Your life may not be littered with exciting stories, or intense drama, but that's okay. Your personal essay can still be engaging for your reader if you focus on finding an angle for your essay. You should try to find a unique or interesting take on an experience, or moment in your life. Looking at an experience from a particular angle can turn it into deep, meaningful subject matter for your essay. For example, maybe you want to write about an experience where you learned about failure. You may think the time you failed a pop quiz in class. Though the quiz may have seemed insignificant to you at the time, you realized later that failing the pop quiz forced you to reassess your goals and motivated you to get a passing grade. Seen from a certain angle, your small failure became a gateway to perseverance and determination. A good personal essay will explore a specific experience that created a sense of conflict in your life. The personal essay can be a way to explore how and why you were challenged or hurt by the experience. Think of it as a space where you can discuss a significant moment and reflect on its impact on your life.  This could be a seemingly small moment that ended up having a profound influence on you later, such the first time you experienced disgust as a child or the look on your mother’s face when you told her you were gay. Try to really dig into why you were hurt or compelled to overcome a challenge in this moment in your essay. Remember that moments charged with strong emotion will often be more engaging to readers. Having a strong reaction to a specific moment will allow you to write passionately about it and keep your reader interested in your essay. You may also explore a specific event in your life that left a lasting impression on you. Often, personal essays act as reflections on an event that occurred in your life and shifted it in some way. Think of a specific event that is unique and personal to you. The stranger the event, the more likely the essay will be engaging to read.  For example, you may focus on the day you found out your father cheated on your mother, or the week you mourned the death of a loved one. Think about a heavy experience in your life that shaped who you are today. You may also decide to write about a seemingly light topic or event, such as your first ride on a roller coaster, or the first time you went on a cruise with your partner. No matter what event you choose, make sure it is an event that triggered a strong emotional response, ranging from anger to confusion to unabashed joy. You may want to explore a tenuous relationship with a person in your life in your personal essay. Think about a person you have grown apart from or feel estranged from. You may also choose a person that you have always had a difficult or complicated relationship with and explore why this is in your essay.  For example, you may think about why you and your mother stopped speaking years ago or why you are no longer close to a childhood friend. You may also look at past romantic relationships that failed and consider why they did not succeed or a relationship with a mentor that went sour. This could also be about someone that you're close with. For example, you could write about a moment that tested your relationship with a close friend. Good personal essays consider the specific, such as your experiences, as well as the general, such as a current event or larger issue. You may focus on a current event or topic that you feel passionate about, such as abortion or refugee camps, and consider it from a personal perspective.  Ask yourself questions about the current event. For example, how does the current event intersect with your own experiences? How can you explore a current social issue or event using your personal thoughts, experiences, and emotions? For example, you may have an interest in writing about Syrian refugee camps in Europe. You may then focus your personal essay on your own status as a refugee in America and how your experiences a refugee have shaped the person you are now. This will allow you to explore a current event from a personal perspective, rather than simply talk about the current event from a distant, journalistic perspective. Personal essays are usually formatted in sections, with an introductory section, a body section, and a concluding section. These sections are broken down as follows:  The introductory section should include “the hook”, opening lines where you catch the reader’s attention. It should also have some sort of narrative thesis, which is often the beginning of an important event in the piece or a theme that connects your experience to a universal idea. The body sections should include supporting evidence for your narrative thesis and/or the key themes in your piece. Often, this is in the form of your experiences and your reflections on your experiences. You should also note the passage of time in your body sections so the reader is aware of when and how certain events occurred. The concluding section should include a conclusion to the events and experiences discussed in the essay. You should also have a moral of the story moment, where you reflect on what you learned from your experiences or how your experiences changed your life. In the past, it was advised to have five paragraphs total, one paragraph for the introductory section, three paragraphs for the body section, and one paragraph for the concluding section. But you can have more or less than five paragraphs for your personal essay as long as you have all three sections.
جد منظورًا لمقالتك. اكتب عن لحظة هامة. ناقش حدثًا محددًا حفز لديك استجابة عاطفية. فكر في شخص بحياتك واجهت معه صعوبة بطريقة ما. تفاعل مع حدث حالي. اكتب الخطوط الرئيسية للمقالة.