the material you most want to emphasize. This is the most likely format for a class assignment, and offers the most opportunity to add context and analysis.
• Conversational format. This is a looser format than the formal writing style required for most essays. You can address the reader directly and use both first and second person. This format can be suitable for anything from class assignments to magazine articles.
• Question-and-answer format. This form presents your questions to the interviewee, followed by the interviewee's responses. (That is, the text looks something like this: (Your Name): How long have you been in the circus? (Interviewee's Name): About 35 years.) These are always direct quotes, although you may insert explanatory material in parentheses and substitutions, such as a person's name in place of a personal pronoun, in brackets. This format is best suited for essays with only a single interviewee or a closely related group, such as spouses or the core cast of a TV show.
• Informative format. This format usually interweaves the interview with research you've done on the subject, incorporating some of that research in the text to provide background and give it a little more color.

• Read over your interview notes and listen to any audio / video recordings you have. Utilizing both whenever available will allow you to thoroughly consider both the highlights of the interview and the most significant themes to emerge from it. These, in turn, will inform your outline of what information your essay will cover and how it will appear. [9] X Research source
• One possible outline could be an introduction that starts with an anecdote about the interviewee and then presents your thesis statement, several key points that support the main focus, and a conclusion that summarizes the information presented. Traditional school essays often utilize a five paragraph format (introduction, three supporting paragraphs, conclusion), and this can often work with interview essays as well.

• If, however, the purpose of your essay is to use your interviewee's comments to support a position or examine a larger theme, your thesis will probably be a statement of that position or theme, with the interview / interviewee placed within that context. For instance: "John Doe's mixed feelings of pride and betrayal reflect those shared by many Vietnam veterans still with us."
• Regardless of essay format, make your thesis clear and concise, and be sure that the remainder of your essay refers back to it. See How to Write a Thesis Statement for more advice.

• Interviews can sometimes produce a good deal of repetitive answers (even with high-quality questions), so you may need to trim repetitions and unnecessary elements from the body of your essay. Make sure that whatever material you do keep remains true to both the spirit of the interview and the overarching focus of your essay. [10] X Research source
• A handout from the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina (available at http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/oral-history/ ) provides a wealth of valuable materials on interview essays. It includes, for instance, examples of how to utilize the same interview materials in a transcription (question-and-answer format), a presentation of individual experiences (quotations and paraphrases), and the placing of the interview / interviewee in a larger context (paraphrasing and quotations with ample explanation).

• Reading over the essay yourself is a good start, but it is always wise to have another set of eyes look it over as well. Another reader is likely to catch errors, repetitions, and unclear sections that you have glossed over. [12] X Research source
• Go back to your original interview notes, recordings, and transcripts, and make sure that your essay continues to reflect the actual interview. Layers of editing and revising can sometimes cause the essay to drift away from the original source and intent. You may even want to let the interviewee read it over to ensure that it captures their voice. [13] X Research source

• Any materials you used for research, information about the interviewee, or context for the essay itself should be referenced in the approved citation format for your essay.
• Make sure one more time that any direct quotations from your source are placed in quotation marks, and any paraphrasing is done without quotation marks. Don't put words in your subject's mouth, and respect the words that do emerge from it.

What Are The Dos And Don’ts Of a Journalistic Interview?

Expert Q&A

• After the interview, send the interviewee a written thank-you note expressing your appreciation for their time. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If the person you're interviewing is busy or elderly, you may want to plan for more than one interview session. Observe the interviewee for signs of impatience or fatigue. Conduct multiple, shorter sessions if necessary. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• If you plan to interview someone over the telephone, permission to record the conversation is required by law. Thanks Helpful 15 Not Helpful 3

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/oral-history/
• ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/interview-paper
• ↑ http://www.whatkidscando.org/featurestories/2007/maine_students/tip_sheets/FIRST-PERSON%20ESSAYS%20TIP%20SHEET.pdf
• ↑ http://www.brighthubeducation.com/help-with-writing/97515-how-to-write-an-interview-essay/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/proofreading/proofreading_suggestions.html

About This Article

To write an essay from an interview, you’ll first have to decide on the format the essay will take, as this will determine the structure and what you write. The most common form is the narrative format, in which you use direct quotes and paraphrase your subject to add context and detail, or you can write in a more conversational tone, or even in a directly transcribed question-and-answer form. Once you decide on format, plan an outline by forming a central thesis, which will be the central statement your essay is making. Add onto the outline by drafting supporting evidence directly from the interview and from other sources, like books, newspaper articles, other essays, anything else to support your point. Write and finish the essay by combining information from the interview and other sources with your own explanations and words. To learn about how to conduct the interview to get enough information to write about and how to finish the writing process, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Oct 19, 2016

Did this article help you?

Tyler Jordan

Sep 11, 2016

Tawana Moos

Nov 20, 2017

Mar 28, 2016

David Mcaniel

May 23, 2017

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Get all the best how-tos!

Sign up for wikiHow's weekly email newsletter

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• How to write a narrative essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A narrative essay tells a story. In most cases, this is a story about a personal experience you had. This type of essay , along with the descriptive essay , allows you to get personal and creative, unlike most academic writing .

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What is a narrative essay for, choosing a topic, interactive example of a narrative essay, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about narrative essays.

When assigned a narrative essay, you might find yourself wondering: Why does my teacher want to hear this story? Topics for narrative essays can range from the important to the trivial. Usually the point is not so much the story itself, but the way you tell it.

A narrative essay is a way of testing your ability to tell a story in a clear and interesting way. You’re expected to think about where your story begins and ends, and how to convey it with eye-catching language and a satisfying pace.

These skills are quite different from those needed for formal academic writing. For instance, in a narrative essay the use of the first person (“I”) is encouraged, as is the use of figurative language, dialogue, and suspense.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Narrative essay assignments vary widely in the amount of direction you’re given about your topic. You may be assigned quite a specific topic or choice of topics to work with.

• Write a story about your first day of school.
• Write a story about your favorite holiday destination.

You may also be given prompts that leave you a much wider choice of topic.

• Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself.
• Write about an achievement you are proud of. What did you accomplish, and how?

In these cases, you might have to think harder to decide what story you want to tell. The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to talk about a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

For example, a trip where everything went according to plan makes for a less interesting story than one where something unexpected happened that you then had to respond to. Choose an experience that might surprise the reader or teach them something.

Narrative essays in college applications

When applying for college , you might be asked to write a narrative essay that expresses something about your personal qualities.

For example, this application prompt from Common App requires you to respond with a narrative essay.

In this context, choose a story that is not only interesting but also expresses the qualities the prompt is looking for—here, resilience and the ability to learn from failure—and frame the story in a way that emphasizes these qualities.

An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

If you’re not given much guidance on what your narrative essay should be about, consider the context and scope of the assignment. What kind of story is relevant, interesting, and possible to tell within the word count?

The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to reflect on a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

Don’t worry too much if your topic seems unoriginal. The point of a narrative essay is how you tell the story and the point you make with it, not the subject of the story itself.

Narrative essays are usually assigned as writing exercises at high school or in university composition classes. They may also form part of a university application.

When you are prompted to tell a story about your own life or experiences, a narrative essay is usually the right response.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, July 23). How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved March 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/narrative-essay/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to write an expository essay, how to write a descriptive essay | example & tips, how to write your personal statement | strategies & examples, unlimited academic ai-proofreading.

✔ Document error-free in 5minutes ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

English Basics

How to Write an Essay for a Job Interview?

There are several key tips for writing an essay that will win the attention of your employer. You can use the Narrative format or the Conversational format. Make sure to use powerful adjectives and include a call to action. Use examples to help you come up with a topic. After you’ve crafted your essay, you’ll need to find a topic for your call to action. Then, brainstorm ways to present it in the most compelling way.

Narrative format

In an essay for a job interview, you will most likely be asked to write a story, so a good format for this type of essay is the narrative format. It allows you to paraphrase information or use direct quotes and provides you with the opportunity to analyze and add context. Narratives are the most common in-class assignments, but they are also suitable for magazine articles. When you choose a narrative format, make sure you choose one that is appropriate for the type of interview you are going to conduct.

This essay format has five parts. Each body paragraph contains one important piece of information. Next, each body paragraph should have a main argument that relates to the audience. The last paragraph should summarize the main ideas and give feedback on the person. This essay should be between three and five paragraphs long. Generally, you can use a five-paragraph structure, citing quotes and citations, and dedicating each paragraph to a particular idea.

While writing an essay for an interview, remember to be as concise as possible. You should include quotation marks for any quotes you have used from the interviewee. Also, remember to use smooth transitions from one paragraph to the next. Lastly, consider including a conclusion that sums up the main points and relates to your interview. Whether it is a call to action or a summary of the overall message of the essay, the conclusion should be memorable.

The last paragraph should include a hard piece of evidence, such as a quote that illustrates your point. In addition, your essay should also contain standard essay parts such as a good introduction and an effective closing. If you are unable to write quickly, you should use an audio recording device. Once you have written your essay, you can start thinking about the topics your reader would be interested in. Make sure to select at least three themes that you want to highlight in the body of your essay.

When writing a narrative essay, make sure to draw your audience’s attention with the details that are most relevant to the interview. This type of essay requires critical thinking and analytical skills. In the end, it allows you to show the interviewee’s personality. Remember that your goal is to entertain as well as inform, so your audience will enjoy reading about your life and your experiences. This style of essay will not only impress your interviewer but also help you land the job you want.

Conversational format

The structure of an essay for a job interview is very different than an essay you might write for a class assignment. For instance, when you write a narrative, you present information in the form of a story with a central theme. Conversely, a conversational essay relates the events of a conversation between a writer and another person. It uses the first and second person to relate the story and includes personal comments.

A conversational essay is a casual style that allows for the retelling of direct speech without redundant information. It is written in 12-point Times New Roman type and allows for a wide variety of approaches to address the audience. This format works best when you have one interviewee or a small group of closely related individuals. In a conversational essay, it is important to use direct quotes when citing any source for more than 40 words.

Another method for generating conversational responses is to use a conversational tone. This is effective because the interviewee tends to overreact to the reactions of the interviewer. Using small inflections or repeating phrases encourages the respondent to elaborate. Similarly, restating a reply allows time for reflection and clarification. It is important, however , that you do not insert the “right” words into the interviewee’s mind.

Using a conversational style can be difficult in certain genres. The conversational format, on the other hand, is more flexible, and it may not be as effective in the formal context. This style makes it easier to read and presents the interview subject as being more articulate than they actually are. However, if you want to use this format, be consistent. You can even try to explain the rationale behind your decision by citing a source for background information or research.

Powerful adjectives

Use powerful adjectives in an essay for a job application to convey your passion and enthusiasm. It’s important to choose the right words and avoid overuse, as this can make your essay sound hollow. For example, if you’re an introverted person, you can’t use the word “shy” on your resume. Instead, use powerful adjectives such as “dedicated” or “motivated” that highlight your qualities.

When describing yourself in an essay for a job application, use positive adjectives and use as few as two or three words. Choose words that describe one trait about yourself and avoid overstating. Think about what the job requires and what sets you apart from the competition. Your friends or family can give you a perspective on how you appear to them. Try to limit yourself to about 60 to 90 seconds.

When choosing an adjective, use it sparingly, but use it to describe actions and outcomes. Using too many adjectives makes your resume look unprofessional and fluffy. However, it can help your bullet points stand out and make you sound more qualified. Adjectives can make you sound like a rock star or a high-performing employee, so don’t be afraid to use them sparingly.

Call to action

The call to action in an essay for a job application should convey the importance of the position. The employer wants assurances that you are prepared to go above and beyond the job requirements. Mention your skills and experience and how you can help the company overcome challenges. In addition, show the employer that you have the knowledge and expertise to perform tasks beyond your job description. By including a call to action in your essay, you can increase your chances of getting the job.

Your cover letter should contain a call to action that encourages the employer to follow up with you. The last few sentences of your cover letter should be devoted to expressing your enthusiasm for the job and pushing the employer to contact you. By including a call to action, you show your enthusiasm for the position, which makes the hiring manager more likely to contact you for more information. This will demonstrate your commitment and confidence in the job.

If you can’t make the reader take action immediately, use a CTA. This is an essential element of your content. Ensure your CTA is visible above the fold of your essay. You can start your call to action with compelling words that make people feel motivated to take action right away. Social proof is a strong way to convince readers to take action. Make sure your call to action is backed up by compelling evidence.

Related posts:

• Why Abortion Should Be Illegal Essay
• How to Write an Essay Last Minute?
• How to Write an Essay Like a Professional?
• How to Write an Essay on Why You Deserve a Scholarship?

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Tell Me about Your Life as a Trapeze Artist: Interview into Narrative Essay

SHARON’S BLOG

My great-grandmother marked the day in her journal when she received her first icebox. What was she using for refrigeration before then?

One acquaintance traveled the world with the army during the Vietnam years and isn’t even allowed to tell me what he did, though he likes to tell me about the strange food he ate on those trips.

But I’m not the only one who knows interesting folks.

People in your family, your church, and your neighborhood have led remarkable lives as well. They’ve fought in wars and been in accidents. They’ve experienced disasters, invented things, started their own businesses, overcome debilitating abuse or sickness, beat the odds, seen the world, or eaten raw squid.

These people want to tell their stories to someone who will listen. And your children, in interviewing these people, will come away with a new perspective on history and life. This type of writing activity is well worth the effort.

The following guidelines are written to your student.

How to conduct the interview

Interviewing someone is an incredible way to experience real, living history. Here are a few tips.

1. Make an appointment and research.

Holidays are perfect times to conduct an interview with a family member or other person of interest, especially if the relative can come prepared for it. Before interviewing, research the person or anything about them. For instance, if the interviewee fought in the Korean War, research the war to better understand him and to prepare an informed list of questions.

2. Record the interview.

That way, you can concentrate on the person, not on taking notes. This will also help in gathering precise quotations used in the narrative essay later.

3. Ask open-ended questions.

Open-ended questions are ones that require more than a yes or no answer. For instance, instead of asking, “Did you like being a trapeze artist with the traveling circus?” say, “Tell me about your days as a trapeze artist with the traveling circus.”

4. Listen actively.

People respond well to this, and it will give you a better chance to ask effective follow-up questions.

Don’t be afraid of awkward pauses in the interview. Watch any TV news show with a famous interviewer like Barbara Walters and you’ll see how pauses effectively draw out the interviewee and keep him or her talking.

5. Ask if they want to add something.

Before ending the interview, ask your interviewee if there is anything else he or she would like to say. You might get some interesting responses now that everyone is relaxed.

6. Check the facts.

Sometimes dates or names are not remembered correctly, but you’ll want to get them right for your essay.

Shy students often freak out—quietly—when considering the possibility of conducting an interview, but shy people are the best interviewers. Instead of talking, they listen well. They understand that the interview isn’t about them; it’s about the interviewee.

How to write up the interview into narrative form

1. choose the story or slant..

You are not going to write this interview in a question-and-answer format. Instead, you are going to write a story, a narrative essay, about this person. Think about the material you have. Listen again to the interview and think about these questions:

• What is the important story to tell?
• What personal quality do you want to emphasize?
• What feature or time period in your person’s life do you want to write about? Choose only the slant you want to highlight.

2. Start with something to grab your reader.

Begin your narrative essay with a fascinating story, fact, or quotation from your interviewee. Let that set the tone and direction for the whole essay. If you begin with a story, don’t finish it until later in the essay. Keep your readers interested.

3. Describe your person.

Include a short description of your person , including the age, soon after the introduction. For instance, “Marie, 79, sat on a little chair with her back straight, looking like a tiny bird on a still wire.” Include mannerisms and perhaps the sound of his or her voice (“scratchy,” for example). Use direct quotations. This way, readers will be able to see and hear your person.

4. Be chronological.

If you need to back up and tell how your person got into the introductory story, write his or her history chronologically. Then catch readers up to the story.

For instance, if you begin the narrative essay with the trapeze artist hanging upside down by her toes caught in the rope, back up and tell about her life and how she came to be a trapeze artist, how she admired her mother and wanted to fly just like her mother did. When you catch up to your story, finish off the initial story so readers know what finally happened to your person. Don’t leave them hanging, so to speak.

5. Draw conclusions.

Tell how these events affected your interviewee, what she learned from all this, or how her life has affected you. Draw conclusions about the story, time period, or the character trait you highlighted.

You are writing to inform and entertain your audience. So inform. Entertain. And enjoy this amazing glimpse into someone else’s life.

The material for this article is taken from The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School. Get free samples of the textbook and teacher’s guide (including a free grading grid), here. >>

Yours for a more vibrant writing class,

Looking for something?

Sharon’s Blog

Grading Essays Made Easy

Homeschool Life

Miscellaneous

Proofreading Tips

Writing Prompts

Writing/Teaching Tips

High school prompts

Description

Download free samples of our courses here. Dismiss

All You Need to Know About Interview Essay Writing

Purpose of Writing an Interview Essay

The writing process is not always smooth sailing. When it comes to the construction of interview papers, you are free to ask about myriads of issues of your interests and get a broad insight from the interview subject. Once you figure out the main thesis statement for your interview essay, you must collect relatable data in question-and-answer format. The gathered information is almost always subjective since the authoritative individuals and qualified experts are your main data providers. Interview essays are constructed based on people's biased opinions rather than books, historical records, and other sources.

Are you looking for answers on how to write an outline for interview essay? We are here to provide you with useful tips on how to write interview APA format essay. 

You might as well find this article helpful since we have prepared essay writing in interview sample at the end of it.

Format for Writing an Interview Essay

Are you on the verge of choosing an appropriate format to write an interview essay? One of the essential steps includes identifying the type of interview paper you are willing to write. The interview essay format is determined based on the style of your paper. There are three basic types of interview papers:

• Narrative Essay Interview - Through this type of paper, you are assigned to research a specific topic based on the conducted interview. The main thing is to accumulate all the information that the interviewed person has provided in a neat and organized manner in the form of a narrative. The story might be written from your perspective or that of the interviewee. In that case, you are free to write in the first and second person.
• Personal Interview - Such type of paper demands you to prepare a list of witty interview questions to ask a specific person who holds a certain type of authority based on their professional occupation. The final product turns out to be an interview in essay format.
• Question-answer Interview - Such interview questions are often asked to job seekers. This is your chance to glance through the common interview questions that the hiring managers will ask you to get a glimpse of your personality and career goals. The questions and answers can be combined in an interview paper. For more information, check out internship interview questions and answers here.

How to Write an Outline for Interview Essay

After you have chosen key points for your interview paper and adjusted its format accordingly, you might wonder, 'should I write an outline for an interview essay ?'. The answer is clear and direct - 'Yes, definitely!'

Good writers always prepare an outline in advance, which is a great tip to lift the burden of the time-consuming paper writing process. The basic structure of interview essay outline includes three major parts:

• Introduction - As you state your paper's thesis statement, you can start writing by introducing the person or the people you interviewed.
• Body Paragraphs - The following paragraphs should contain the subjective points of view that your interviewees provided concerning your major thesis statement.
• Conclusion - In the concluding paragraph of the essay, restate the paper's main goal and summarize the most important points you have made so far.

Writing an Interview Essay Introduction

Once you wrap up the interview essay, outline you are ready to start the writing process. Writing a catchy lead and grabbing a reader's attention right away is not a simple task. However, there are some key elements that make up the best of the introduction part of your interview essay. The primary sentence should briefly contain the main objective behind the chosen topic of the paper. The following sentences should report the importance of your essay topic to your target audience. Finally, you can proceed with the thesis statement, which indicates the basic value of your paper. In other words, try to answer the question of what benefits the reader gets from familiarizing themself with your interview paper.

Do not hesitate to ask us to write an essay for me whether you are assigned to construct an interview essay on writing or any other given subject.

Writing an Interview Essay Body Paragraphs

The body paragraphs hold the majority of the essay. Provided paragraphs support the central statement with relatable facts, details, and key points as the answers that an interviewer asks.

Some of the interviewers prefer to use a recording device, while others opt for notes to contain the important data in its entirety. They choose to include parts of the narrative later in the body paragraphs of the essay as they gather the most important and thematic points made throughout the interview process. You might as well include direct quotes or in-text citations as the sources of provided answers. However, always keep in mind to ask for written permission if you plan to paraphrase or directly copy their ideas word by word according to the issue of your interest.

Writing an interview essay can be hard, so if you are looking for further tips on how to write an essay , we can provide you with an interview essay outline example as well as the complete paper itself.

Writing an Interview Essay Conclusion

The classic format for writing an interview essay includes jotting down the main objectives made throughout the paper in a final paragraph, otherwise known as the conclusion. The last paragraph is not any less important compared to the opening one. That is why you should try and restate the crucial points that interviewees have made while answering questions provided by you. That way, you will sound even more persuasive as you provide evident arguments supported by powerful public figures regarded as influential in society.

You are welcome to conclude the essay with a respectful thank you note as well. Express sincere gratification to the reader for taking the time to read your essay and focus on your contribution to them with the source of information contained in the written interview paper.

If you don’t have distinguished skills for writing an outline for college interview essay, our experts have your back! Contact us to write papers for money and enjoy a perfectly-crafted assignment.

Essay Writing Topics in Interview

Looking for inspiration? Researching an interesting topic for the essay can be exhausting sometimes. But we are here to give you a helping hand through tough times. Our experts have gathered some of the most compelling essay writing topics in interview. You are free to take a look at them and choose one that satisfies your curiosity and challenges you to be analyzed in depth.

• Does body language describe our mental state?
• How important is eye contact for establishing genuine connections?
• Are educated and qualified people obliged to give more to others?
• Which job position is the most attractive in the 21st century?
• Do career services help people get to their target job market?
• Does conflict resolution hold an important place in the contemporary world?
• What is love, and where do you feel it or experience it most often?
• How do our family heritage and traditions influence our personalities?
• How many hours of sleep are needed at different stages of life?
• What kind of skills is essential to possess in order to become a good leader?
• Should the tax system be allocated to the rich and poor accordingly?
• Is the two-party system the guarantee of American democracy in the US?
• Should combatting racism be an individual responsibility?
• Should the American people restrict the amount of money spent on the electoral college?
• How do relationships and friendships shape our lives?
• Do your dreams and nightmares reflect real-life events?
• How do you keep yourself from getting sick?
• Does technology make your daily life easier?
• Do you agree or disagree with the idea that opposites attract?
• What does it mean to be a religious and faithful person to you?

We hope those mentioned above, as well as other essay writing topics for interview in google, will fuel your curiosity.

Meanwhile, you can always pay for papers . Our experts are capable of writing an essay for a job interview based on your individual demands that will get you closer to your dream position.

Interview Essay Writing Examples

Here is one of the interview essay writing examples to check out. We hope that the provided example will give you some kind of perspective:

'A LEADER IS ONE WHO KNOWS THE WAY, GOES THE WAY, AND SHOWS THE WAY'

According to the popular idea, leaders are born rather than made. Contrary to this belief, many real-life examples prove that people can grow into a leader type as they grow older if they want to. Any man can be a leader, but it is not an easy thing to do. You need to know yourself to set an example for others, inspire them, and give them a sense of trust to follow your steps. People are inclined toward those who know where they are going, have their own vision, and are educated enough to support their decisions with rational arguments. These traits give leaders the power to be persuasive. They have their goals set and are not afraid to firmly face any challenges that life might throw their way.

To support this statement, we have interviewed a Pakistani female education activist, Malala Yousafzai, who also carries the honor of being the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She is a pure example of how one can rise from any kind of social and domestic circumstances if one has a vision and works hard enough to achieve their goals. She realized the value of education from a very young age. The latter was often inaccessible for girls of her nation due to authoritative powers in the head of the government, under which education was banned for almost all the females in the Northern Pakistani region. Malala persistently fought for her truth and raised awareness about the value that educating girls and boys could hold. She began writing articles and her personal insights anonymously to describe the intolerable circumstances that females had to face under the group of dictators, highlighting the purpose of education and its unavailability for girls of Pakistan.

Malala's example is one of a kind. She wants to be remembered as a girl who tries to help others in whatever capacity she can hold. She did everything possible to let the outer world know about the injustice that the government of her nation committed. She never backed down even after the confrontation between her and the representatives of the ruling power at the head of the Pakistani government.

Further Academic Help

We hope you gained some beneficial information throughout this article which will help you craft a top-notch interview essay for your journalism class. In case of further assistance, our expert writers are here to provide you with interview essay examples APA format at our paper service platform.

Before you go, you are welcome to take an essay writing test for interview to check how well you understood the concept of the article and implement gained knowledge into your upcoming assignment.

Frequently asked questions

She was flawless! first time using a website like this, I've ordered article review and i totally adored it! grammar punctuation, content - everything was on point

This writer is my go to, because whenever I need someone who I can trust my task to - I hire Joy. She wrote almost every paper for me for the last 2 years

Term paper done up to a highest standard, no revisions, perfect communication. 10s across the board!!!!!!!

I send him instructions and that's it. my paper was done 10 hours later, no stupid questions, he nailed it.

Sometimes I wonder if Michael is secretly a professor because he literally knows everything. HE DID SO WELL THAT MY PROF SHOWED MY PAPER AS AN EXAMPLE. unbelievable, many thanks

You Might Also Like

New Posts to Your Inbox!

Stay in touch

Job Interview Essay

As one would expect during a job interview, your employer may be asking you to write something . This would be in the form of an essay. This is usually about your experiences, your skills and all the basic information they need to know more about you. They do this to see and to understand you as a person. Here are some 7+ job interview essay examples you can check out for some tips on what to write and what to avoid.

7+ Job Interview Essay Examples

1. job interview essay template.

Size: 95 KB

2. Sample Job Interview Essay

Size: 430 KB

3. Basic Job Interview Essay

Size: 573 KB

4. Job Interview Question Database Essay

Size: 90 KB

5. Job Interview Essay in PDF

Size: 75 KB

6. Printable Job Interview Essay

Size: 66 KB

7. Job Interview Strategy Essay

Size: 150 KB

8. Formal Job Interview Essay

Size: 192 KB

Define Interview

An interview is a meeting face to face. It is usually a conventional conference . A conversation or a questioning for the purpose of getting information from the interviewee. 

Define Job Interview

A job interview is a dialogue between an employer and the applicant. In a job interview, the employer asks questions about the applicant’s work history, educational history, and skills. 

Things to Avoid in Writing a Job Interview Essay

Some of us get so excited when writing essays, like that of a job interview, but one thing we must remember is to summarize the job interview essay   We often forget that an essay is nothing but a short summary of what we wish to write. But that’s okay. It’s nothing different. But unlike some of the essays you may be used to, there are some things to avoid when writing for a job interview essay. Here are some of the things you need to avoid at all cost.

• Lying about your answers – when writing about what is asked, be careful. Interview questions in an essay may be tricky. Do not make up anything to make your essay sound nice. The interviewer would not be amazed one bit if you lied in your essay. Rather, there is a bigger chance they will not accept you.
• Flowery words – Most of us are guilty with this when writing the essay. It is best to avoid putting flowery words to make it sound like we did these things. Again, your employer has a way of knowing you are being truthful or lying. Avoid this at all costs.
• Too proud – this is often taken for granted but I want to put it right here. Do not boast about the experiences you may not have and write it off as yours. Do not boast about the experiences you have in your essay. You have to remain open and humble.

Things You Should Remember When Writing an Essay

• Voice – keep it professional. The tone in your essay has to be in a professional setting. If you write in a childish manner or as if you are angry at someone, your employer or anyone reading it will surely see that you are not fit for the job.
• Information – write what is asked in the essay. Do not put any other information that is not required nor needed. Example for this information is through a question that goes like this “why should we hire you?” This may sound easy but be very careful as to what you are going to write or say. Do not forget to introduce yourself in your essay.
• Explaining – In some questions in an essay, you are required to explain. Like the sample question above, you must give an explanation in your own words as to why they should hire you. However, avoid saying explanations like “because I am the best”, “I am better than anyone.” This will not only make you lose your opportunity, it is also very rude to tell that to your employer.
• Descriptive – keep your essay as  descriptive as possible . When you are to general in your writing, you are making the person reading confused. Put a little effort to what you are writing.
• Be prepared – when you are going to a job interview, always expect the unexpected. Answer questions as honest as possible.
• Reflect – reflect on what you have written . Understand what you have learned and done. A job interview essay is simply one of many essays you are going to go through.

I want to write about my experiences related to the job, should I write down everything?

Yes you may. As long as you remember that what you are writing is true and correct. As well as be careful on how you word it. Your tone in writing should be professional.

Why am I not allowed to show off my skills in my essay?

Employers are interested in what you have, but they are not interested in the way you talk about it. They prefer to see someone professional talking about their experiences in the same professional tone. Rather than being too cocky.

Is it necessary to know your skills? What if I don’t?

It is better to know what you are good at. When your employer may state you need to write your skills in the essay, you have to be prepared to do so. Ask yourself what you are good at and write it down.

Is there a time limit to writing the essay?

Most companies give a certain amount of time for the applicant to finish the job interview essay. This is so that neither of the two parties are wasting time. Be prepared to write a good essay within a limited amount of time.

Writing a job interview essay can be difficult. It can also be rewarding knowing you did a good job and you have done what you were told to do. Though a job interview essay may not give you the outcome of getting that job, but it is good practice on showing off your skills. Once you find out how to write a good essay for a job interview, all you need to do is to remember the guidelines.

To remember not to be too cocky when writing about your experiences. Do not be too shy either, rather be professional about it. Employers do read your essay, so be careful what you write. Watch your grammar and how you word things as well. This can affect the opportunity of getting that job. With all that being said, I wish you luck.

Job Interview Essay Generator

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

Describe your preparation process for a job interview in your Job Interview Essay.

Reflect on a successful job interview experience in your Job Interview Essay.

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Professions & Career — Job Interview

Essays About Job Interview

Prompt examples for job interview essays, preparing for a successful job interview.

Discuss the essential steps and strategies for preparing for a successful job interview. What should candidates do before, during, and after the interview to increase their chances of landing the job?

The Importance of Interview Etiquette

Examine the significance of interview etiquette and professionalism. How do good manners, dress code, and communication skills impact a candidate's impression on the interviewer?

Behavioral Interview Questions

Explore the use of behavioral interview questions by employers. What are these questions, and how should candidates respond to them effectively? Provide examples.

Handling Common Interview Questions

Discuss common interview questions such as "Tell me about yourself" and "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" How can candidates provide compelling and honest answers to these questions?

The STAR Method in Interviews

Analyze the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method for answering behavioral interview questions. How does this structured approach help candidates provide detailed and impactful responses?

Virtual Job Interviews

Examine the rise of virtual job interviews, especially in the context of remote work. What are the unique challenges and opportunities of virtual interviews, and how can candidates excel in them?

Handling Stress and Nervousness

Discuss strategies for managing stress and nervousness before and during a job interview. How can candidates build confidence and maintain composure during high-stakes interviews?

The Role of Body Language

Analyze the importance of nonverbal communication and body language in job interviews. How can candidates use body language to convey professionalism and confidence?

Post-Interview Follow-Up

Explain the significance of post-interview follow-up, including thank-you notes and emails. How can candidates express gratitude and reiterate their interest in the position?

Interviewing in a Competitive Job Market

Discuss strategies for standing out in a competitive job market where multiple candidates are vying for the same position. What can candidates do to distinguish themselves during interviews?

Narrative Essay About Job Interview

A job interview questions and answers, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

The Motivational Interviewing Approach

Interview preparation, self-introduction for job interview: tips and tricks, things not to say during an interview , let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Interview Questions You Do not Have to Answer

Job questions, reflective an interview with school worker, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

Interactive Program to Prepare for The Actual Visa Interview.

Interview report: richard gulwak – a professional basketball player, research on concepts and trends of work and employment, robots as the solution to equality in the job interview process, entrepreneur interview: mr. sayed yousuf ali, interview of an 18 year old elitekits gamer, interview with lennart küster - ceo of cryptohawk ag, real estate sales agent job analysis, reflective the interview with a foreign student, navigating the teacher interview process: tips for success, sephora case study 2014, relevant topics.

• Career Goals
• Dream Career
• Community Service
• Social Work
• Work Experience
• Pediatrician

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 3 great narrative essay examples + tips for writing.

General Education

A narrative essay is one of the most intimidating assignments you can be handed at any level of your education. Where you've previously written argumentative essays that make a point or analytic essays that dissect meaning, a narrative essay asks you to write what is effectively a story .

But unlike a simple work of creative fiction, your narrative essay must have a clear and concrete motif —a recurring theme or idea that you’ll explore throughout. Narrative essays are less rigid, more creative in expression, and therefore pretty different from most other essays you’ll be writing.

But not to fear—in this article, we’ll be covering what a narrative essay is, how to write a good one, and also analyzing some personal narrative essay examples to show you what a great one looks like.

What Is a Narrative Essay?

At first glance, a narrative essay might sound like you’re just writing a story. Like the stories you're used to reading, a narrative essay is generally (but not always) chronological, following a clear throughline from beginning to end. Even if the story jumps around in time, all the details will come back to one specific theme, demonstrated through your choice in motifs.

Unlike many creative stories, however, your narrative essay should be based in fact. That doesn’t mean that every detail needs to be pure and untainted by imagination, but rather that you shouldn’t wholly invent the events of your narrative essay. There’s nothing wrong with inventing a person’s words if you can’t remember them exactly, but you shouldn’t say they said something they weren’t even close to saying.

Another big difference between narrative essays and creative fiction—as well as other kinds of essays—is that narrative essays are based on motifs. A motif is a dominant idea or theme, one that you establish before writing the essay. As you’re crafting the narrative, it’ll feed back into your motif to create a comprehensive picture of whatever that motif is.

For example, say you want to write a narrative essay about how your first day in high school helped you establish your identity. You might discuss events like trying to figure out where to sit in the cafeteria, having to describe yourself in five words as an icebreaker in your math class, or being unsure what to do during your lunch break because it’s no longer acceptable to go outside and play during lunch. All of those ideas feed back into the central motif of establishing your identity.

The important thing to remember is that while a narrative essay is typically told chronologically and intended to read like a story, it is not purely for entertainment value. A narrative essay delivers its theme by deliberately weaving the motifs through the events, scenes, and details. While a narrative essay may be entertaining, its primary purpose is to tell a complete story based on a central meaning.

Unlike other essay forms, it is totally okay—even expected—to use first-person narration in narrative essays. If you’re writing a story about yourself, it’s natural to refer to yourself within the essay. It’s also okay to use other perspectives, such as third- or even second-person, but that should only be done if it better serves your motif. Generally speaking, your narrative essay should be in first-person perspective.

Though your motif choices may feel at times like you’re making a point the way you would in an argumentative essay, a narrative essay’s goal is to tell a story, not convince the reader of anything. Your reader should be able to tell what your motif is from reading, but you don’t have to change their mind about anything. If they don’t understand the point you are making, you should consider strengthening the delivery of the events and descriptions that support your motif.

Narrative essays also share some features with analytical essays, in which you derive meaning from a book, film, or other media. But narrative essays work differently—you’re not trying to draw meaning from an existing text, but rather using an event you’ve experienced to convey meaning. In an analytical essay, you examine narrative, whereas in a narrative essay you create narrative.

The structure of a narrative essay is also a bit different than other essays. You’ll generally be getting your point across chronologically as opposed to grouping together specific arguments in paragraphs or sections. To return to the example of an essay discussing your first day of high school and how it impacted the shaping of your identity, it would be weird to put the events out of order, even if not knowing what to do after lunch feels like a stronger idea than choosing where to sit. Instead of organizing to deliver your information based on maximum impact, you’ll be telling your story as it happened, using concrete details to reinforce your theme.

3 Great Narrative Essay Examples

One of the best ways to learn how to write a narrative essay is to look at a great narrative essay sample. Let’s take a look at some truly stellar narrative essay examples and dive into what exactly makes them work so well.

A Ticket to the Fair by David Foster Wallace

Today is Press Day at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, and I’m supposed to be at the fairgrounds by 9:00 A.M. to get my credentials. I imagine credentials to be a small white card in the band of a fedora. I’ve never been considered press before. My real interest in credentials is getting into rides and shows for free. I’m fresh in from the East Coast, for an East Coast magazine. Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish. I think they asked me to do this because I grew up here, just a couple hours’ drive from downstate Springfield. I never did go to the state fair, though—I pretty much topped out at the county fair level. Actually, I haven’t been back to Illinois for a long time, and I can’t say I’ve missed it.

Throughout this essay, David Foster Wallace recounts his experience as press at the Illinois State Fair. But it’s clear from this opening that he’s not just reporting on the events exactly as they happened—though that’s also true— but rather making a point about how the East Coast, where he lives and works, thinks about the Midwest.

In his opening paragraph, Wallace states that outright: “Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they’ll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish.”

Not every motif needs to be stated this clearly , but in an essay as long as Wallace’s, particularly since the audience for such a piece may feel similarly and forget that such a large portion of the country exists, it’s important to make that point clear.

But Wallace doesn’t just rest on introducing his motif and telling the events exactly as they occurred from there. It’s clear that he selects events that remind us of that idea of East Coast cynicism , such as when he realizes that the Help Me Grow tent is standing on top of fake grass that is killing the real grass beneath, when he realizes the hypocrisy of craving a corn dog when faced with a real, suffering pig, when he’s upset for his friend even though he’s not the one being sexually harassed, and when he witnesses another East Coast person doing something he wouldn’t dare to do.

Wallace is literally telling the audience exactly what happened, complete with dates and timestamps for when each event occurred. But he’s also choosing those events with a purpose—he doesn’t focus on details that don’t serve his motif. That’s why he discusses the experiences of people, how the smells are unappealing to him, and how all the people he meets, in cowboy hats, overalls, or “black spandex that looks like cheesecake leotards,” feel almost alien to him.

All of these details feed back into the throughline of East Coast thinking that Wallace introduces in the first paragraph. He also refers back to it in the essay’s final paragraph, stating:

At last, an overarching theory blooms inside my head: megalopolitan East Coasters’ summer treats and breaks and literally ‘getaways,’ flights-from—from crowds, noise, heat, dirt, the stress of too many sensory choices….The East Coast existential treat is escape from confines and stimuli—quiet, rustic vistas that hold still, turn inward, turn away. Not so in the rural Midwest. Here you’re pretty much away all the time….Something in a Midwesterner sort of actuates , deep down, at a public event….The real spectacle that draws us here is us.

Throughout this journey, Wallace has tried to demonstrate how the East Coast thinks about the Midwest, ultimately concluding that they are captivated by the Midwest’s less stimuli-filled life, but that the real reason they are interested in events like the Illinois State Fair is that they are, in some ways, a means of looking at the East Coast in a new, estranging way.

The reason this works so well is that Wallace has carefully chosen his examples, outlined his motif and themes in the first paragraph, and eventually circled back to the original motif with a clearer understanding of his original point.

When outlining your own narrative essay, try to do the same. Start with a theme, build upon it with examples, and return to it in the end with an even deeper understanding of the original issue. You don’t need this much space to explore a theme, either—as we’ll see in the next example, a strong narrative essay can also be very short.

Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolf

After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.

In this essay, Virginia Woolf explains her encounter with a dying moth. On surface level, this essay is just a recounting of an afternoon in which she watched a moth die—it’s even established in the title. But there’s more to it than that. Though Woolf does not begin her essay with as clear a motif as Wallace, it’s not hard to pick out the evidence she uses to support her point, which is that the experience of this moth is also the human experience.

In the title, Woolf tells us this essay is about death. But in the first paragraph, she seems to mostly be discussing life—the moth is “content with life,” people are working in the fields, and birds are flying. However, she mentions that it is mid-September and that the fields were being plowed. It’s autumn and it’s time for the harvest; the time of year in which many things die.

In this short essay, she chronicles the experience of watching a moth seemingly embody life, then die. Though this essay is literally about a moth, it’s also about a whole lot more than that. After all, moths aren’t the only things that die—Woolf is also reflecting on her own mortality, as well as the mortality of everything around her.

At its core, the essay discusses the push and pull of life and death, not in a way that’s necessarily sad, but in a way that is accepting of both. Woolf begins by setting up the transitional fall season, often associated with things coming to an end, and raises the ideas of pleasure, vitality, and pity.

At one point, Woolf tries to help the dying moth, but reconsiders, as it would interfere with the natural order of the world. The moth’s death is part of the natural order of the world, just like fall, just like her own eventual death.

All these themes are set up in the beginning and explored throughout the essay’s narrative. Though Woolf doesn’t directly state her theme, she reinforces it by choosing a small, isolated event—watching a moth die—and illustrating her point through details.

With this essay, we can see that you don’t need a big, weird, exciting event to discuss an important meaning. Woolf is able to explore complicated ideas in a short essay by being deliberate about what details she includes, just as you can be in your own essays.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.

Like Woolf, Baldwin does not lay out his themes in concrete terms—unlike Wallace, there’s no clear sentence that explains what he’ll be talking about. However, you can see the motifs quite clearly: death, fatherhood, struggle, and race.

Throughout the narrative essay, Baldwin discusses the circumstances of his father’s death, including his complicated relationship with his father. By introducing those motifs in the first paragraph, the reader understands that everything discussed in the essay will come back to those core ideas. When Baldwin talks about his experience with a white teacher taking an interest in him and his father’s resistance to that, he is also talking about race and his father’s death. When he talks about his father’s death, he is also talking about his views on race. When he talks about his encounters with segregation and racism, he is talking, in part, about his father.

Because his father was a hard, uncompromising man, Baldwin struggles to reconcile the knowledge that his father was right about many things with his desire to not let that hardness consume him, as well.

Baldwin doesn’t explicitly state any of this, but his writing so often touches on the same motifs that it becomes clear he wants us to think about all these ideas in conversation with one another.

At the end of the essay, Baldwin makes it more clear:

This fight begins, however, in the heart and it had now been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.

Here, Baldwin ties together the themes and motifs into one clear statement: that he must continue to fight and recognize injustice, especially racial injustice, just as his father did. But unlike his father, he must do it beginning with himself—he must not let himself be closed off to the world as his father was. And yet, he still wishes he had his father for guidance, even as he establishes that he hopes to be a different man than his father.

In this essay, Baldwin loads the front of the essay with his motifs, and, through his narrative, weaves them together into a theme. In the end, he comes to a conclusion that connects all of those things together and leaves the reader with a lasting impression of completion—though the elements may have been initially disparate, in the end everything makes sense.

You can replicate this tactic of introducing seemingly unattached ideas and weaving them together in your own essays. By introducing those motifs, developing them throughout, and bringing them together in the end, you can demonstrate to your reader how all of them are related. However, it’s especially important to be sure that your motifs and clear and consistent throughout your essay so that the conclusion feels earned and consistent—if not, readers may feel mislead.

5 Key Tips for Writing Narrative Essays

Narrative essays can be a lot of fun to write since they’re so heavily based on creativity. But that can also feel intimidating—sometimes it’s easier to have strict guidelines than to have to make it all up yourself. Here are a few tips to keep your narrative essay feeling strong and fresh.

Develop Strong Motifs

Motifs are the foundation of a narrative essay . What are you trying to say? How can you say that using specific symbols or events? Those are your motifs.

In the same way that an argumentative essay’s body should support its thesis, the body of your narrative essay should include motifs that support your theme.

Try to avoid cliches, as these will feel tired to your readers. Instead of roses to symbolize love, try succulents. Instead of the ocean representing some vast, unknowable truth, try the depths of your brother’s bedroom. Keep your language and motifs fresh and your essay will be even stronger!

Use First-Person Perspective

In many essays, you’re expected to remove yourself so that your points stand on their own. Not so in a narrative essay—in this case, you want to make use of your own perspective.

Sometimes a different perspective can make your point even stronger. If you want someone to identify with your point of view, it may be tempting to choose a second-person perspective. However, be sure you really understand the function of second-person; it’s very easy to put a reader off if the narration isn’t expertly deployed.

If you want a little bit of distance, third-person perspective may be okay. But be careful—too much distance and your reader may feel like the narrative lacks truth.

That’s why first-person perspective is the standard. It keeps you, the writer, close to the narrative, reminding the reader that it really happened. And because you really know what happened and how, you’re free to inject your own opinion into the story without it detracting from your point, as it would in a different type of essay.

Stick to the Truth

Your essay should be true. However, this is a creative essay, and it’s okay to embellish a little. Rarely in life do we experience anything with a clear, concrete meaning the way somebody in a book might. If you flub the details a little, it’s okay—just don’t make them up entirely.

Also, nobody expects you to perfectly recall details that may have happened years ago. You may have to reconstruct dialog from your memory and your imagination. That’s okay, again, as long as you aren’t making it up entirely and assigning made-up statements to somebody.

Dialog is a powerful tool. A good conversation can add flavor and interest to a story, as we saw demonstrated in David Foster Wallace’s essay. As previously mentioned, it’s okay to flub it a little, especially because you’re likely writing about an experience you had without knowing that you’d be writing about it later.

However, don’t rely too much on it. Your narrative essay shouldn’t be told through people explaining things to one another; the motif comes through in the details. Dialog can be one of those details, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Use Sensory Descriptions

Because a narrative essay is a story, you can use sensory details to make your writing more interesting. If you’re describing a particular experience, you can go into detail about things like taste, smell, and hearing in a way that you probably wouldn’t do in any other essay style.

These details can tie into your overall motifs and further your point. Woolf describes in great detail what she sees while watching the moth, giving us the sense that we, too, are watching the moth. In Wallace’s essay, he discusses the sights, sounds, and smells of the Illinois State Fair to help emphasize his point about its strangeness. And in Baldwin’s essay, he describes shattered glass as a “wilderness,” and uses the feelings of his body to describe his mental state.

All these descriptions anchor us not only in the story, but in the motifs and themes as well. One of the tools of a writer is making the reader feel as you felt, and sensory details help you achieve that.

What’s Next?

Looking to brush up on your essay-writing capabilities before the ACT? This guide to ACT English will walk you through some of the best strategies and practice questions to get you prepared!

Part of practicing for the ACT is ensuring your word choice and diction are on point. Check out this guide to some of the most common errors on the ACT English section to be sure that you're not making these common mistakes!

A solid understanding of English principles will help you make an effective point in a narrative essay, and you can get that understanding through taking a rigorous assortment of high school English classes !

Need more help with this topic? Check out Tutorbase!

Our vetted tutor database includes a range of experienced educators who can help you polish an essay for English or explain how derivatives work for Calculus. You can use dozens of filters and search criteria to find the perfect person for your needs.

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

• For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

• Get the Job
• Resumes and CVs
• Applications
• Cover Letters
• Professional References

Professional Licenses and Exams

• Get a Promotion
• Negotiation
• Professional Ethics
• Professionalism
• Dealing with Coworkers
• Dealing with Bosses

Communication Skills

Managing the office, disabilities, harassment and discrimination, unemployment.

• Career Paths
• Compare Careers
• Switching Careers
• Training and Certifications
• Start a Company
• Internships and Apprenticeships
• Entry Level Jobs
• College Degrees

Growth Trends for Related Jobs

How to answer essay questions for a job interview.

Some employers use essays during the job interview process to assess an applicant's writing skills and ability to communicate effectively. They also show how an applicant works under pressure and time constraints. Job interview essays are often only one or two paragraphs long and usually require you to write about subjects pertaining to that particular job. A good essay can be the difference between getting the job and the employer pursuing other candidates.

Read the essay topic or question. Make sure you completely understand what you need to write about before you begin the essay. Ask the interviewer for clarification if necessary.

Introduce the topic with a strong sentence about how much experience you have in the subject of the essay or an interesting bit of personal or professional information about the subject. This grabs the reader's attention and makes them want to read the rest of the essay. Do not write "This essay is about (blank)" or any other simple introduction.

Give an example of how you handled a situation that pertains to the subject of the essay in a previous position. Be specific about how your skills helped you overcome the situation and how you can relate that experience to the new job.

Keep the essay concise to make sure you get your point across while staying within the space provided on the page. Do not add information that does not pertain to the subject of the essay, even if it pertains to other aspects of the job.

Read the essay when you are done and revise for spelling, punctuation, grammar, clarity and length.

Related Articles

Interview questions & answers for a paraprofessional job →.

How to Write a Persuasive Essay on Getting a Raise →

How to Answer Questions in Narrative Form →

How to Write Personal Information on a Resume →

How to write job application letters →.

How to Write a Cover Letter for a Job →

Lauren Treadwell studied finance at Western Governors University and is an associate of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. Treadwell provides content to a number of prominent organizations, including Wise Bread, FindLaw and Discover Financial. As a high school student, she offered financial literacy lessons to fellow students.

• Job Descriptions
• Law Enforcement Job Descriptions
• Administrative Job Descriptions
• Healthcare Job Descriptions
• Sales Job Descriptions
• Fashion Job Descriptions
• Education Job Descriptions
• Salary Insights
• Journalism Salaries
• Healthcare Salaries
• Military Salaries
• Engineering Salaries
• Teaching Salaries
• Accessibility
• Privacy Notice
• Cookie Notice
• Copyright Policy
• Contact Us
• Find a Job
• Manage Preferences
• California Notice of Collection
• Terms of Use

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Narrative Essays

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The Modes of Discourse—Exposition, Description, Narration, Argumentation (EDNA)—are common paper assignments you may encounter in your writing classes. Although these genres have been criticized by some composition scholars, the Purdue OWL recognizes the widespread use of these approaches and students’ need to understand and produce them.

What is a narrative essay?

When writing a narrative essay, one might think of it as telling a story. These essays are often anecdotal, experiential, and personal—allowing students to express themselves in a creative and, quite often, moving ways.

Here are some guidelines for writing a narrative essay.

• If written as a story, the essay should include all the parts of a story.

This means that you must include an introduction, plot, characters, setting, climax, and conclusion.

• When would a narrative essay not be written as a story?

A good example of this is when an instructor asks a student to write a book report. Obviously, this would not necessarily follow the pattern of a story and would focus on providing an informative narrative for the reader.

• The essay should have a purpose.

Make a point! Think of this as the thesis of your story. If there is no point to what you are narrating, why narrate it at all?

• The essay should be written from a clear point of view.

It is quite common for narrative essays to be written from the standpoint of the author; however, this is not the sole perspective to be considered. Creativity in narrative essays oftentimes manifests itself in the form of authorial perspective.

• Use clear and concise language throughout the essay.

Much like the descriptive essay, narrative essays are effective when the language is carefully, particularly, and artfully chosen. Use specific language to evoke specific emotions and senses in the reader.

• The use of the first person pronoun ‘I’ is welcomed.

Do not abuse this guideline! Though it is welcomed it is not necessary—nor should it be overused for lack of clearer diction.

• As always, be organized!

Have a clear introduction that sets the tone for the remainder of the essay. Do not leave the reader guessing about the purpose of your narrative. Remember, you are in control of the essay, so guide it where you desire (just make sure your audience can follow your lead).

• Scriptwriting

What is a Narrative Essay — Examples, Format & Techniques

I was in the Amazon jungle the first time I wrote a narrative essay, enlightened and enraptured by the influence of ayahuasca. That’s not true. I’ve never been to South America nor have I ever taken ayahuasca. The purpose of that opening is to show how to craft a narrative essay intro — hook, line, and sinker. Narrative essays rely on hooking the reader, and enticing them to read on. But what is a narrative essay? We’re going to break down everything you need to know about these essays — definition, examples, tips and tricks included. By the end, you’ll be ready to craft your own narrative essay for school or for publication.

What’s a Narrative Essay?

First, let’s define narrative essay.

Narrative essays share a lot of similarities with personal essays, but whereas the former can be fictional or non-fictional, the latter are strictly non-fictional. The goal of the narrative essay is to use established storytelling techniques, like theme , conflict , and irony , in a uniquely personal way.

The responsibility of the narrative essayist is to make the reader feel connected to their story, regardless of the topic. This next video explores how writers can use structural elements and techniques to better engage their readers. 

Personal Narrative Essay Examples With Essay Pro

Narrative essays rely on tried and true structure components, including:

• First-person POV
• Personal inspiration
• Focus on a central theme

By keeping these major tenets in mind, you’ll be better prepared to recognize weaknesses and strengths in your own works.

NARRATIVE ESSAY DEFINITION

What is a narrative essay.

A narrative essay is a prose-written story that’s focused on the commentary of a central theme. Narrative essays are generally written in the first-person POV, and are usually about a topic that’s personal to the writer. Everything in these essays should take place in an established timeline, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. 

Famous Narrative Essay Examples

• Ticker to the Fair by David Foster Wallace
• After Life by Joan Didion
• Here is a Lesson in Creative Writing by Kurt Vonnegut

Narrative Writing Explained

How to start a narrative essay.

When you go to sleep at night, what do you think of? Flying squirrels? Lost loved ones? That time you called your teacher ‘mom’? Whatever it is, that’s what you need to write about. There’s a reason those ideas and moments have stuck with you over time. Your job is to figure out why.

Once you realize what makes a moment important to you, it’s your job to make it important to the reader too. In this next video, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker J. Christian Jensen explains the power of the personal narrative. 

Narrative Writing and the Personal Narrative Essay  •  Video by TEDx Talks

Anything and everything can be the topic of your essay. It could be as benign as a walk to school or as grandiose as a trip to the moon — so long as that narrative exists within reality. Give your thoughts and opinions on the matter too — don’t be afraid to say “this is what I think” so long as it’s supported by storytelling techniques. Remember, never limit yourself as a writer, just keep in mind that certain topics will be harder to make engaging than others.

Narrative Essay Outline

How to write a narrative essay.

First step, game plan. You’re going to want to map out the story from beginning to end, then mark major story beats in your document.

Like all stories, your narrative essay needs a clear beginning, middle, and end. Each section should generally conform to a specifically outlined structure. For reference, check out the outline below.

Narrative Essay Format  •  How to Write a Narrative Essay Step by Step

Make sure to reference back to this outline throughout the writing process to make sure you have all your major beats covered.

Purpose of narrative essay writing

Narrative essays give writers the ability to freely express themselves within the structure of a traditional story. Nearly all universities ask applicants to submit a narrative essay with their formal application. This is done for two reasons: they allow institutions to judge the linguistic and grammar capabilities of its applicants, as well as their raw creative side.

If you’re considering studying creative writing in an undergraduate or graduate program, then you’re going to write A LOT of narrative style essays. This process may seem indomitable; How am I supposed to write hundreds of pages about… me? But by the end, you’ll be a better writer and you’ll have a better understanding of yourself.

One thing that all successful essayists have in common is that they make radical, often defiant statements on the world at large. Think Ralph Waldo Emerson, Virginia Woolf, and Langston Hughes for example.

Being a professional essayist isn’t easy, and it’s near-impossible to be one who makes a lot of money. Many essayists work as professors, editors, and curriculum designers as well. 

This next video features the late, award-winning essayist Brian Doyle. He explains all the things you need to hear when thinking about writing a story.

Narrative Essay Examples “Lecture” via Boston University

We can learn a lot from the way Doyle “opens” his stories. My favorite is how he begins with the statement, “I met the Dalai Lama once.” How can we not be interested in learning more? 

This brings us all the way back to the beginning. Start with a hook, rattle off the line, then reel in the sinker. If you entice the reader, develop a personal plot, and finish with a resolute ending, you’ll have a lot of success in essay writing. 

 Up Next

Narrative essay topics.

We've curated a collection of narrative essay topics that will spark your creativity and bring your experiences to life. Dive into the rich tapestry of your memories, explore the unique threads of your life, and let your narrative unfold.

Up Next: Narrative Essay Topics →

Write and produce your scripts all in one place..

Write and collaborate on your scripts FREE . Create script breakdowns, sides, schedules, storyboards, call sheets and more.

• Pricing & Plans
• Product Updates
• Featured On
• StudioBinder Partners
• The Ultimate Guide to Call Sheets (with FREE Call Sheet Template)
• How to Break Down a Script (with FREE Script Breakdown Sheet)
• The Only Shot List Template You Need — with Free Download
• Managing Your Film Budget Cashflow & PO Log (Free Template)
• A Better Film Crew List Template Booking Sheet
• Best Storyboard Softwares (with free Storyboard Templates)
• Movie Magic Scheduling
• Gorilla Software
• Storyboard That

A visual medium requires visual methods. Master the art of visual storytelling with our FREE video series on directing and filmmaking techniques.

We’re in a golden age of TV writing and development. More and more people are flocking to the small screen to find daily entertainment. So how can you break put from the pack and get your idea onto the small screen? We’re here to help.

• Making It: From Pre-Production to Screen
• What is Poor Things About — Plot and Themes Explained
• Best Free TV Scripts Online (with PDF Downloads)
• What is an Anagram — The Art of Writing Word Puzzles
• What is a Color Palette — How to Use Them in Visual Arts
• What Was the First Movie With Sound — Film History 101
• 1 Pinterest

Narrative Essay : Interview

An interview is not just a conversation; it’s a journey of discovery. It’s a chance to learn about someone’s experiences, thoughts, and personality. Whether it’s a job interview, a feature interview for a magazine, or a casual conversation with a friend, interviews offer a unique opportunity to connect with others and gain insights into their lives.

An interview is like a journey where you get to discover things about someone. It’s a way to find out about their experiences, thoughts, and who they are. Whether it’s a job interview, a magazine article, or just talking with a friend, interviews let you connect with others and learn about their lives. They’re a chance to see the world from someone else’s point of view and learn new things. Interviews can show us things we didn’t know before and help us understand people better.

Preparation: The Foundation of a Successful Interview

Before an interview, preparation is key. This involves researching the person or topic, preparing questions, and setting the right tone. For a job interview, this might mean researching the company and understanding the role. For a magazine feature, it could involve reading previous interviews and finding unique angles to explore. Being prepared shows respect for the person being interviewed and helps ensure a successful conversation.

The Interview: A Dance of Dialogue

During the interview, the interviewer’s role is to guide the conversation while being open to unexpected turns. Asking open-ended questions encourages the interviewee to share more about themselves and their experiences. Active listening is crucial, allowing the interviewer to pick up on cues and delve deeper into interesting topics. It’s also important to be respectful and empathetic, creating a comfortable environment for the interviewee to open up.

The Impact: Discoveries and Reflections

Interviews can have a profound impact on both the interviewer and the interviewee. For the interviewer, it’s a chance to learn from others and gain new perspectives. For the interviewee, it’s an opportunity to reflect on their own experiences and share their story with others. Interviews can also inspire and educate, sharing valuable insights with a wider audience.

Conclusion: The Art of Connection

In conclusion, interviews are more than just conversations; they’re journeys of discovery. They offer a chance to connect with others, learn from their experiences, and gain new perspectives. Whether it’s a job interview, a feature interview, or a casual chat, interviews have the power to inspire, educate, and connect us with the world around us.

Epilogue: The Everlasting Impact

Long after the interview has ended, its impact lingers. The stories shared and the insights gained continue to resonate, shaping our understanding of the world and the people around us. Interviews are not just moments in time; they are experiences that leave a lasting impression, reminding us of the power of human connection and the importance of listening and understanding each other. As we embark on new interviews, we carry with us the lessons learned and the connections made, enriching our lives and our understanding of the world.

• Narrative Essay on The Book That Changed My Life  
• Narrative Essay: A Personal Journey with Health

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Why Robert Hur Called Biden an “Elderly Man with a Poor Memory”

By Jeannie Suk Gersen

When I first approached Robert Hur for an interview, soon after his appointment as special counsel, fourteen months ago, he demurred, saying, “I’m boring.” Then his circumstances changed. When we finally met, he pulled up in an armored black government S.U.V., accompanied by two U.S. marshals. Hur had completed his report on whether President Joe Biden had mishandled classified documents—he had declined to prosecute Biden but had impugned the President’s memory in the process—and members of both parties were furious. “I knew it was going to be unpleasant,” he told me this past week, “but the level of vitriol—it’s hard to know exactly how intense that’s going to be until the rotten fruit is being thrown at you.”

Hur’s report stated that his investigation “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice-presidency when he was a private citizen.” Yet Hur concluded that “the evidence does not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” He reasoned that “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” In Hur’s view, “it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

The report was designated confidential, but the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, had already promised to make as much as possible of it public. When he did so, on February 8th, Biden immediately held a press conference, which turned chaotic. Reporters yelled over each other, and Biden pushed back on Hur’s characterization of him, saying, “I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing.” The President was particularly incensed by Hur’s claim that he did not recall what year his son Beau had died: “How in the hell dare he raise that.” Afterward, the White House continued to fight back, calling the references to the President’s memory “unnecessary, inflammatory, and prejudicial statements” that are “unsupported personal opinion criticism on uncharged conduct that is outside the Special Counsel’s expertise and remit.” (The Justice Department immediately defended Hur’s report as entirely consistent with legal requirements and Department policies.)

This past week, during a four-hour hearing in Congress, lawmakers from both political parties rebuked Hur. Republicans accused him of going easy on the President by not charging him despite the evidence of criminality; Democrats alleged that, because Hur could not indict the President, he had set out to hurt Biden politically. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia, claimed that Hur had deliberately played “into the Republicans’ narrative that the President is unfit for office because he is senile.”

During his time as special counsel, Hur refused to speak to the press, but, shortly after he gave his congressional testimony, we sat down for a conversation, in which we spoke about his approach to prosecution, his commitment to the United States as the son of Korean immigrants, and why he took the special-counsel job. As we delved into how he wrote the report—and I shared some of my own concerns about his approach—it became clear to me that we were talking across something of a disconnect, between what the public needs from a special counsel and how a well-trained Justice Department prosecutor conceives of the role.

From the beginning, the investigation into President Biden has been double-edged: it was always about both Biden and Donald Trump. In September, 2022, after the F.B.I. found that Trump had taken boxes of classified documents from the White House and stored them at Mar-a-Lago, Biden called Trump’s conduct “totally irresponsible.” Two months later—shortly before the special counsel Jack Smith was appointed to investigate Trump’s alleged election interference and retention of classified documents—Biden’s lawyers alerted the government that boxes of materials from the Obama Administration had been found at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank where Biden spent time after his Vice-Presidency. The boxes contained some classified documents, and subsequent searches found more, at Biden’s Wilmington home and at the University of Delaware. In January, 2023, without informing the President, Garland appointed Robert Hur to investigate Biden’s retention of classified documents.

According to Justice Department regulations, a special counsel must be a lawyer selected from outside the federal government “with a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking” and “appropriate experience.” Hur was an obvious choice. At fifty-one, he had spent a total of fifteen years at the Justice Department, including roles as the top aide to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—which involved work on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election—and as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland. Hur, a registered Republican, was nominated to the U.S. Attorney role by Trump (and confirmed unanimously by the Senate), but he insists that he does not have a partisan mind-set. “I’m just doing the work,” he told me. “I don’t have a particular ideology or crusade that I’m trying to go after.” When news broke of his appointment as special counsel, many of his friends, Democrats and Republicans alike, were supportive but said it was a little crazy to take such a thankless job. It was guaranteed that “this part of the country, or that part of the country,” he said, raising his arms to shape the two swaths, would be angry with him.

I asked Hur why he accepted the appointment. He explained that much of it had to do with his family’s history. His mother’s family fled from North Korea to South Korea shortly before the Korean War. Hur’s parents arrived in the U.S. in the early seventies, and he was born soon after. His father, now retired, was an anesthesiologist, and his mother, who trained as a nurse, managed her husband’s medical practice. “I know that my parents’ lives and my life would have been very, very different if it were not for this country and American soldiers in Korea during the Korean War,” Hur said. “There is a real debt that my family and I have to this country. And in my view, if you’re in a position where the Attorney General of the United States says there is a need for someone to do a particularly unpleasant task, if it’s something that you can do, ethically and consistent with your own moral compass, then you should do it.”

Hur grew up in the Los Angeles area, where he attended Harvard School for Boys (now a coed school called Harvard-Westlake). He recalled that the actor Tori Spelling was at the sister school: “There were lots of Hollywood people. I felt very much an outsider from all of that because of my strict Korean upbringing.” He explained, “It was quite stern. Excellence was expected. Fun was severely optional.” He played piano and violin. “I played drums, too, for a while,” he said, “because that was my form of rebellion.”

Hur went to Harvard for college, where, he said, he was “regularly floored by how effortlessly classmates of mine could become fluent in things that took me quite a while to get on top of.” He continued, “I’ve never been the person whom people look at and say, ‘That person is a rare generational brain.’ But I’m going to work harder and grind it out.” He started out studying premed but was “weeded out” by a course in organic chemistry. He went on to study English, and wrote a thesis that was “an ethical analysis of William Faulkner’s ‘Absalom, Absalom!’ ” Hur traces his interest in literature to his high-school English teachers, who included the journalist Caitlin Flanagan. Flanagan remembers Hur, too—she recently chided him on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” saying, “As I taught Robert and so many students fortunate enough to benefit from my tutelage, when writing, the most important thing in an essay is we keep related ideas together.” She continued, to big laughs from the studio audience, “Robert, the assignment is ‘Should criminal charges be issued for this thing?,’ not ‘Can you give us an armchair neurological report of the man you’re investigating?’ ”

Contrary to the stoic persona he displayed at the congressional hearing, Hur is lively and humorous in person. But I couldn’t help but connect his self-described fun-optional upbringing—and the unspoken pressures of being the first nonwhite person in this very prominent job—with his insistence that his work as a prosecutor is plodding and not creative. “I view it almost like an engineering task or a construction task. I am building a case,” he told me. “There are planks and nails and hammers. How does this thing get built with the requisite solidity and seaworthiness that it actually will hold up?” His goal, as special counsel, was to call as little attention to his work as he could. He resigned before his congressional testimony, he explained, simply because his predecessors had. “Look, if Mueller did it this way, then there must be some reasons,” Hur said. “I don’t want to make history here.”

Hur’s report was refreshingly blunt and direct, but it still led to misunderstandings. The White House and Democrats have managed to spin his conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to convict Biden as something separate from his observations about memory and forgetting. Republicans who wanted Biden to be charged are similarly motivated to see the two issues as distinct, so that they can depict him as both criminal and senile. But the failing-memory issue was not extraneous to the evidence in this criminal matter; indeed, it was integral to Hur’s decision to not recommend indicting Biden. Hur concluded that the evidence is not sufficient to convict Biden in large part because of his memory.

The federal crime for which Biden was being investigated makes it a felony for a person who has “unauthorized possession” of a document “relating to the national defense” to “willfully retain” it. After Biden left the Vice-Presidency, in 2017, he was no longer authorized to possess classified documents. Hur found—and Biden has not disputed—that Biden did possess them, at his home and offices. The only open question in this investigation was whether his retention of the documents was “willful.” The answer would have been a clear, easy, and resounding “no” if Biden was unaware that classified documents were in his home or office, or if he discovered them and promptly reported their presence. The trouble is that Hur’s evidence included an interview recorded in 2017, in which Biden told a ghostwriter, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Hur also found, on recordings, that Biden read aloud classified information from a notebook to the ghostwriter “on at least three occasions.”

Given these findings, one has to wonder why Hur didn’t charge Biden. Based on my reading of Hur’s report and conversations with him, the answer is that Hur believed that Biden—who certainly knew that he possessed classified documents in 2017—may have forgotten about them. The report points to where some documents were found: “in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket,” and so on. This, the report notes, “does not look like a place where a person intentionally stores what he supposedly considers to be important classified documents, critical to his legacy.”

Then there are Hur’s observations that Biden’s “memory was significantly limited”—that, in interviews with Hur and the ghostwriter, he displayed “limited precision and recall.” After reading the transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden, many Democrats noted with relief that the President remembered a lot: from the details of a home renovation to a 2011 visit to Mongolia. Reading the transcript, I was at first surprised that his attorneys had let him ramble to that extent—having represented clients in interviews with federal prosecutors, I wanted to bury my head in my hands. At one point, Hur even said to Biden, “Sir, I’d love—I would love, love—to hear much more about this, but I do have a few more questions to get through.” But I eventually surmised that Biden’s lawyers had been right to allow him to make the impression of a highly likable man with diverting stories and fuzzily selective recall. My impression, from examining the evidence of his conduct regarding the classified documents, is that Biden came uncomfortably close to being indicted. Hur’s most damning words—that a jury would perceive the President as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” and thus be unlikely to convict—seem to have saved him from that outcome.

In Congress, Hur defended his report’s discussion of Biden’s memory by saying, “I had to show my work.” In our conversation, I suggested to Hur that he might have been able to avoid some misunderstandings if he had shown his work even more. Hur’s report rolled the prosecution case and the defense case together into a realism-oriented prediction of what an eventual jury could conclude—that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” I proposed that he might instead have laid out, step-by-step, as one would for a law student, how the evidence he found went to each element of the crime, including the key element of willfulness. He might then have drilled down on how the defense—which had already emphasized to Hur that Biden forgot about the classified documents—could successfully undermine proof of willfulness with arguments about Biden’s memory, bolstered by his likely demeanor at a trial years from now. Hur told me, “I didn’t write it for law students. I didn’t write it for the lay public, and I didn’t write it for Congress. I wrote it for the Attorney General of the United States, who himself was an experienced prosecutor.” Hur was aware that Garland had said he was “committed to making as much of his report public as possible, consistent with legal requirements and Department policy.” But Hur insisted that his audience was still Garland alone, citing a regulation which states that the special counsel should prepare a confidential report for the Attorney General.

A confidential report that everyone understands will become public seems like a paradox, but it reflects the long-standing norms and blinkered training of people who do the job of special counsel. Hur worked the case like he would any other criminal investigation, and he wrote his report in the way he would have written many memos as a federal prosecutor. But the potential defendant he was investigating was the President of the United States. At the hearing in Congress, Hur refused to “engage in hypotheticals,” but he has previously prosecuted people for the same crime, including an N.S.A. employee who kept classified documents in his home and was convicted and sentenced to more than five years in prison. Hur’s decision not to charge Biden was based on the view that he could not realistically persuade a jury to convict not just any defendant but this particular President. The job was inevitably special. And its special obligation—to undertake a federal investigation of the boss who oversees the Justice Department, an inherent conflict of interest, while maintaining public trust—can come into conflict with the D.O.J.-molded circumspection that characterizes special counsels and certainly came through in my interview with Hur.

The White House has attacked Hur’s report with the goal of winning the Presidential election—but, in doing so, may have put Biden at greater risk of prosecution in a future Trump Administration. The more Democrats insist that Biden is in fact sharp as a tack, the more they suggest that he may have been guilty of “willfully” retaining classified documents that he knew he wasn’t authorized to have. And, conversely, the more Republicans insist that Biden is “senile”—though Hur never used that word, nor the word “unfit”—the less likely he is to have willfully retained the documents. For both parties, the political and legal risks point in opposite directions.

Biden and Trump, however, are in certain respects aligned in their legal defenses. In his report, Hur appeared to think that jurors would be convinced that Biden sincerely believed his notebooks containing classified information were his personal property. (In the interview, Biden noted that Ronald Reagan kept diaries containing classified information in his home after leaving the Presidency, without having been investigated or required to return them.) Trump has also claimed that classified documents he retained were his personal property, and the parts of Hur’s report that seem lenient toward Biden’s “my property” notion may throw a bit of a lifeline to Trump’s defense. Indeed, it wouldn’t be outlandish for Trump’s defense attorneys to subpoena Biden to testify as to his belief that he was entitled to keep notebooks containing classified information. (As a matter of law, there is no relevant distinction between notebooks containing classified information and documents that are marked classified.)

Hur declining to prosecute Biden has another implication for Trump’s defense. At trial, Trump’s attorneys may well be able to present him, too, as an old man with mental impairments that undermine the prosecution’s proof of willfulness. Trump is only a few years younger than Biden—and, in 2017, a broad perception that Trump suffered from mental deterioration led Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman and former constitutional-law professor, from Maryland, to propose establishing a body to determine that the President was unfit for office. (At this month’s hearing on Hur’s report, Raskin rebuked Republican colleagues for “being amateur memory specialists giving us their drive-by diagnoses of the President of the United States.”) If Jack Smith’s case against Trump goes to trial, it would be surprising if Trump’s attorneys didn’t raise his impairment in his defense, especially now that we have the Justice Department precedent of declining to prosecute an elderly President based on what a jury would likely think of his memory. Smith would probably insist that Trump’s mind and memory are just fine. There may be uncomfortable moments for Biden if the Trump case goes to trial, with the Justice Department all but claiming that Trump’s mental faculties are superior to Biden’s.

Hur’s conclusion, as spelled out in his report, was ultimately not that Biden’s memory is actually failing (or abnormal for a man his age). It was, rather, a trial lawyer’s assessment that a jury, with persuasion from defense lawyers, might not be able to rule out that Biden just forgot he had the documents. But that imagined jury has a lot in common with us as voters, distressed about our choices and concerned about the candidates’ age. Biden in particular is perceived even by a majority of Democrats as too old to be President. Hur himself was tight-lipped about how the report resonated with the public. But, whether we are talking about Biden or Trump, Hur’s report has forced us to contemplate voting for a candidate while believing that he is impaired enough to fall short of a “willful” mental state. Perhaps Hur, while doing a thankless public service, also offered a generational lament at our gerontocratic government. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

The repressive, authoritarian soul of “ Thomas the Tank Engine .” 

Why the last snow on Earth may be red .

Harper Lee’s abandoned true-crime novel .

How the super-rich are preparing for doomsday .

What if a pill could give you all the benefits of a workout ?

A photographer’s college classmates, back then and now .

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Evan Osnos

By Jay Caspian Kang

By Patrick Radden Keefe

By Andre Dubus III

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Maureen Dowd

James Carville, the Cajun Who Can’t Stop Ragin’

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from New Orleans.

A few years ago, when James Carville was teaching at Louisiana State University, he heard that one of his students had gotten into the school of her dreams to work on an advanced degree. He wanted to toast her.

“I get a $25 champagne and four plastic flutes,” he recalled, “and I said to the students: ‘All right. You are not going to get out of James Carville’s class unless you know how to properly open a bottle of champagne.’

“I said: ‘Here’s what you’re going to do. You don’t pop it like you see in the movies or you’re going to poke somebody’s eye out. You take the foil off. Now you’re going to take a dishcloth, and you’re going to execute the classic counterclockwise movement. The bottle is going to go one way; the cork is going to go the other way. You just ease it out, and the sound that you are looking for is the sigh of a satisfied woman.’

“The next Tuesday, the dean comes into my office and he said: ‘I’m closing the door. We need to have a talk.’”

A female student had complained about the sighing line.

He wanted to mutter to the dean, “Her boyfriend has never heard that sound,” but he simply said, “OK, I’ll endeavor to do better.”

But this is the Ragin’ Cajun we’re talking about, so “do better” really meant “go further”: “I went back in the classroom, and I told the Gilbert Gottfried joke from ‘The Aristocrats,’” Carville continued. “I said: ‘Girl, you wanted me to get in trouble? This is what you do when all is lost and you’re up against the wall.’ Of course, it’s the grossest joke ever.”

Nobody puts Bayou Baby in a corner. The experience soured his joy in teaching at his alma mater.

“This was L.S. freaking U., not Oberlin,” he said. “It was terrible. I wouldn’t take the coeds to dinner after class. I would take the male students. I was scared to death in my job. I was like: ‘I don’t need L.S.U.’s money. I don’t need to drive up there and listen to that crap.’ I just said: ‘That’s it. I’m done. This is not for me.’”

Carville, mastermind of Bill Clinton’s election, laughed and sipped his red wine. We were talking in the back of a Big Easy deli/wine store called Martin’s, on a break from the New Orleans Book Festival last week.

Carville is as busy as ever, raising money for Democrats, doing a podcast with Al Hunt and starring in a documentary directed by Matt Tyrnauer, who has also delved into the lives of Valentino and Roy Cohn. (He also starred with George Stephanopoulos in the acclaimed film about the vertiginous 1992 campaign “The War Room.”)

Tyrnauer, who’s still working on the movie, said he was drawn to the project because “James is an American original. He’s a one-off.”

Why doesn’t Corporal Cueball, as the bald operative and former Marine calls himself, get in more trouble?

“Certain people rise above cancelability,” Tyrnauer said. “In the current election cycle, James has been really out front saying that it seems to him, based on the polls and data, that Biden has a problem. And everyone else seems to be like ostriches with heads buried in the sand. James is a truth teller.”

Indeed, there’s a scene in the documentary where the director Rob Reiner, who was in New Orleans filming “Spinal Tap II,” upbraids Carville for pushing the idea that Democrats needed fresh blood in the White House and perhaps an open convention.

The director Rob Reiner spars with James Carville over the 2024 election in a documentary being produced about Mr. Carville.

“You said something quite a while ago. This is before Biden announced. You said that you thought time for new blood, time for a changing of the guard, open primary season. Then, within the last month or so, you said you wish there would be an open convention, like the old-fashioned days, where they’d broker and find a candidate. And that was a little upsetting to me because this is about whether or not we preserve our 249 years of self-rule or we slip into a theocratic autocracy.” “I don’t think people really appreciate how bad Biden’s poll numbers are. When you look at them, it’s like walking in on your grandmother naked. You can’t unsee them, no matter how hard you try. And the deeper you dig, the kind of worse it is. I don’t think we thought this thing through. I don’t think people realize the hunger and appetite for something different in this country. And I don’t think they realize this terrific pool of candidates out of there.” “I don’t disagree with you that we have a good bench. There are a lot of great candidates out there for 2028. But can we just talk about those poll numbers that you talk about, which are — right now, you look at them, they’re not good. There’s no question about it. But I think we can still win this election, but we have to all be pulling with the same oar. We all have to be pulling the same oar.” “So when I say it’s underappreciated how bad these numbers are, first of all, in order for a Democrat to win in a coalition, an integral part of coalition are Blacks and under 30. The numbers among Blacks are abysmal. They’re not bad, OK? I think Biden will obviously carry the Black vote, but he won a close election with a robust Black turnout — I don’t see it — and a robust under-30 turnout. Under 30 should be 17 percent of the electorate. It’s clocking in now 14. And they think that we are old — — I don’t know where they get that idea — And that —” [OVERLAPPING VOICES] “Look at us, man.” [INAUDIBLE] “I’m a young puppy, compared to you.” “I know that. My sister says, ‘Do you realize how old you are?’ I said, ‘No, I never think about it.’ I know how old I am.” [LAUGHS] “And I understand where you’re coming from. People that I love, that I talk to every day, that have been part of this film make exactly the same point you do. And I can’t unsee what I see.” “Yeah.” “Look, if it goes to the convention and Biden is the nominee, I’ll be the most enthusiastic point person that you can imagine.” “I like hearing you say that, once he’s the nominee —” “There’s no [INAUDIBLE].” “You’re all in. You’re all —” “Right.” “You’re all in.” “But if there’s a 5 percent chance I can stop — if I knew someone was going to commit suicide or I thought they were, I thought there was a 60 percent chance they’re going to commit suicide —” “I’ll be committing suicide if Trump becomes president. 100 percent.” “Well, I know. I understand what you’re saying. I feel like that we might be committing suicide.” “Now, we did talk about suburban women. And to me, when they understand that Trump has called for a national abortion ban and that could happen, that is another part that’ll energize the suburbs of Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Phoenix, those places.” “Literally, Democrats have not lost an election since Dobbs. Anywhere.” “Right.” “Everywhere.” “Right.” “But if we don’t have 12 percent Black contribution or 17 percent under 30, you can’t make it up with suburban women.” “How do we get those people out? That’s what we need you to do.” [STAMMERING] “That’s what we need you for.” “Again, I — so people ascribe to me powers that I don’t have, OK? The world is not — I mean, as high an opinion I might have of myself, and it’s probably not as high as some people think it is — but suppose I affect 100 votes, and suppose but for 75 votes, Biden would have won, and somebody — and a political scientist, you know — did an algorithm and some advanced math calculations and said, you know, ‘James Carville is the reason that we don’t have a Constitution anymore.’ All right, now that’s obviously not true.” “No.” “But if you think it goes through my head, yeah. If it’s us and Trump, of course we got to work our asses off. But it’s not going to be. It’s going to be us and Trump and No Labels and Bobby Kennedy, who’s [EXPLETIVE] crazy.” “And there’s no definitive polling that he will take more from Biden than Trump. He probably will, but I’m thinking — and again, we’re on the margins here. We’re on the margins. So if he can take one or two points more, that could be very dangerous for us.” “So they have [INAUDIBLE]. I don’t know how to get to — how you get this number. But there’s a [EXPLETIVE] vote in the United States. And there always has been.” “Always has been. But it’s bigger than — That put — that put George W. in the White House because they voted for Ralph Nader instead of for Gore.” “But there is no doubt that without Ralph Nader, the Supreme Court could not have stole the 2000 election.” “Yeah.” “Trump doesn’t want another ‘Well, [EXPLETIVE]’ candidate, because he’s cornered the ‘Well, [EXPLETIVE]’ market. You know?” “He really does. Assuming that we’re where we are, it’s going to be Biden against Trump, unless something wildly unforeseen happens, do you still think we can win this election?” “Yeah, but — because every election is close. Right now — and we need more than a little bit of a change to win this. And I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m no better at predicting who’s going to win an election than you would be, maybe, better at, like, predicting who’s going to win the Academy Award because you know these people think, but you probably don’t. You know, not very good rate. But in a country that is just craving some kind of a change, and people say democracy — I agree — democracy is on the ballot. But if a democracy produces two candidates that 70 percent percent of the people don’t want, people are going to say, well, [EXPLETIVE], just let the General Motors board pick whoever they want to be president.” “It is a — it’s a crapshoot, whether — you know, Biden is our nominee. If you decide that you’re going to blow up where we are now and open up a convention and have a brokered convention or whatever, that could also be dangerous. I’m just looking at the reality of where we are and saying, ‘This is where we are, and this is what we have to accept and full-bore support Joe Biden.’” “It looks like the party has decided that, OK, we’re just going to go through with this. I think the modern Republican Party is defined by criminality. And I’ve been a Democrat all my life, but I’m beginning to think that the defining trait we have is cowardice. I can’t unsee my naked grandmother.” “Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. And if there’s that 1 percent or 2 percent chance that something happens and we have to, you know, go a different direction, like you, I’m percent behind that.”

“It’s the only election in my lifetime where it’s about yesterday, not tomorrow,” Carville told me.

“If you were going to ask me what I’d want the title of the documentary to be? ‘When Politics Was Fun,’” he said. “There was actually a time when people loved doing this. People would go out, they’d drink, they’d talk to everybody, they’d leak stories. Generally, when it was over, you’d go sit with the other side and have drinks together.”

(Or in the case of his wife, Mary Matalin, whom he met during the 1992 campaign, when she was a top George H.W. Bush adviser and he was a top Bill Clinton adviser, there was “Sleeping With the Enemy.” Matalin has since switched her registration to Libertarian.)

Politics now, Carville said, is filled with hatred and doctrinaire positions.

“Hubert Humphrey used to describe himself as ‘the Happy Warrior,’” he said. “If somebody said, ‘I’m a happy guy’ right now, they’d go: ‘What’s wrong with that guy? Don’t you realize the evil in this world?’

“It’s not like it used to be, where everybody would have these huge media scrums with hundreds of reporters and local news,” he said nostalgically. “The latest fad is campaigns unionizing. Who the hell ever wanted to work on a campaign that didn’t want to work on a Sunday? It was a sprint to the end.”

Carville has been sounding an alarm about progressives getting too censorious since he advised Hillary Clinton in 2016. He disparaged liberals’ snooty, elitist “faculty lounge” attitudes long before he blew off the faculty lounge himself. He complained that “woke stuff is killing us,” that the left was talking in a language that ordinary Americans did not understand, using terms like “Latinx” and “communities of color,” and with a tone many Americans found sneering, as in Hillary’s infamous phrase “basket of deplorables.”

“There are a lot of people on the left that would rather lose and be pure because it makes them feel good, it makes them feel superior,” Carville said. And that, he said, is how you end up with Dobbs.

He thinks Donald Trump’s voters see him as akin to King Cyrus or King David in the Bible, a flawed messenger, so it’s best to use a biblical narrative about betrayal.

“If you say, ‘You dumb son of a bitch, how can you ever think that this fat, slimy, rapist, criminal, racist should be president?’ they’re going to recoil,” he said. “I think Democrats should say: ‘Look, you believed in him. You felt like you weren’t being seen, you were being culturally excluded. But he betrayed you. You thought he was going to be for you and helping you, but he was really for TikTok and tax cuts to the rich.’”

Carville says that at 79, he is too old to hate. And certainly too old to start giving trigger warnings.

“No one wants to live like this,” he said. “Who ever thought it was a good idea to tell people you can’t hug them or you’ve got to be careful or you’ve got to think about names to call them other than the name you know them by? There’s nothing wrong with me being white or you being white or them being Black or me being male or you being female. It’s a giant, stupid argument.”

He is blithely un-P.C., using axioms like “It’s the Indian, not the arrows.”

He offered a bawdy metaphor about President Biden’s shaky approval ratings: “When I look at these polling numbers, it’s like walking in on your grandma naked. You can’t get the image out of your mind.”

He told CNN’s Dana Bash that Biden “is like a mosquito in a nudist colony: It’s hard to pick a target, but you’ve got to pick one and go after it. He ought to tell Bibi Netanyahu to shut his stupid pie hole.” Carville added, “He’s got to understand how much money the United States has sent to Israel during his prime ministership.”

Talking about Evan Osnos’s recent New Yorker piece about Biden, which suggested that Biden and his advisers don’t worry about polls, Carville was skeptical. “When the polls are not good, you don’t believe in polls,” he said. “If the polls are good, you believe in polls.”

Lately, he has been obsessed with Biden bleeding Black male voters.

“A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females” dominating the culture of his party. “‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.’ The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’

“If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election. I’m like: ‘Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?’”

He disagrees with Democrats who claim there’s been too much attention on Biden’s age.

“If you do a focus group,” he said, “the first thing out of anybody’s mouth is ‘Old,’ so how do you say we’re going to act like this doesn’t exist?”

“Now don’t tell me that Biden has more energy or cognition than Trump because it’s evident that, yeah, Trump’s got word salads, but he projects energy,” Carville said. “He’s insane. He’s a criminal of the first order. But he does have a little timing and a little sense of humor and knows how to move from one story to the other.”

Biden clinging to power has eclipsed the other talent in the party.

“The most underreported, underrealized thing is how talented the Democratic Party is right below the presidential level,” Carville said. “Everyone thinks we’re an old urban party.” He reels off the names of promising Dems: “Mitch Landrieu, Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Raphael Warnock, Gretchen Whitmer, Gina Raimondo, Roy Cooper.”

He said most of the criticism of Kamala Harris is misogynistic, but added: “She reminds me of this great baseball player. He got arms that big. Can’t wait to see the guy. He takes three pitches and walks back to the dugout.”

Although he is worried about the president’s strength in this race, he said: “I actually like Biden. He’s a tenacious guy that’s had a real life. He’s a state school guy. He doesn’t have an iota of elitism. He doesn’t even know what ‘woke’ is. He’s been demonstrably the best president that Black America’s ever had, Clinton and Obama included. You look at incomes, employment, poverty rates, access to health care. It’s not where whites are, but it’s closer than it’s ever been.”

So how does Biden change the narrative?

“I don’t think he can do much more than soldier on and let the Democratic groups kick in,” he said, shrugging.

And with that, Carville bought some wine, climbed into his red Bronco — which he likes to think of as his pirogue, a Cajun canoe — and went home to Mary.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Maureen Dowd is an Opinion columnist for The Times. She won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. @ MaureenDowd • Facebook