5 Things Your Personal Essay Needs To Have

Editor's Note: Put Gilsdorf's advice into practice in his upcoming class, "Writing Great Scenes for Your Personal Essays"!

Another entry in the monthly column, The Freelance Life, by Ethan Gilsdorf, about the trials, tribulations, triumphs—and tips to share—along the path to becoming a freelance writer.


Here are some questions I often get: “What makes a great personal essay?” “What’s a good topic for a personal essay?” “I don’t even know what goes into a personal essay.” And so forth. 

Personal essays can take all sorts of forms, and they can contain all sorts of ideas, emotions, themes, scenes, moments, musings, and other content. There’s no one way to write one or structure one, and I don’t have all the answers. But as you do begin to write, or before you write, or as you go back and look at that necessary but messy first draft, you might do some strategic thinking.

Here are five things that you might consider.

1. A question to explore

What’s a good topic for a personal essay? In my experience, it’s something that poses a question, that you want to answer. A personal investigation. Why did you behave a certain way on that first date? What explains that lousy relationship with your father? There’s some dark matter, some problem with heat, that needs to be uncovered. The question you crave an answer to can be a guiding force for self discovery on the page. Make it interesting for YOU to investigate it, to write it, and it will be interesting to read.

If it helps as you draft, type that question at the top of the page. In the draft itself, you can insert an implicit hint or direct reference to what you want to explore. How did I become such a jerk? How did I survive that time in my life? Who is my tribe? Etc.

Stories only you can tell are the best. Remember, the marketplace demands unique stories. Be strategic. Think of  essay topics that are sensational, unique, thoughtful, dramatic, and risky.


2. A something at stake

What is at stake for you? When I talk about this idea of what's at stake for you, what I means is, What is the reason we as the reader going to care about you? What happens to you? Are you in danger, physically, emotionally, or psychically?  Or is the risk simply being willing to face, or re-view, or revise, some aspect of how you see your life, or admit to a fault, or see a situation from another perspective? There has to be a sense of risk or danger -- bad things might happen to you if you don't come to some fresh understanding, or change your life, or make that leap to new place in life.


3. A clear scope of story and theme

Many personal essays fail because they try to take on too much: the time I didn’t make the basketball team + my anger about that disastrous Thanksgiving + my thoughts on forgiveness + that crappy period of depression. It’s important to make sure your essay has a tight theme and limited scope. Don't try to talk about your entire relationship with your mother; focus on a particular time or aspect of your relationship with your mother that was trying, like when you found yourself still hearing her voice in your head as you raised your children. It's almost always better to go deep on a smaller topic, theme or thread from your life, and use a smaller frame, than it is to cast a wide net.

Here’s one idea to help you focus: Try to summarize your idea and theme in one title and subtitle. These examples come from Salon.com:

Keep your comments off my baby
As a blogger, I could take the Internet's wrath. But when I decided to have a kid, I wondered: Was it time to quit?

Never show them your back
I hid those moles, because they were hideous. But the worst part of your body can look different to someone else

My sexual awakening at 70
I was a nice, Jewish girl taught to believe sex was dirty. Fifteen years after my husband died, all that changed


4. A character arc

Sometimes in essays, the writing is lovely, the images are fresh, the scenes are exciting. But it all goes nowhere. Nothing much happens that’s interesting. When that happens, the problem is that there is no character arc.

Remember, in a personal essay, you are the protagonist of your essay. Just like in a novel or short story.  So the “character of you” needs to face conflict, and be challenged by it, and be changed by it. Your understanding your life in a new way might be the thing that changes, or it could be something more dramatic, like you lost your left leg in an accident, and that has made all the difference. Take the reader on a journey, and arrive somewhere new by the end of the essay. In short, be the change you want to write about.


5. A Beginning in the middle

Some essays begin too slowly. They meander. It’s not clear what’s interesting because the writer has given us too much backstory, or is seemingly compelled to detail the ugly truths of every character in a family constellation or, perhaps worse, every detail about the writer’s childhood. But there’s no action. No forward motion.

One solution to this problem is to begin the essay as if the reader is just overhearing a scene or a story that’s already happening. Begin in scene, in the midst of things (AKA in medias res), into the middle of a narrative, without preamble. Give us some of your best stuff first. Something shocking. Make a bold statement. Grab our attention by presenting a hint of the problem that’s going to be dealt with soon.

This can often be handled by a compelling move right out of the gate. Here’s some examples of a few first lines:


“There’s the night that Veronica knocked her front teeth out.” (“Veronica’s Teeth,” by Joshua Mohr, The Rumpus)

“Sometimes those who live near seem far off.” (“The couple next door,” by Shuo Zhuang, Boston Globe Magazine)

“I used to flash my bra when I was good and drunk.” (“Never show them your back,” Sarah Hepola, Salon)


You get the idea. In other words, get us on board – intrigued, fascinated, worried, unbalanced. Tease us just enough, and we’ll keep reading.

I hope this handful of concepts, tricks, and approaches helps you focus, shape, and get your personal essay headed in a fruitful and satisfying direction. Happy writing.

*Photo by Enouch Lau. Used Courtesy of Creative Commons License.

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