Tales from a Toronto Writer: How To Structure Your Personal Essay

Need some help writing your personal essay? Here are 5 things to consider.

Personal essays offer vivid snapshots of a life experience that changed your trajectory or your way of thinking. They are windows into chapters of your life story. Technically there isn’t only one right way to structure your essay. Personal essays are innately subjective. However, there are a few tips that you can take advantage of to make sure your essay flows in a way that makes sense.

1. The Introduction

Open your personal essay with a vivid anecdote. Think of an anecdote as a “story within a story.” Recall a specific moment within the larger life experience you are writing about. For example, if you’re writing about your mother’s death, maybe open your essay with a memory from the last moment you spent with her. Another example, if you’re writing about addiction, maybe begin your essay with the moment you had your first drink or your last drink. The important thing is that your anecdote should hook your reader’s attention and draw them into the story.

2. Building Your Narrative Foundation

The majority of your essay is framed around explaining the specific details of the life experience you are writing about. The key here is to stay focused. Don’t ramble or throw in minutiae detail just for the sake of it. Remember the reader is unaware of your personal story or topic, so ask yourself what necessary details do you need to provide so that they can adequately understand and resonate with your story? Think about the scenarios and anecdotes you’ll want to recall that directly build towards your takeaway reflection or the main point that ties your story altogether.

3. Include Insights From the Past and the Present

Every event in our lives is informed by what preceded it. In order to sharpen the level of insight you offer in your essay, you’ll want to reflect on memories that precede the life experience you are writing about. For example, if you’re writing about your divorce, you might want to include memories and anecdotes from when you were married that portray your emotions and feelings about the relationship in its early stages. This offers the reader a deeper perspective which strengthens your narrative.

4. Use Dialogue and Scenery

The best personal essays make readers feel like they are reliving the life experience with you. Visual detail and dialogue can make your story come alive. Use setting to convey emotion. If the setting of your story is your childhood home, then think about the specific characteristics of your home that reflect your unique personality or the emotion that you are trying to convey. Dialogue can be a way to include important conversations from your memory that changed the trajectory of your story. Maybe it was the words your mother said when she revealed her cancer diagnoses or the mean words of a childhood bully.

5. The Takeaway Moment

A personal essay should offer more than just a surface level analysis of a day in your life. Instead it should answer the question, “how did this life experience fundamentally impact who I am as a person?” This is what I like to refer to as the takeaway moment. Think of the takeaway moment as the climatic point in your essay. Your entire narrative structure should build towards this moment and round out the end of your essay.

Still need more help with personal essay writing? Sign up for my online writing workshop, Writing Your Life Story https://www.genellelevyjournalist.com/writing-classes

#writing #personalessays #writingadvice #creativewritingadvice