How to Create a Great Personal Essay?

Your professor has just given you a personal essay assignment at the beginning of the academic year. Essays that are personal or narrative in nature give professors the chance to see your knowledge of grammar, writing basics, and creativity levels. This guide is aimed to help you go through the entire process if you're unsure where to begin or feel frustrated by the broad prompts and topics. When you keep the essential components of a winning essay in mind, writing about yourself is simple.

Explore Ideas and Get Inspired

Without a topic, you cannot start writing a personal essay. If you are having trouble coming up with a topic, try looking at some of these sources of inspiration:

• Browse lists of suggestions to get your mind working on the potential for your essay. Don't write about anything that is untrue because a personal essay is subjective.
• Try writing in the first person. Write down anything that's on your mind and don't stop or delete anything as you write. A flow of ideas puts everything in your head on paper, even if the ideas aren't at all related.
• Do some research. Discovering new passions might spark your imagination and provide brief moments of self-reflection. If there are any topics that you believe you would like to write about, hold on to them.

Ask your professor for some recommendations right away. If you're still having trouble coming up with a topic, ask your professor for advice or a more detailed assignment.

Understand the Essay's Structure

Remind yourself of the fundamentals of essay structure before you begin. An introduction, a body, and a conclusion are the typical structure of an essay. A common example of this is the five-paragraph essay, which has an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Before starting, write down your ideas in an outline or basic essay outline.

Introduction: After the hook, briefly summarize the topic of your essay in the opening paragraph. The introduction should make it clear to your readers where the rest of your essay will go.

Body: The paragraphs that make up your essay's body each provide readers with information on the topic you've chosen differently. A paragraph's structure mirrors your whole essay. A paragraph is made up of a thesis statement that grabs the reader's attention, many phrases that elaborate on it, and one or two concluding sentences that restate the key point.

To properly introduce the following topic without delving into too much detail, the conclusion sentence of a paragraph should also serve as a transition into the following paragraph. Each paragraph should include a different idea that is closely related to the overall subject of the essay but expands on it differently. To make your essay easy to read, subjects must relate to one another logically.

Conclusion: End your essay with a paragraph that summarizes your main ideas and your readers' main conclusions. In conclusion paragraphs of personal essays, you should discuss the lessons you learned from your experience or how it affected you. In other words, summarize your article and restate the concepts from the opening in a different light.

Use the Correct Voice When Writing Essays

The voice of your writing is one of the numerous aspects of English grammar that affects how well it is written. The writer's voice and the word choice are the two types of voice. Using voice, or your unique way of telling a narrative is one of the things your professor will be searching for when reading your personal essay.

They will check the pace of your essay, search for distinctive features of your writing, and analyze how you show your credibility. The passive voice is used when the subject is receiving the action, while the active voice is used when the subject is performing the action or verb.

In the examples that follow, the subject is underlined:

Ms. Thompson gave me an essay to write.

A personal essay about spring break was given by Ms. Thompson.

In general, the active voice works best for personal essays because it is better at moving a narrative forward. You will also sound more authoritative if you use verbs in the active voice.

Keep Your Point of View and Tense Consistent

Your point of view and verb tenses should be consistent since personal essays are about you. The pronouns I, we, and us are commonly used in personal essays to describe events in the first person. Readers must understand a situation from your point of view.

Remember that you can only refer to your ideas and emotions in the first person if you can be certain of what another person thought or felt and quote them. Because essays explain something that happened to you rather than something that is or will happen, which is the reason why personal essays are written in the past tense.

Use Your Own Words

When writing personal essays, you shouldn't fear, just as you shouldn't lie. Your word choice might assist you in creating lasting themes throughout your essay. Each word counts. Honesty should be your goal when writing a personal essay, and you should use your words properly. When writing, use the words that naturally spring to mind and avoid trying to sound unreliable. Your vocabulary should be appropriate for the subject and guide readers to follow your writing in a particular way.

Here are some illustrations of an excellent choice of words:

• Use strong words that clearly convey your ideas while making a statement or an argument. Instead of saying, "I ran fairly fast," try saying, "I ran as fast as the wind."
• Use words that express uncertainty if you want to explain the doubt you felt while having an experience. Instead of saying, "I didn't think it could happen," use, "I debated whether or not it was a smart idea."
• Use positive words. Instead of writing about what did not happen or what is not, focus on what did happen or is. Instead of saying, "I disliked dinner and couldn't even eat it," say, "I had more room for cake after dinner."

Always use as many of your senses as you can to describe things in your writing. To help your readers visualize the action for themselves, describe what you saw, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted in your writing. Use adjectives to reinforce what you have described, but not to avoid the need for description.

Even for native English speakers, essays writing is difficult. To make sure that you have written an essay you can be pleased with, review grammatical rules before writing and check your work once you have finished.

For any type of paper, editing is one of the most critical steps in the writing process. Giving yourself time away from your essay right after you finish it before you start revising is a smart idea because it can help you better understand your writing.

When editing, consider the following:

• Is your essay's grammar and sentence structure proper?
• Is your essay well-structured and simple to read? Is it cohesive?
• Is the essay's writing always on the topic?
• Can your readers visualize what you've described?
• Has your point been made?

Answer these questions, follow our tips and you will get a great personal statement. Good luck!