How to write a personal essay

Simple steps to write a perfect personal essay

An essay can be of different types, argumentative, descriptive, narrative, expository. Apart from these kinds of essays, there is a type of essay which reveals more of personal matters of an individual.

Have you ever experienced a miracle in your life? Have you fallen in love with beautiful things and the nature around you? Describing those experiences through words can be categorized under an essay category called personal essay.

These kinds of essays are written as a college application essay, for a competition or just as a collection for a diary. 

What exactly is a personal essay?

More than facts and procedures, a personal essay is an insight on how an individual feels, the past experiences or any lesson learned in one’s life. It consists of emotions, feelings, and use of informal language to express.

Elements of a personal essay

To write a personal essay, there are several elements required which will add up to the glory of it. Here we present those elements which should be useful while writing your next personal essay.

1.A voice to the essay

2. Personal touch

3.Creativity in words

4.Emotion

5.Strong characters

How to write a personal essay?

It is not necessary to write a personal essay in a prescribed format or are there any rules to write it in the limited word count. Here writers are given the choice and freedom to express their emotions, opinions, feelings in an informal manner.

However, there are certain sure shot tips that can be helpful to craft a beautiful personal essay. Find below to know more!

1.Describing v/s description: Though both mean the same thing but have a slight variation in the form they are used. To describe or describing something is a verb form whereas description is a noun form.

There is an encouragement given for describing than description when a personal essay is written. As verb represents action and seems nearer to reality when compared to using a noun form. 

2.Being original: This factor is essential when a personal essay is written for a college application.

It becomes important to understand that universities and colleges want to judge or test an individual through these personal essays. It is one of the crucial parameters that need originality than anything else.

The key point is being original while expressing yourself which becomes important to get into your dream college. 

3.Reflect emotions: A personal essay must involve emotions and should be easily reflected in it. Stronger the emotions, the better it connects to the readers.

Readers must be pleasantly surprised with the words that are offered but not overwhelmed with it too.There must a strike of balance between conveying content with the right amount of feelings and emotions.

4.Show don’t tell: Personal essays are an opportunity given to express yourself. This chance certainly must be utilized at an optimum level. Thus to begin writing an essay, there must a strategy utilized which focuses more on showing than telling.

The “show don’t tell”  strategy should be put into best use as readers can hook to the reading till the end when they are shown what you have experienced rather than just telling them by words.

5.A touch on the humour: The slightest touch of humour can take your personal essay to places. A little of light-hearted humour while explaining an essay can be advantageous to you and fun to read for the readers.

Care must be taken not to add too much of it as it can turn it to a comedy content adding many loopholes. 

6.Keep up the suspense: True to its meaning, if there is something interesting that you want to share, it must be kept till the end. Keeping the whole essay into suspense is not the way out, but giving little hints and revealing it finally is the goal.

Such suspense must be tried only to the selected genre and confined type of subjects. 

7.Glorify the content: If you have any achievements which can be shared, that can be added too, which will only glorify the content. It is not wrong in showcasing your real self and your talent until it does not become boastful.

8.Add strong components: This constitutes a great part to the essay as it will add depth to it. Finding out the important component of your story and adding it cleverly is like giving a Midas touch to it.

How to find topics for writing a personal essay?

It might be difficult sometimes to find a good topic to write a personal essay. Here we have formulated few situations or circumstances which will help in brainstorming for a topic.

1.Any personal experience which has gained you a valuable lesson or has been a life-changing event.

2.A dialogue between two characters, a funny incident, a conflict anything can be written.

3.An objective to share something that you have learned.

4.Personal view or an opinion on a topic.

5.Description of a character or a situation.