A truthteller’s toolkit
5 components a personal essay needs to succeed – and sell.
By Nicki Porter
Once upone a time, a writer might contact an agent and confess their desire to publish an essay collection. And once upon a time, an agent might have resisted an urge to laugh in the writer’s face. As a form, essays had fallen out of favor, hard, and finding a home for one both at a publisher and on readers’ bookshelves was an immensely difficult task, especially for a new author.
Thankfully, the tides have reversed, and essay collections like Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias, Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, and Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror now flourish in bookstores and on bestseller lists. Online publications seeking personal essays abound, providing space and readers for true stories told well. The personal essay, frankly, has never been hotter.
But the rise in popularity has also led to a rise in submissions, making it harder for a writer to stand out in the crowd. If you’re looking to jump into the fray, here are the key components a writer needs to build a strong personal essay – plus bonus tips for writing one that’s irresistible to editors.
1 START WITH A STORY.
Essays are a nonfiction form, true, but they have more in common with the short story than with academic writing. A personal essay is a true short story, plain and simple. An essayist must color within the lines of fact, but they also must utilize many of the same components as a short story writer: Show, don’t tell. Paint dynamic real-life “characters.” Use scenes, not exposition. Sprinkle in realistic dialogue. Build a compelling narrative arc. Etcetera.
We receive many essays each year that are merely a long string of real-life events. Events do not make a story – and, put more bluntly, just because they happened to you doesn’t make them worth writing about. It’s the writer’s job to spin events into a compelling narrative, to shine them for public consumption.
For example, if I were talking about my experience with beekeeping, I might say: We started beekeeping in Boston at my fiance’s request. At first, I was against the idea, fearing stings and a loss of backyard peace, but slowly I came around. When we moved to Virginia, we brought them with us. One hive died, but the others are doing well.
If I were writing an essay on beekeeping, I might open with: The first thing we did when we arrived in Virginia was check on the beehives strapped to the back of the pickup truck. I pressed my hand against the white boxes, feeling the hum of activity inside, and breathed a sigh of relief. We’d done it: Our bees had survived 507 miles in the back of a rental truck. Thousands of honeybees, the ones I’d resisted having for so long, the ones I now felt such fondness toward, had made it across six state lines. They buzzed, outraged, demanding to be let out. We’d need to wait until morning, we decided; the bees would swarm if we released the hive now, off in search of a new home that wouldn’t up and move on them in the middle of the night.
In the morning, we learned the truth: Layers of comb had burst in transit, and a third of the hive had drowned in their own honey. I watched my fiancé wordlessly sweep their sticky bodies out of the hive and wept for the lives of a thousand insects I’d once hated.
The first version narrates dots on the timeline; the second attempts to connect them into a cohesive narrative greater than the sum of its parts. Look closely at the dots on your own timeline. How can you knit them together to form something greater than the sum of their parts? What stories lurk behind the facts and dates? When you find them, you’ll find your essays.
2 REMEMBER WHO’S TELLING IT.
Reader, I am officially giving you permission to forget every bland persuasive or informative essay you ever wrote in high school. Banish that creaky, cranky English teacher from your mind. You are not here to inform, and you are not here to persuade: You are here to tell a story. Your story. So if you recall being told to keep the personal “I” out of your essay, I would like to hand you a bucket and a squeegee so you can scrub that notion right out of your mind.
Fiction is nothing without a strong protagonist. Guess who the protagonist is in nonfiction?
That’s right, my friend. It’s you. And your voice needs to be as sure and strong and compelling and believable and dynamic as any character’s.
If that sounds intimidating, remember this: This essay you’re trying to write is your story. It happened to you. You are the only one who can write it. That alone makes you compelling, right off the bat. It makes you brave, for being willing to share your truth with us.
But it also means a fair amount rides on the voice in any personal essay. And the No. 1 thing I don’t see enough on the page is confidence.
A confident voice knows why they are telling this story, and they know exactly where it is going. They know they have something to say, and they also know why they are the only one who can say it. A confident voice says to the reader from the very first line: Hop in, friend, we’re going for a ride – and I promise it’ll be worth your while.
A little pre-planning can do a world of good in boosting your own confidence as a narrator. Even if you’re not an outliner, consider mulling over the following questions before you sit down to write:
1. Why am I telling this story?
2. Why am I the only one who can tell it?
3. Why does it matter to me, and why will it matter to others?
4. How do I want the reader to feel when they read this story?
5. If I were telling my story out loud to someone, how would my voice sound?
6. Where would I tell this story, and who would I tell it to?
3 FIND YOUR ESSAY’S CONFLICT.
Here’s a secret for all the folks out there with perfect marriages, perfect houses, perfect children, perfect stock portfolios, and perfectly alphabetical bookshelves: That’s great! We’re happy for you! But we don’t want to read 10,000 words about it.
An essay without conflict is like a puff of cotton candy: Sweet, insubstantial, and not long for this world. The best stories always involve some form of struggle, lesson, or accomplishment, because that’s what we humans are really curious about.
We don’t flock to a marathon finish line because we particularly enjoy seeing sweaty, bedraggled runners cross a painted line on the pavement; we do it because we know they’ve traveled 26 miles of hell to get there. The top of Everest isn’t nearly as interesting as the climb, you know? A happy ending only feels happy because of the conflict that came before it; otherwise, it’s just an ending.
Lest we worry we can only write about the darkest, gloomiest times in our lives, here’s another secret: I bet the happiest moments in your life, the most startlingly bright and most joyful memories you own, have a lot more hidden conflict than your mind would have you believe.
Here’s an example: If you asked me to pick a moment where I was perfectly content, where all felt right in the world, and I felt gloriously happy, I could answer in an instant. I’m on a sunny rooftop in Spain, drinking cava and nibbling on ham and cheese with my beloved. It’s a beautiful day in May, and we’ve just gotten engaged.
But the more I investigate that memory, interrogating it to find the real heart of my happiness, I remember how the day began: Due to a translation error, we’d arrived late to our scheduled times at the Sagrada Família – a place I’d desperately wanted to visit for decades. I was stressed because we were late; my fiancé was stressed because he planned to propose. We’d skipped breakfast and were starving. And then, evidently too caught up in the joyful windfall of the proposal, we’d taken a wrong turn and walked several miles in the wrong direction before we realized our error.
The memory of the rooftop picnic feels all the sweeter because of the turmoil that came before it, a happy ending to the hunger and stress and tired feet that preceded it.
Look closely at your own happy memories. What did you endure to get there? How can you best show that conflict – inner or external – to the reader?
4 MAINTAIN A SENSE OF TENSION FROM BEGINNING TO END.
Imagine that every time you publish a piece of writing, you are handing a reader a rope. Their only job is to not drop the rope – to keep reading and paying attention. It’s your job to hold that rope taut from beginning to end, never once letting the line slack or jerking your reader around.
Holding a narrative yarn taut is all about maintaining a steady release of information to the reader. Don’t bombard them with your entire life story in the first three paragraphs. Don’t leave out an essential piece of information until the last section (unless you are aiming for a “twist ending,” which, fair warning, has generally fallen out of favor in modern publishing and often makes editors quite cross).
A writer must give the reader incentive to hold the line, to keep reading after each sentence. The siren call of Netflix, YouTube, and Twitter is strong. A fine-tuned essay is one that silences that call, embedding the reader so deeply into the world you’ve built that they can’t hear anything outside of it.
In some ways, holding tension in nonfiction is easier than fiction, because you already know which parts in the memory made your heart beat a little faster (if it spiked your blood pressure in real life, it should spike your readers’, too). In other ways, nonfiction is harder, because you can’t throw in a car chase or murder to keep your tale moving along at a nice clip.
Here’s one strategy for understanding which points to highlight and which to skip: Pretend you are telling your story out loud at a party or to a friend. (Actually say it out loud – no cheating!) Or better still, call up a real friend and ask to tell them this story. Note which parts you speed up and which parts you slow down, pausing to emphasize critical moments. Note, too, which parts your friend loses interest in or which parts make them gasp or react. See which sections you can skip and which require more explanation. Then, when it’s time to revise your first draft, hand over your essay to a third party. Ask them to mark where they felt restless, where they needed more information, or where the narrative seemed to jump. (You can also just watch their reactions as they read, but most folks tend to find this a bit creepy.)
5 NEVER FORGET TO PROVIDE A TAKEAWAY FOR YOUR READER.
We often begin an essay for ourselves. We have a moment in our lives we wish to process on paper. We want to know what we truly believe. We want to see what insights lurk in our hearts and minds, what might be revealed when we prod a memory on the page.
As the essay progresses, however, from first-draft embryo to a walking, living manuscript, it’s time to remember your reader. To remember the person sitting on the other side of the screen or magazine, taking in your work and responding to it. Because they will respond to it if you leave them the room to do so.
We tend to think of the essay as a monologue, a work spoken in one voice and delivered to the masses. But the very best essays – the work editors love to publish – are actually the ones that work as a conversation between writer and reader. These essays leave space for readers to ask questions, to follow the author’s clues, to process their own meaning as they read between a writer’s lines.
Your very worst nightmare should be a reader walking away from your work with nothing more than they started with. Imagine: You offer your whole heart to a reader on the page, only to have them read your entire essay, reach the last line, and feel absolutely nothing new. Learn nothing new. Have zero reactions to your work. They close the magazine or browser and walk away, utterly untouched by the story you poured out on the page.
No editor wants to publish a piece that will have that effect. Our job is to look for pieces that not only please us but also will resonate with our larger audience.
A few examples of what an essay can offer a reader in exchange for their time and attention include:
• Humor, which serves as a brief respite from the stresses of our everyday lives
• A triumph over hardship, in which we learn from the writer’s struggles and ultimate success
• Empathy toward a subject or group of subjects, which encourages us to foster our own empathy in return
• A heartfelt display of emotion, which lets us access and evoke feelings we might have buried
• A new way of seeing or expressing a concept, which allows us to view the subject in fresh light
Ask yourself: What can I offer the reader by telling this story? How can I include my reader in my narrative?
If those questions fall flat, my bluntest question for better including your audience in your writing is this: If you were telling your story to some belligerent stranger at a party, and they interrupted to say, “Why should I care?,” what would you say to that person? And how can you graciously incorporate that reader into your next draft? How can you acknowledge that person in your query?
There are so many ways a writer can reach an audience. The only way to fail to do so is to forget they’re there in the first place.
Nicki Porter is the editor of The Writer.
SIX INGREDIENTS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR ESSAY STAND OUT FROM THE SLUSH PILE
1. Timeliness. Why does this essay need to be told right now? What does it add to the current conversation? Include all this in your query letter.
2. Originality. Maybe you know how to turn a phrase better than any wordsmith you know. Perhaps you wrote an essay about loss styled as a series of recipe cards. Or maybe you’ve got the rare ability to keep your sense of humor when writing about the saddest of subjects, which serves as much-needed comic relief. Find your strengths and lean on them – originality can easily make your essay rise to the top of the slush pile.
3. Authenticity. Why are you the only person who can tell this story? What essential information in your bio lends credibility to your essay? Tell an editor all about it in your query.
4. Completion. It’s much easier to say yes to a fully written, wonderful essay than a riskier pitch or story idea, especially if you’re new to a publication.
5. Professional format. Please choose a professional 12-point font that is not, say, Courier New, Comic Sans, etc. Double-spacing is your friend. And be wary of giant blocks of text in your essay, especially if you’re pitching for an online publication – separate them into short paragraphs for a reader-friendlier look that will appeal to editors.
6. Correct grammar. Sorry, folks, there’s just no getting around this one. It may be an editor’s job to catch a typo here or there before it goes to print, but it’s not on us to do the lion’s share of grammatical work. Proofread your work incessantly before you pitch. It’s not just politeness, either: Errors pull us out of the world you’ve worked so hard to create on the page, and you want an editor to feel transported by your essay, not annoyed by errant commas or missing punctuation.
