Personal essays have functions – they are needed for college applications, as a way for writers to tell their life stories and as a means to inspire others with real-life experiences.
Personal essays stand out from other types of writing as they allow writers to turn their thoughts, experiences and feelings into stories that captivate and connect with readers.
This guide will explore the art of crafting essays focusing on techniques and strategies to create meaningful and touching narratives whether you’re a seasoned writer or a novice looking to express reflective thoughts effectively.
Understanding the Essence of a Personal Essay
The personal essay investigates the writer’s life and thoughts intimately. It sets itself apart from forms of writing, by blending facts with viewpoints to connect with readers on a deeper level.
When crafting essays, writers need to think about their goals—be it to inform, convince or entertain—to shape the tone and organization effectively.
This type of writing generally adopts a storytelling approach that’s easy for readers to connect with and usually results in discoveries about the human journey.
Several exceptional personal essays have changed the writing scenes, some of which are written by Jacob Bronowski[1] in his series about his Nagasaki and Hiroshima visit in 1945. In addition, we have Wendell Berry’s essay[2] on expressing the present environmental movement and William Langewiesche’s perspective on the Iraq war[3].
How to Structure a Personal Essay
A perfectly written personal essay should have an introduction, multiple body and a conclusion. While the length of each section may be different based on these three key elements are essential…
Introduction
The initial part of the essay should be able to get the attention of the reader. For one, you need to first articulate the concepts of the essay ensuring that the plans are well discussed. You can use quotes to create personal connections with the readers from the beginning of the essay.
Body
The subsequent part of the essay ought to detail the core of the essay by offering information supported by retells and deliberations. In this part, you get to express yourself as you like, explaining how your personal experiences have been a factor in reshaping your views of life and what you learnt from these experiences.
Conclusion
Here is the concluding part of the essay where you state your hypothesis and explain the overall lessons or what the lessons mean in deeper terms using your narrative. Even more, you get to deliberate on the crucial part of your essay and what the essay takeaways.
Perfectly writing an essay entails introducing the concepts, a perfectly crafted essay body that expresses in detail the personal accounts or experiences of the author, and finally, a conclusion with meaning that supports the message of the essay as the author intends. With this outline, you can present and defend the insights you want to share with your audience.
Tips To Help You Craft Compelling Narratives
Beginning a personal essay journey entails looking to understand the purpose of your story. Decide if you want to share a life lesson, arouse emotions or simply entertain an audience. This clarity will influence the tone, structure and content of your essay.
- Discovering your unique voice – Your voice is what makes your essay special reflecting who you are and how you see the world. Whether it’s funny, thoughtful or touching being genuine is key.
- Picking the ideal topic – Pick a topic that deeply reverberates with you delving into moments of self-discovery or transformative events.
- Organizing your essay – Create a beginning and maintain a flow in the main body paragraphs and end with a reflection or resolution.
- Being open and real – Share both successes and challenges authentically to connect with readers on a level.
- Writing descriptively and engagingly – Use descriptions and sensory language to draw readers into your narrative trying out techniques to make it more engaging.
- Editing and polishing your essay – Always revise your essay for structure, clarity and influence while welcoming comments for improvements.
- Balancing self-reflection with appeal – Find the mark between reflection and relatability to make sure your story articulates to audiences.
- Welcome the development of your writing style – Always be ready to receive change while writing, as this ensures that your writing style grows alongside your experiences and perspectives.
The Elements of Good Writing Style
The Elements of Style as created by E.B White[4] provides a checklist of eight distinct fundamental rules and ten essential guides for writing a convincing personal essay. Here’s a look at some of these guidelines:
Elementary rules of usage
- When forming the possessive singular of nouns, add ‘s.
- In a series of three or more words connected by a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.
- Make use of commas to enclose parenthetic expressions.
- Use a comma before the conjunctions “and” or “but” when introducing an independent clause. Try not to join independent clauses with a comma.
- Avoid breaking sentences into two separate sentences.
- Make sure that a participial phrase at the start of a sentence refers to the grammatical subject.
- Separate words at line-ends concerning their formation and pronunciation.
Fundamental principles of composition
The subsequent section provides some key principles that you can use to write better personal essays.
- Structure your writing around paragraphs focusing on one idea per paragraph.
- Start every paragraph with a topic sentence.
- End it by linking back to the beginning.
- Make use of voice to make your writing more engaging and natural.
- Positively express ideas whenever you can rather than using negative language.
- Simplify your writing by eliminating words to make it more concise and impactful.
- Avoid creating disjointed sentences in succession.
- Present ideas consistently, for clarity.
- Group related words together to ensure coherence and flow in your writing.
- Maintain verb tense when summarizing information.
- Emphasize words or phrases by placing them at the end of sentences.
Conclusion
Finally, becoming skilled in the art of writing essays entails embracing genuineness, honing storytelling skills and following to the rules of writing. By creating essays that connect with the readers and showcase development writers can produce captivating essays that have an effect.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Bronowski
[2] https://vonsteuben.org/ourpages/auto/2013/12/5/51248406/Berry%20An%20
Entrance%20to%20the%20Woods.pdf
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Langewiesche
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style