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Teaching structural elements sometimes takes a visual touch.

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Where are the paragraphs and what are they suppose to look like?

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GAH! I've never taught an essay unit! Watch me stumble, watch me fall, and watch me pick up all the pieces as they come together!

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Color-coding is a quick and simple way to support students with that all-important skill of organization. Persuasive writing is a case in point.

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THE WRITER’S NEW PERSONAL ESSAY/MEMOIR CONTEST

$10 ENTRY FEE
They’re looking for your original, unpublished viewpoint about  a particular topic or an experience you’ve had. Essays should be 1,000-1,200 words.

Deadline is November 30, 2011.

First prize: $1,000; a free 10-week creative writing workshop  offered online by Gotham Writers’ Workshop ($420 value); publication in The Writer and on WriterMag.com; and a one-year  subscription to The Writer.

Second prize: $300; free enrollment in a four-week How to Get Published seminar taught online by a literary agent and Gotham Writers’ Workshop ($150 value); publication on WriterMag.com; and a one-year subscription to The Writer.

Third prize: $200; free enrollment in a four-week How to Get Published seminar taught online by a literary agent and Gotham Writers’ Workshop ($150 value); publication on WriterMag.com; and a one-year subscription to The Writer.

http://www.writermag.com/2011essaycontest

I know everyone has a story to tell about something that happened in their life. Here’s your chance to share it, make some money, take a writing class, and get publishing credit.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

Filed under: Contests, earn money, magazine, opportunity, Places to sumit, submissions Tagged: Get Published, Personal Essay, Writing Contest

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Recently, I judged a personal essay contest for a regional writing group. I love judging contests as it exposes me to some great writing and some not-so-great writing. With most of the entries, I found myself being able to tell in a few paragraphs whether or not to put the essay in the possible winners pile or the sorry pile. Everything I’d heard from editors and agents at conferences was true—in most cases, you can tell whether a piece of writing works or doesn’t from the first page.

While judging the personal essays, I came up with some criteria for the winners that I thought I’d share. Writing personal essays has become popular—so what makes them successful?

The Topic
An interesting and unique topic was one of the first criteria I used to separate the winners from the rest of the batch. Personal essays can be about anything—your childhood playmate, a vacation gone wrong, a favorite teacher. When judging the entries, I found the best essays to be about topics that other writers left alone—a trip into the past that featured an ice truck, a daughter and father that grew grapes for wine, and a summer job in a factory with an opera-singing Sicilian. Sure, all of these were also well written, but the topic caught my attention and kept me reading until the end of the essay.

When you are writing, think of unusual events, activities, and even people in your life—could you write a personal essay about them? If you are writing for a themed anthology—such as Chicken Soup for the Dog Lovers’ Soul—then you’re a bit limited on your topic choices; but you can still brainstorm unusual topics or angles within that theme.

The Voice
Like all forms of writing, the voice of a personal essay is extremely important. It is your voice since you’re telling a personal story. It shouldn’t sound stilted or like the reader opened an encyclopedia. It should sound like the writer is sitting on the front porch, telling this story to someone else.

The Structure
When judging the essays, the structure I found that works best is the circle structure. The author starts the essay with a general statement or a scene that leads into the rest of the essay. At the conclusion, the writer wraps up the essay with a mention of or some tie-in to the beginning scene.

Besides the circle structure, another type of ending that works well for personal essays is the twist or surprise. If the writer chooses to use a twist at the end, it’s usually something clever or funny that happened that readers will not expect. These types of endings usually work better with short stories or even children�

4 Comments on Personal Essay Writing: Tips for You, last added: 8/23/2011

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Mari said, on 8/23/2011 6:49:00 AM

Margo, thank you for the information and inspiration on personal essay writing. The circle structure caught my eye and I'll use that as my guide.

thesis example said, on 8/23/2011 6:59:00 AM

oh very interesting! thanks alot!

write my essay said, on 8/23/2011 7:40:00 AM

Good work. Thanks.

Patricia Anne McGoldrick said, on 8/23/2011 9:33:00 AM

Great fundamentals, Margo!
Personal essays are favourites for me as they provides those special perspectives.

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If the titles designating the four parts of this slender paperback seem, at first, daunting—"Evocations of Consciousness," "Evocations of Personality," "Personae and Culture," and "Personae and Personal Experience"�there's nothing but good stuff in between.  Delightful ruminations on the poetics of self, the possibility/impossibility of tracking the mind at work, the grand seductions and sometimes promise of what Klaus, the founding director of the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program, calls "The literature of interiority.  The story of thought. The drama of mind in action." etc. We get satisfying reflections on Montaigne reflecting on Montaigne, pithy quotes from nonfiction masters, mind teases that force us to conclude (again and again) that writing (and reading) the personal essay is both a mine field and an irresistible enterprise.

Every time I teach memoir or essay, I yearn to be writing it again.  This happened to me during the online book club ("Literature of Bearing Witness") that I was recently leading for the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania.  Memories leak.  Assertions are disproven.  The mind set free veers, trembles, and ultimately discovers something that might have been, something that might still mean something.  If only we knew for certain what about any of it were true. 

Reading Klaus put me right back into that danger zone—that thirst for trying to write the personal all over again (and yes, dear readers, I do realize that I write the personal every day on this blog).  Klaus gave me new essays to read (note to self:  read more Didion; get a copy of David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," get Anatole Broyard's Intoxicated by My Illness). He gave me experiments to try out on myself.  He gave me cause to think, and he made smile, and it was all delivered with the kind of companionable prose that made me feel like I was in a classroom, which is where, so often, I want to be.

I have said this a few times this year; I grow redundant:  We have entered, I believe, a new era of memoir making and personal essay writing.  An era in which the forms feel noble again—better explicated, more sound, more open to new possibilities.  I grow increasingly tempted to write toward the true.

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I recently taught a personal essay writing class for the local community college. The introductory exercise was simple: tell a two- to three-minute story about yourself and make sure your spiel has a defined beginning, middle and end.

Easy, right?

For class members, speaking about themselves was easy. They intertwined humor and insight into the quick look at one moment in their lives. But when I asked them to write the same story on a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 ruled notebook paper, something was lost in translation. The tidbits of humor disappeared. The glaring insight suddenly lost its significance.

What changed? Somewhere between the oral tradition and the written word, these students forgot to add essential elements that formulate the basis of strong storytelling. Personal essay enthusiasts will agree that stories that engage readers contain a twist of the common elements. The stories that stand out mold an individual experience and create empathy.

Personal essays rely on strong word choices, imagery, setting, and tension that make a point. To build audience intimacy, try these strategies:

• Build conflict. Consider movies, TV shows and books that capture your attention. What recurring element piques your interest? Conflict and tension. Even a personal essay will fail if tense undertones don't keep rumbling through the piece. Who wants to read a piece about perfect love? I want to hear about the tearful breakup from your high school sweetheart and how that moment changed your impression of Cupid's arrow.
• Establish time. Since most personal essays must conform to a word limit, grabbing the reader's attention is mandatory. Link your theme to a current event or pop culture phenomenon. You'll be amazed at the interesting comparisons you'll be able to develop.
• Kick up the intensity. Avoid voicing the safe opinion. It's overdone. Instead, look at other angles about your topic. Bend the rules. Your story will be stronger.
• Obsess much? Choose a topic you find interesting. Select a subject you have experience with. If you haven't lived it, how can you write about it?
• Slam dunk the ending. Don't settle for a rehash of events. Challenge your memory and grill your brain about the realities of the situation. Question your motives. Then, you'll hold the reader in the palm of your hand, offering them a piece of your world and the lessons you discovered.

A personal essay is just that: it's personal. It's a probe of the human psyche that examines questions and situations that we all want answered.

The personal essayist is brave enough to report her findings.

by LuAnn Schindler. Visit LuAnn's website for her weekly column of personal essays about her home state - Nebraska.

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Need a basic comment sheet for your students’ next Publishing Celebration? Just make a three-column table in Word like this: Posted in personal essay, publishing      

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Today was the last day my students were collecting patches of thought for their personal essays. This is a copy of the end-of-the-workshop teaching share that I did on how to turn a quote into a patch of thought (the first one was done in conjunction with the student whose thesis the Dangerfield Quote [...]

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News & Announcements Chart for Monday, 11/10/08 Originally uploaded by teachergal In order to keep my demonstrations fresh, I’ve come to believe that I have to craft a NEW piece of writing each and every year for units I’ve taught in the past. If I don’t, then I find my teaching becomes stale. Plus, I [...]

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I’ll be using this with my students tomorrow. Just wanted to share! The topic I would like to write my personal essay about is: _______________________________     The big think I really want to say (or claim) about my topic is: ____________________________     Here are several thesis statements starters I could use to prove my point about the [...]

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Yesterday I was asked to expand “patches of thought” Essentially, patches of thought are little pieces of paper (could be index cards) on which students write mini-stories, lists, or other items that support a particular paragraph in an essay. It’s essentially the evidence that one feels will support a topic sentence within their [...]

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Great news! The student who I blogged about yesterday went home and did the first of the graphic organizers last night. WOO-HOO! She really did a nice job working within the structure I set up for her. (Hopefully these scaffolds can be taken away in a couple of weeks.) Posted in non-narrative [...]

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Today’s lesson is one of my favorites of the school year. It’s the day when the kids really start to notice the world around them with a heightened sense of awareness. The teaching point for today is: Writers observe the world with extra care and alertness and then think hard about their observations, [...]

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This month, Andrea had the honour of contributing a personal essay to Paper Tigers — a bi-monthly e-zine and website for librarians, teachers, publishers and all those interested in young readers’ books from and about the Pacific Rim and South Asia.

Canadian Armchair Explorations in Homegrown Asian-themed Children’s Literature is an introduction to some of our family’s favourite Canadian, Asian-themed children’s books.

Paper Tigers also gave us a fantastic write-up on their site.

Thanks, PaperTigers!

Tags:Asian Canadian, Childrens Literature, Paper Tigers, personal essayAsian Canadian, Childrens Literature, Paper Tigers, personal essay

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