Helpful Guidelines on How to Compose Descriptive Narrative Essay Topics

Your descriptive narrative essay topic will include an account or experience from your personal life. The difference between a regular narrative essay and a descriptive narrative essay is the level of detail. Your descriptive narrative essay will describe the setting, surroundings, and people of your narrative in great detail using concrete adjectives and descriptors—rather than more abstract ideas. When assigned a descriptive narrative essay, some helpful guidelines for selecting a topic include: considering your recall and the topic originality.

Consider Your Recall

When selecting your descriptive narrative essay topic you will need to consider how well you recall the event. For a descriptive essay, you will want to make sure you vividly recall the events and details so you are able to include the most comprehensive information.

Topic Originality

Also, when considering your topic you will want to make sure it is original. Try to avoid cliché descriptions and events. For instance, anyone can tell the story of when they were stood up the first time. Go into deeper detail and share what made your experience, interesting, different, personal, unique, and/or moving.

Taking these guidelines into consideration and thinking back on your memories, you will find the perfect descriptive narrative essay topic. Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Your First Home

Think about the first home you lived in, what are your memories there? Often early memories like this can have vivid descriptions. What did your childhood bedroom look like? What was your favorite place in the house? Thinking about our childhood home can be a great starting place for your descriptive narrative essay.

2. Hardest Lesson Learned

When growing up and maturing we often face difficult lessons. Some of these lessons are harder than others. Is there a specific lesson you can remember clearly? Why was it a hard lesson? What difficulties were you faced with? These moments of trial can be described with vivid detail.

3. Story of Santa

When did you realize Santa was fictitious? Was this a heart wrenching realization or an easy truth to accept? This is a huge step from childhood to adolescence, a time when we realize make believe may be just that—make believe.

4. Your First Serious Injury

Have you ever had a serious injury? If so, think about how it happened, what you thought, what you felt, where you were, who you were with, and the road to recovery. All these aspects of the process can each make a compelling descriptive narrative essay.

5. Losing Someone You Love

Whether they passed away, moved away, or have disappeared from your life—losing a loved one is always difficult. We experience raw emotions and these emotions can be very descriptive.