One thing you might struggle with in your academic career is coming up with narrative essay topics. A narrative essay is an essay that is personal by its very nature, concerning a story that involves something you learned or experienced. While most people have had interesting life experiences, you might have difficulty translating your experiences into a readable essay.

Fortunately, when it comes to personal narrative topics, the sky is the limit. Here are a few narrative essay ideas that may help you when it comes to crafting the perfect narrative essay.

What is a Narrative Essay?

As mentioned above, a narrative essay is an essay that tells a story, usually (though not always) personal. Due to the open-ended nature of the narrative essay, teachers will rarely assign strict narrative topics, instead encouraging students to develop their own personal narrative essay topics that are suited for them.

This open-ended nature often trips up students who are not used to being given this much freedom on a project. Additionally, given the personal nature of narrative writing topics, coming up with a good one can be difficult for personal reasons specific to you. The following good narrative topics, however, are time-tested ones that can help you out if you are writing a narrative essay.

Narrative Essay Topics

1. Discuss your first day at school. How did it make you feel? Anxious? Excited?
2. Discuss the most memorable day you had at school.
3. Discuss your favourite school field trip.
4. Discuss the best summer vacation you ever had.
5. Discuss a trip where something unexpected or unusual happened to you.
6. Discuss a frightening experience that you’ve had. It could be something life-threatening, supernatural, or just plain bizarre.
7. Discuss learning something new and how it changed your life.
8. Discuss meeting someone new and how doing so changed your life.
9. Discuss an embarrassing moment that you had.
10. Discuss something amusing that happened to you or someone you know.
11. Discuss a birthday party, one that went well or awry.
12. Discuss an unusual weather event that you were caught up in, such as a tornado, a hurricane, or even just a snowstorm.
13. Discuss a memorable experience with someone you knew. Was it a good experience or a bad one and why?
14. Discuss a time when you got lost somewhere. How did you find your way home?
15. Discuss a memorable moment when you were playing sports, performing in a band, or some other hobby of yours.
16. Discuss a time you were rejected.
17. Discuss a serious injury you suffered, such as breaking your leg.
18. Discuss your reaction to a major event that happened during your lifetime.
19. Discuss a difficult decision you made and what made it hard.
20. Discuss the beginning or end of a friendship or relationship.
21. Discuss a time when you did something your parents (or other authority figures) didn’t want you to do.
22. Discuss a time when you stood up for an issue that mattered to you.
23. Discuss the luckiest day you ever experienced.
24. Discuss the first time you developed a crush on someone.
25. Discuss the biggest disappointment you ever experienced in your life.
26. Discuss your experience dealing with peer pressure.
27. Discuss your experiences being bullied and how you dealt with them.
28. Discuss a time when you successfully changed someone’s mind about something.
29. Discuss a time in which you fought with a friend and how you resolved it.
30. Discuss your experiences of culture shock when travelling abroad.
31. Discuss your opinions of drinking alcohol and/or using drugs.
32. Discuss your moral principles and how you developed them.
33. Discuss a time in which you lied about something and what happened as a result.
34. Discuss a time in which you missed a plane, train, or other mass transportation.
35. Discuss the first time you travelled without your family.
36. Discuss how you followed one of your dreams despite obstacles in your way.
37. Discuss an unusual person you once met.
38. Discuss a regret you have about an action you did or did not take.
39. Discuss a time when you were kind or altruistic.
40. Describe the happiest day you ever experienced.

Conclusion

As you can see, coming up with narrative essay topics is actually quite easy. Feel free to use these personal narrative topics or come up with your own to make your narrative essay stand out from the crowd.