What should be included in a personal essay
A personal essay needs to include experience, opinion, and emotion.
A personal essay is vulnerable
A personal essays requires that a writer to disclose something vulnerable. Its challenge is how much vulnerable a writer can be. This act of courage helps the writer know themself.
Poetic license in writing a personal essay
You may use dramatization to help readers follow your chain of thought as long as you make reality your basis.
How to choose a topic
Context is important when thinking about a topic to write about. Some contexts are stringent (i.e., there are rules to follow). But most of the time, one must be as free as possible when thinking about what to write about.
Contests are stringent contexts. When writing for a contest, choose a topic that is unique and will make you stand out, because a good choice of topic could make you win.
Outside contests, a good question to think about is whether to write about big things or small things. Big things are almost always popular so they become common. When writing about a common topic, ask yourself what are you saying that is new.
Writing about simpler experiences and things can be more challenging. One strategy when writing about ordinary things is to use a different lens to interpret them.
Tell a story but always process in an essay
It’s okay to tell a story in an essay. It’s okay that an essay reads like a story. But always include a meditation which leads to an insight. Use a story to illustrate an insight.
How to include others in a personal essay
A personal essay shouldn’t only be about personal stuff. You must always include the other in your personal essay. There are different ways to do this.
- Write about someone else’s experience vicariously as if it was your own.
- Play the role of an onlooker and simply report what you see others are doing.
- Choose a universal subject.
- Design the personal essay as something that could be useful for the self as well as outside of it.
Starting a personal essay
However you do it, avoid using a statement to start an essay, since this is old school and boring. You could use a scene to begin then return to that scene to end with some additional content. Aspire to use the beginning to earn the trust of your reader and draw them into the essay and maintain their interest.
If you aren’t sure about your opening, finish the essay first and return to your opening to change it. But if you do this, remember that changing your opening will have implications to your ending.
Concluding a personal essay
However you do it, do not summarize your essay in your conclusion. Instead, you could simple thread the ending with the beginning.
The conclusion doesn’t have to have a resolution. If ever there is resolution at the conclusion, it doesn’t have to be complete. Just provide a partial resolution and leave something for the reader to think.
Elaborating the question of the essay, which provides some form of resolution, should happen at the middle of the essay.
Ideal length of a personal essay
The longer an essay is, the higher the demand for its aesthetic and effectiveness. It has to be so good that people won’t let it go. Also there might be a need to rationalize the length of the essay within the essay itself.
For contests, a safe length is 10–15 pages of double-spaced text. A long essay is 20–25 pages of double-spaced text.
Outside of contests, the essay’s length is not formulaic.
The essay is a free form
The essay is a free form. It could be fragmented and indeterminate, because that is what life is.
Open your essay to reader interpretation
Don’t write an essay where answers are all clear. If you are trying to answer a question, provide different resolutions but not a single resolution. If you don’t know everything, admit it. And even if you have a clear answer, give room for your reader to interpret your work.
Also, instead of seeing the essay simply as a giver of answers, consider making it a giver of questions and a listener.
Language is dynamic
There is no pure language, because language is dynamic. Recognizing a language’s dynamism is recognizing the changes it went through after a long history of usage. This view should encourage you to be proud of the variants and to not be apologetic about the variant you use.
Bend and blend genres in a personal essay
You can blend genres in an essay as long as it is still predominantly an essay.
Including a photo in an essay
One view about including a photo in an essay is to include one only if it is truly essential, that is, if the narrative breaks down without it. But one could argue that a narrative could stand by itself and still add a different layer through photos. And this view is okay.
Travel essay
A travel essay is an essay that uses a travel as a platform for self-discovery, meditation, and self-change through the journey (which is more important than the destination).
An essay always has an insight
References
Breis, Niles. 2024 Gawad Bienvenido Lumebra Craft Lectures: Pagsulat Ng Personal Na Sanaysay. Online.