7 Helpful Tips on How to Write A Memorable Personal Essay

KAREN HERTZBERG

Everyone has a story to tell and a message to share. The challenge lies in getting that story and message out of your head and into print in a way that resonates with your audience.

Starting somewhere in the late 2000s, a certain type of personal essay experienced a popularity boom. These essays were ultra-personal and confessional in nature, often in a TMI sort of way. Their headlines were clickable, not to mention shareable, for their shock value alone.

Although the confessional shock essay’s star seems to be fading, the personal essay itself is still standing strong. Essay collections by late greats like James Baldwin (The First Next Time) and David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster) still top Amazon’s Best Sellers in essays. Jenny Lawson (aka The Bloggess) launched a career with her darkly funny and self-effacing essays about her health and mental illness challenges (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened). Celebrities like Mindy Kaling (Why Not Me?) and Tina Fey (Bossypants) blended personal essays into memoir-esque collections that became best sellers. We head for the nearest bookseller when essay titans like David Sedaris or Anne Lamott have a new release.

We’re thirsty for real stories and musings from people who are able to share their foibles, lessons, and truths in a way we can relate to. Here are seven tips to help you craft a personal essay that will connect with readers.

1 Understand what a personal essay is.

Ask three different experts what a personal essay is and you’ll likely get three different answers. Are they structured? Must they address a certain type of subject? Here’s a definition we like:

A personal essay is a short work of autobiographical nonfiction characterized by a sense of intimacy and a conversational manner. Also called a personal statement.

A type of creative nonfiction, the personal essay is ‘all over the map,’ according to Annie Dillard. ‘There’s nothing you can’t do with it. No subject matter is forbidden, no structure is prescribed. You get to make up your own form every time.’

—Richard Nordquist for ThoughtCo.

Personal essays relate the author’s intimate thoughts and experiences to universal truths. They aren’t simply a retelling of events, though—that falls more in the realm of memoir or autobiography. They conclude with the author having learned, changed, or grown in some way and often present some truth or insight that challenges the reader to draw their own conclusions.

2 Find a compelling topic.

The best essay topics are often deeply relatable. Although the story itself is unique to the author’s experience, there’s some universal truth that speaks to us from just below the surface. Topics like facing a fear, falling in love, overcoming an obstacle, discovering something new, or making a difficult choice tackle feelings and events that happen in everyone’s life.

3 Start with a strong hook.

As with any type of writing, it’s essential to draw the reader in from the very first paragraph, or even the first sentence. Here are a few examples.

Aside from Peter, who supposedly guards the gates of heaven and is a pivotal figure in any number of jokes, the only saint who’s ever remotely interested me is Francis of Assisi, who was friends with the animals.

—David Sedaris, “Untamed”

When I was young, my family didn’t go on outings to the circus or trips to Disneyland. We couldn’t afford them. Instead, we stayed in our small rural West Texas town, and my parents took us to cemeteries.

—Jenny Lawson, “Amelia and Me”

I underwent, during the summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis.

—James Baldwin, “Letter from a Region in My Mind”

Alone, we are doomed. By the same token, we’ve learned that people are impossible, even the ones we love most—especiallythe ones we love most.

—Anne Lamott, “Blessings: After Catastrophe, A Community Unites”

Your hook and opening paragraph should establish the topic of your essay (or at least allude to it) and set the scene and tone.

4 Create an outline.

All it takes to understand the importance of an outline is listening to someone who struggled to tell a personal story. Often, the story will seem to have no real point. The switchbacks where the teller says “But wait, I have to tell you about this part, first!” are maddening and disruptive. An outline will help you organize your thoughts before committing them to text.

Consider your opening hook and the statement it makes, then map out the sequence of events or main points that support it. Just like a good fictional story, your essay should have rising action. Raise the stakes with each paragraph until you reach a climax or turning point. Plan to add a conclusion that will evoke an emotional response in your reader.

5 Narrow your focus.

Don’t try to write to a general topic. Your essay may well be about sexism, but you need to illustrate it through the lens of a defining incident that’s deeply personal to you. What did your experiences teach you about sexism? What does it mean to you as an individual?

6 Show, don’t tell.

Close your eyes. Think of the scene you’re about to write down. What were you experiencing with your five senses? How did you feel?

Your challenge is to evoke those senses and feelings without flatly stating them. Don’t say “I felt cold.” Say “I exhaled and my breath turned to vapor that hung in the air. I shivered and pulled the blanket tight around my shoulders in a vain attempt to trap my body heat.” Your description should help the reader experience the cold with you. Stephen King describes it as making the reader “prickle with recognition.”

7 Craft a thought-provoking conclusion.

Your essay should end with your own reflection and analysis. What did you learn? How have the events and thoughts you described changed your life or your understanding of life? It’s not enough to say “And that’s what happened.” You have to describe how whatever happened shaped you.

Just as a good lead hooks readers and draws them along for the ride, a good conclusion releases them from your essay’s thrall with a frisson of pleasure, agreement, passion or some other sense of completion. Circling back to your lead in your conclusion is one way to give readers that full-circle sense. Try to restate your thesis in a way that reflects the journey the essay has taken.

—Tom Bentley for Writer’s Digest

There is so much outside the false cloister of private experience; and when you write, you do the work of connecting that terrible privacy to everything beyond it.

—Leslie Jamison for Publishers Weekly

8 Constructions You Should Avoid in English Writing

by Christine Allen

Despite a good writer does have to be talented, a talent alone is not enough. Writing has to be not only interesting but also well-done. Otherwise, editors will decline it, no matter how original your text looks.

Grammar skills can be improved. If you learn some important writing guidelines and find out what are the most crucial writing mistakes, you will be able to write better.

Let's take a look at these 8 constructions that editors greatly disapprove of.

1. Passive constructions

Excessive use of passive constructions is one of the most common writing mistakes: it makes your writing look poor and sometimes complicates your texts too much. This doesn't mean you refrain from using passive constructions at all, just use them properly. Basically, passive constructions are used when the actor is either unknown or irrelevant. In other cases, better use an active voice. Just compare these two simple sentences:

• Passive construction: “The report was prepared by me&rdquo
• Active construction: “I have prepared the report”.

The first sentence is unacceptable. If you want to underline the actor (who has performed the action), you use active voice.

You can use passive voice if the message you want to bring through is the fact that the report is ready, regardless of whose deed it is: “The report was prepared”.

2. “Because of” and “due to”

These constructions make sentences less strong and clear. They make the reader feel like you have simply added some words just for the sake of it. Just compare these two examples:

• Due to the heat, he felt dizzy.
• The heat made him dizzy.

The second sentence is clear and to the point, while the first one looks too wordy and overly complicated without any reason.

Try and keep your sentences simple and avoid complicating them without necessity.

3. “Whether” instead of “whether or not”

Use “whether” only in alternative constructions. So, it should be followed by two alternatives. However, some writers forget that and write unfinished sentences. Just compare these two examples:

• “You should decide whether you want to work overtime.”
• “You should decide whether you want to work overtime or not.”

The second one shows the correct use of this construction. If you only want to state one alternative in a sentence, use “if”: “You should decide if you want to work overtime.”

4. Incorrect use of “different”

According to Merriam-Webster, the word “different” means “not the same” or “unlike.” Though it can look good in constructions like “different countries”, using it in sentences like “We've chosen different software” is a mistake. In the first example word “different” means these countries differ among themselves, while the second sentence is completely unclear: the software is different from what exactly?

When using this word, remember to specify the nature of the difference, if it is not evident.

5. “Quality”

Some writers use the word “quality” to describe things (for example, “It is a quality car”). However, they forget one important thing: the quality can be good and bad. If they don't specify it, it may confuse readers and ruin the impression they want to make.

Always specify that when writing about quality. “It is a high-quality car” would be a correct example of such sentence.

6. Bad comparison constructions

Writers often use comparisons along with different metaphors to make text appear more interesting. However, sometimes they forget that even one missing word can make a comparison ridiculous.

For example: Japanese cars normally use less gas than Americans.

It seems that Japanese cars use less gas than the people of America, which is hard to imagine since people normally don't drink gas. In this case, the correct sentence would be like: “Japanese cars normally use less gas than American ones”.

That's the thing with comparisons: you have to be sure you compare things that can be compared. Though it seems easy to do, sometimes writers forget about simple words while writing and that can cause troubles.

7. Complex constructions

A well-written piece has to be clear and simple enough for all the possible readers to understand it. This doesn't mean you need to shorten all sentences as much as possible. But you need to avoid too complex constructions, which make your sentences too wordy.

One of the best examples of such constructions is “It is… that”:

“It was the storm that made his ship sink.”

First, it is another passive construction, and you should avoid using it. Second, the sentence is overly complex. Unless your goal was “It was the storm that caused the ship to sink”, and not some other reason, a good way to rephrase it is:

“The storm sank his ship.”

Try to improve such sentences by replacing these constructions with more direct and powerful words (verbs or nouns).

8. “I could care less”

For some unknown reason, writers make this particular mistake often. Though writers know this construction very well and use commonly, it sounds like “I couldn't care less,” not “I could.” That's why if you want to use this utterance, use it right.

However, I wouldn't recommend using it at all. Yes, this phrase is common, but it's considered a cliché these days, and a good writer tries to avoid clichés as much as possible. You should be careful while using common expressions: after all, you probably want your writing to seem original and good, not full of phrases that everyone uses. The only correct way to use clichés is when they fit a certain character's style and speech.

If you avoid using these 8 constructions, you'll be able to improve your writing greatly. However, do not forget that a good writer learns all the time and don't hesitate to improve your writing draft till it will be perfect, and then proofread it a few times more! There are many other tips that can help you to become a better writer, so keep learning and using them!