1. Part 2: Inquiry Projects
Chapter Three
Writing a Personal Essay
PowerPoint by Michelle Payne, PhD
Boise State University
The Curious Writer
Fourth Edition
by Bruce Ballenger
Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. Chapter Three
Writing a Personal Essay
In this chapter, you will learn how to
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3. The best topics ask to be written about
because they make you wonder Why did
I do that? What does that mean? Why
did that happen? How did I really feel?
What do I really think?
Image from Microsoft Clip Art
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4. MOTIVES FOR WRITING A
PERSONAL ESSAY
“The personal essay tradition inspired by Montaigne is probably unlike what
you are familiar with from school. The school essay is often formulaic—a five-
paragraph theme or thesis-example paper—while the personal essay is an
open-ended form that allows for uncertainty and inconclusiveness. It is more
about the process of coming to know than presenting what you know.”
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5. Use personal experiences and
observations to drive inquiry.
Goal 1
The personal essay attempts to find out rather
than to prove.
• Ideal if
– You want to explore ideas
– You wonder about relationships between your
subject and yourself
• Pitfalls:
– Can be too subjective, become narcissistic
– Doesn’t answer so what? for the reader
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6. THE PERSONAL ESSAY AND
ACADEMIC WRITING
“What we choose to write about, the questions that interest us, and our
particular ways of seeing are always at work, even in academic pros …
Whenever anyone—scientist or humanist—uses language to communicate
discoveries, they enter a social marketplace where words have meanings that
are negotiated with others. For writers—any kind of writers—language is a
social currency.”
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7. Apply the exploratory thinking of
personal essays to academic writing.
How does writing a personal essay relate to
writing an academic one?
• Emphasizes exploration as a method of
inquiry:
– Suspending judgment
– Tolerating ambiguity
– Using questions to challenge easy assumptions
• Emphasizes the process of coming to
understand something
Goal 2
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8. • Movement
between critical
and creative
thinking.
• Much like inductive
reasoning typical of
scientific thinking.
Emphasizes the kind of thinking typical of
academic discourse.
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9. THE WRITING PROCESS
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10. Inquiry Project: Writing a Personal Essay
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11. Identify the characteristics of personal
essays in different forms.
Goal 3
Inquiry Questions
What does it mean to me?
What do I understand
about this now that I didn’t
then?
Motives
Self discovery
Uses first-person (“I)—the
writer’s relationship to
his/her subject is central
and shapes meaning.
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12. Features of the Form
• Memory
• Observation
•Specific, sensory details
•Narrative, not necessarily
chronological
•Reflection / Exposition
•Implied thesis
• Ordinary things
• Everyday life
• Writer making sense of
her world
• What does this mean
to me?
• What do I understand
now that I didn’t then?
• Self-discovery
Purpose Subject
SourcesForm
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13. Type Questions Genre
Question of Fact or
Definition
What is it? What is known
about it?
Beginning of inquiry
Question of Value Which is better/worse? Is
it good/bad
Review, Argument,
Research Essay
Hypothesis Question Might this be true? Research Essay, Personal
Essay
Policy Question What should be done? Argument, Proposal
Interpretation Question What does it mean? Literary Essay, Personal
Essay, Ethnography, Profile
Relationship Question Does ___ cause ___? Is
___similar or dissimilar
to ____?
Research Essay, Literary
Essay, Ethnography
Types of Questions Types of Genres
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14. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO
WRITE ABOUT?
“Whatever you write about, what matters most is that you’ve chosen the
topic because you aren’t quite sure what you want to think about it. Write
about what confuses you, what puzzles you, or what raises itchy
questions.”
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15. Use invention strategies to discover and
develop a personal essay topic.
Opening up (generating):
• What do I remember or see that I’d like to think
about?
Narrowing down (judging):
• Which of these raise the most interesting
questions to explore?
Trying out (generating, then judging):
• What do I understand now about this topic that
I didn’t before?
Goal 4
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16. Opening Up: Generating Ideas
• Journal prompts
– Listing
– Fastwriting
– Visual prompts
– Research prompts
Am I uncertain
about what this
might mean?
Might I understand these events
differently now than I did then?
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17. Example:Clustering
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18. What’s Promising Material and What Isn’t?
• Abundance. What subject generated the most
writing? Do you sense that there is much
more to write about?
• Surprise. Did you see or say something you
didn’t expect about a topic?
• Confusion. What subject raises questions
you’re not sure you can answer easily?
Narrowing Down: Judging
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19. Questions about Purpose
and Audience
• Key point:
– Audience and purpose are
important, but not if they keep you
from writing.
• Connecting purpose and
audience:
– What have you discovered about
your inquiry question, your
experiences and observations, that
speak to others—a theme that you
could express in a “we statement”?
“Being too vigilant
about what
readers think can
discourage you
from welcoming
the messy
accidents that can
make for helpful
discoveries.”
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20. Trying Out: Generating, Then Judging
Then-Narrator and
Now-Narrator
• What do you understand
now about this topic that
you didn’t fully understand
when you began writing
about it? Start some writing
with this phrase:
“As I look back on this
now, I realize that . . . ”
• What seems to be the most
important thing you’re
trying to say so far?
• How has your thinking
changed about your topic?
Finish this seed sentence as
many times as you can in
your notebook:
“Once I thought
_______, and now I think
_______.”
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21. Sketch: What Is It?
Choose your most promising material, and
tell the story.
• If drawn from memories:
– Incorporate both what happened then and
what you make of it now.
• If drawn from observations:
– Make sure they are detailed, anchored to
particular times and places, and in some
way significant.
• You may or may not answer the “So
what?” question—see what happens.
Let the
writing
help you
figure out
what you
think.
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22. Sketch: What Should You Try to Do?
• Have a tentative title.
• Keep it relatively short.
• Write it fast.
• Don’t muscle it to conform to a preconceived
idea.
• Write to be read, with an audience in mind.
• Make it specific instead of general.
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23. The Process
So Far…
Narrowing Trying Out
Abundance
SurpriseConfusion
Brain-
storming
Clustering
Prompts
Sketch
Generating
• What questions does this material
raise for you?
• What might it mean?
• Why would readers care about this?
Now what?
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24. DRAFTING
“The key to developing your draft is to arrive at a fuller
understanding of what your purpose is in telling your own stories
and then rebuild your essay around that insight from the
beginning.”
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25. From Sketch to Draft
Consider purpose and
audience again:
• What might this essay
be saying, not only
about me, but more
generally about people
who find themselves in
similar situations?
• What questions does it
raise that might be
interesting, not only to
me, but also to others
who may not know
me?
Keep in mind what you’ve learned
from your writing so far:
• What is the most important
question behind your exploration
of the topic?
• What do you understand now
that you didn’t understand fully
when you started writing about
it?
• How can you show and explain
how you came to this
understanding?
• Have you already written a strong
first line for the draft? Can you
find it somewhere in all your
journal writing?
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26. Apply revision strategies that are effective
for shaping narratives.
Goal 5
Group workshop on drafts:
Purpose
What would you say this essay is about?
Do you have a clear sense of why I’m
writing about this topic?
Meaning
(What’s the S.O.F.T.?)
What would you say is the point of this
draft?
What is the main thing I seem to be saying
about this topic?
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27. Purpose of Revision: Shaping
Shaping
What the
essay is about
How the draft
reveals
• Purpose
• Meaning
• Inquiry question
• Theme
• Organization
• Information
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28. Strategies for Revision
What to
cut/add
• What info is no
longer relevant?
• What info is
missing?
Question
of time
• Info from past
or present?
• How does time
organize essay?
Research
• Background
• Facts
• Other writers
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Image from Microsoft Clip Art

29. Revision: Typical Problems
• The reader isn’t sure from the beginning
where the essay is going.
• There’s too much telling/explaining. Focus on
the narrative backbone of the essay.
• The larger significance isn’t clear. Have you
said what you need to say about how, though
it’s your experience, the meaning you discover
might apply to others as well?
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30. Unclear Purpose
•Not sure what the essay
is about? Fails to answer
the So what question?
Unclear thesis, theme or
main idea
•Not sure what you’re
trying to say?
Lack of information or
development
•Needs more details?
More showing, less
telling?
Disorganized
•Doesn’t move logically
or smoothly from
paragraph to paragraph?
Unclear or awkward at
the level of sentences
and paragraphs
•Seems choppy or hard to
follow at the level of
sentences or
paragraphs?
Chapter 13:
Revision
Strategies
1 to 4
Chapter 13:
Revision
Strategies
5 to 10
Chapter 13:
Revision
Strategies
11 to 14
Chapter 13:
Revision
Strategies
15 to 18
Chapter 13:
Revision
Strategies
20 to 26
Guide to Revision Strategies
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