Personal Essay | How to Write a Personal Essay in English

Personal essays are written for different motives. For instance, high school students draft them purposely for college admissions, while writers use them to share personal experiences with their audience. These essays are intended to educate and encourage an audience with information obtained from real-life experiences.

What is a Personal Essay?

A personal essay is a short writing work where the author expresses an important lesson connected with her life experiences. The essay usually expounds on an important event from a first-person point of view and can be put into practice in several writing styles like creative nonfiction or as a formal essay. Personal essay writers are encouraged to use a conversational tone to create a connection with their audiences. This essay category can be motivating and a source of hope or can act as a caution to others to avoid the writer’s predicaments.

Personal essay themes describe a wide variety of subject matters. They could be about the first time you applied unsuccessfully for a post, unwarranted divorce from your spouse, sexual abuse, or even a person that changed your perception towards a particular subject. Any juncture in your life that spurred growth or lead you to your fortunes can be put into writing in the form of a personal essay and impoverished and complemented by your personal views.

With that in mind, here are steps on how to write a personal essay.

How to Write a Personal Essay

Prepare in Advance

The first step in your readiness to write your personal essay is to identify your target audience and the message you intend to convey. Try to figure out how your narrative connects to your objectives for writing it. It’s beneficial to outline a list of subjects you intend to share so you can draft an essay that makes your narrative relative and engaging.

Get Organized

Coming up with an outline is a huge stride to your ideas as well as your thoughts. Outlines ensure all you discuss is topic bound and avoid discussing irrelevant ideas that can make your main points go unnoticed. A personal essay should be guided by a sequence of events so that the story is not lost on the way.

Pick Your Theme

The theme or experience you narrate should mirror the message you intend to share. Your story should describe turning points in your life or any other experience that touched your life in one way or another.

Contemplate Your Tone

When drafting a personal essay, think about the feelings you intend to discuss or the atmosphere you prefer to create that lends intuition into your personality. Your essays might be about a past incident and may be drafted as a re-look to an already occurred event and its relation to the current circumstances. If you are writing pertaining to a present event, the essay should be written from a present perspective and the effect experienced today. Based on the tone of your story, concentrate on drawing the writer’s attention to your story.

Add a Moral Lesson

Your personal essay definitely has the main lesson that readers can draw from your story. Contemplate things you want the readers to recall about your essay and discuss how, why, and what you have learned from your experience.

Write the Introduction

The introduction should be brief and, in most cases, should not exceed two paragraphs discussing your main points without elaborating in detail. The introduction captures the main ideas of your story, and the introductory sentence should be impactful. The first sentence should be intriguing to draw readers’ attention.

Write the Body

The body elaborates essay ideas and any other crucial information. The body should only be two to three paragraphs. This is where you provide evidence backing the lesson or moral you are depicting in your tale.

Write the Conclusion

The conclusion is typically one to two paragraphs and emphasize your main points in the body. Avoid introducing new concepts and concentrate on delivering your personal message. Conclude your essay with a sentence that wraps up the lesson in your narrative and connects the whole essay.

How to Write a Personal Essay | Image

How to Write a Personal Essay

How to Write a Personal Essay in English

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