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How to Write a Personal Essay with Style and Substance
Insights from PWN’s Personal Essay Instructor Mark McDevitt
Tell an engaging and well-crafted story based on your own personal experience—there’s nothing to it, right? Yes and no. For a lot of beginning writers, the personal essay is one of the easiest forms to tackle—and yet, it can be one of the hardest things to do well. When I talk about “essay” here, I’m talking about the narrative kind—a true story told by the person who lived it—and not an op-ed or college essay, or any other academic kind.
A good personal essay offers the reader a chance to peer inside another person’s head and live vicariously through them, if only for a moment. I like to think of the personal essay as a “mini memoir.” Like a memoir, a good essay can travel far, and sometimes stay with you forever.
The secret to all great storytelling—regardless of length, format, or genre—is creating emotional engagement within the reader. Emotional engagement means the reader is invested in the outcome of the story. We care about what happens to the people involved. One of the ways we do this is by choosing those stories and themes that tap into our shared human experience—things like love, loss, doubt, ambition, hope gained or dashed, resilience, courage, fear—that help to bridge the distance between us and another person. With this in mind, I’d like to offer some suggestions for how to become a more effective, more engaging, and more successful storyteller.
Know what is and isn’t a story
While it’s a very broad generalization, I believe that all good stories are really only about one thing—change. If someone, or something, is not fundamentally changed by the end of a story, it’s doubtful it even is a story. Consider a story in which the narrator recounts her once-in-a-lifetime hiking trip to Peru: the arrival in the country, the scenery, the food, local color, amazing vistas, etc. Is this a story? It could be. Now consider that she tells us about the arduous trek up Machu Picchu with her longtime boyfriend, where she hopes something magical is about to happen. They have talked previously about marriage, and it would not seem unreasonable to expect a proposal here. At the summit, however, he has a moment of “clarity” and reveals to her some of his doubts about their future as a couple. Turns out, he is not proposing at all, he is in fact breaking up with her. Now the story becomes something else entirely. It is about crossed lines, disconnect, and finding a way past disappointment (all of which are incidental to them being in Peru). In one version, we have a mildly interesting travel diary—the literary equivalent of looking at someone’s “vacation photos.” In another, we have a relatable human story about love and loss. Which one would you rather read?
Try to begin with an action, not a set up
A good story has a beginning, middle, and end—though not necessarily in that order. So choose your point of attack carefully. A term they use in film and drama is in media res—which is just a fancy Latin way of saying, “begin with something already happening.” The reader is smart and does not wish to be condescended to, so you can drop them right into the story and they will learn to swim—provided you don’t bore them. A good essay will often begin with a hook—something odd or curious, a question, a bit of dialogue maybe—something that captures our interest and compels us to keep reading. Here are two essay openings that I like: “My sister Lisa became a woman on the fourteenth hole of the Pinehurst Golf Course.” Or how about this one: “Recently, I received an email that wasn’t meant for me, but was about me.” You can’t read those and not want to read the next sentence. And that’s the entire trick—enticing the reader to want to read the next sentence, and the next paragraph, and so on.
Think in terms of scenes, not just paragraphs
I come from screenwriting where the basic building block of story is “the scene.” A scene is something concrete, tangible, irreducible. The succession of scenes is what gives a story its shape and overall structure. I believe that all good stories—whether essay, memoir, novel, even a radio story—are made up of scenes. In an essay, these scenes may be compressed, rendered partially or in whole—but they’re there. Or at least, they ought to be. This is why it is often helpful to anchor your story in a “central event”—a fulcrum around which you can build scenes. And scenes, as we know, will suggest dialogue. Consider this story: a 12-year-old boy travels with his parents and younger siblings in an Oldsmobile station wagon from North Carolina to Florida. They are moving, again. It is summertime, and the car is hot and uncomfortable. He watches from the back seat with growing concern as his parents’ argue, the distance between them growing wider with each passing mile. By the time they get to Florida, he knows: his parents’ marriage is over, and his entire life is about to change. Now, I’m not saying this is the best way to tell the story of a family coming undone, but it is one way—centered on a fateful summer road trip after which nothing would ever be the same again.
Be clear and concise
When it comes to essays, or indeed any form of writing, it is imperative that we get to the point—and quickly. Once we know what the story is about, all of our efforts must be in service of bringing that moment to the greatest possible clarity, while blurring everything else into the background. Similar to a photographer choosing where to set the focus in a picture, a good writer decides where the emphasis will be. This is clarity. The extra adjective, that lovely bit of description or clever piece of dialogue—no essay can withstand it. There is no need (or space) to describe the wallpaper in a living room. Just give the reader three data points—“the room was small, dusty, faintly smelling of mothballs”—and let their imagination fill in the blanks.
Internal versus external story
Sounds obvious, but do you really know what your story is about? Keep in mind, it may take several drafts in order to figure this out. In the first example (the Peru story), it’s not just about a trip to South America, is it? It’s about coming to terms with disappointment. It’s about acceptance. Most good stories will operate on two levels—the internal story and the external story. The external story is grounded in the “events” of the story—in this case, the trip to Machu Picchu. The internal story is about the personal transformation that occurs inside the narrator as a result of the events of the story. For a story to have legs, for it to have any kind of real resonance, it should ideally be about something other than the events depicted. To use a well-known movie as an example—Erin Brockovich isn’t about a corrupt power company poisoning a town’s water supply in Southern California; it’s about one woman’s search for identity and self-esteem in order to bring greater meaning to her life. That’s why we cheer for her, and that’s why we remember the story some twenty-five years later.
Be specific (and universal)
It is one of the great paradoxes of writing—or indeed any art form—that the more sharply a writer can capture the particular, the more likely it is to appear universal. Think of Van Gogh’s portrait of his tiny bedroom at Arles—the simple wooden chairs, the blue washbasin, the red bedspread. In rendering his bedroom with very specific little details, he captures all bedrooms. And the same thing applies to writing. A telling little detail—the worried bobble of an Adam’s apple, the satisfying rattle of breakfast cereal through a vacuum cleaner, the quivering texture of a soft boiled egg—these all help to ground the reader in a story, and find connection with their own lived experience. Think of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, or James Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners. The specificity of those worlds, with their strange language, idiom, and ritual does not alienate the reader—it invites them in. Joyce lived most of his life outside of Ireland but wrote almost exclusively about Dublin. It was his feeling that, “If I can get to the heart of Dublin, I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”
Be honest
It is one of the requirements of the personal essay that we “get personal,” and we tell the truth, at least as we understand it. This requires vulnerability and a certain degree of introspection. The degree to which you can truly reveal yourself in an essay is the degree to which readers will relate to your piece, even if that self is small, petty, and afraid. In order to move someone else, you must be willing to move yourself. You must bring your “authentic” self to the story. As readers, I think we long for those moments when some new insight is gained; when something previously hidden is suddenly revealed. There is a terrific essay by Honor Jones, How I Demolished My Life (A Home Improvement Story), which appeared in The Atlantic some years ago. In the second paragraph she writes this: “Slowly, I realized, I didn’t want this kitchen. Slowly, I realized, I didn’t want this life. I didn’t want to renovate. I wanted to get divorced.” We don’t have to reveal all our traumas or our childhood wounds, but we do need to tell the truth.
Get feedback
So you’ve written an essay? That’s the good news! The bad news is that you’re probably the worst person in the world to evaluate your own work. What may seem totally obvious to you may be entirely missing for another reader. Those jokes that made you crack up while writing them may just confuse someone else, or make them question why you’re even friends in the first place. Which is why we need good feedback: generous, thoughtful readers who understand what we are trying to do, and want to help us do it better. If you have two to three of those people in your life, consider yourself very lucky indeed. If you don’t, you might consider taking a class, workshop, or joining a writer’s group where feedback is offered. Try to approach feedback with a curious, open mind, remembering that critique is not criticism of you but an opportunity to improve “the work.” If someone says something you don’t agree with, well, that is their opinion! If three people say the same thing, then maybe you ought to listen to them.
And finally
Don’t worry about trying to be brilliant or funny or clever. We have enough of those people already. Don’t worry about whether your story is original, or big enough or interesting enough. Just try to be yourself and write in your own voice. Share a genuine piece of yourself by telling us about something that was (or is) important to you. And if you can do this, the chances are that it will be original and we will find it interesting. Publishable? I don’t know. But that shouldn’t be the goal, at least not initially. The goal is simply to tell a human story about what it means to be alive—our hopes, our fears, our passions, and our flaws. Doing this helps us make sense of the world. And if it helps someone else feel less alone, then so much the better.
About the Author
Mark McDevitt is an award-winning writer and screenwriter whose work has appeared in The New York Times (Modern Love, “Best of” Anthology), The Sunday Independent, and numerous other publications. A member of the Writers Guild of America and three-time semifinalist for the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, Mark brings his storytelling expertise to the classroom with a passion for helping writers find their authentic voice. He lives in Fair Haven, New Jersey, with his wife and two young sons.
Ready to tell your story? Join Mark’s upcoming Personal Essay class!
Transform your personal experiences into compelling, publishable essays in this intimate six-week workshop. Starting January 21, you’ll learn the craft of personal essay writing through expert guidance, constructive feedback, and practical publishing strategies. Perfect for writers of all levels looking to develop their voice and share their stories with the world.
Tuesdays, 7-9 p.m. ET | Virtual via Zoom | Register here.
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