‘Tell me about yourself’ has to be the most difficult question to answer.
Do you describe your education or a five-year plan? Should you explain family dynamics or tell a story about your first dog? When there’s so much to tell, choosing the right information to share quickly becomes an impossible problem. So today, we’re here to help you master the art of telling stories about yourself that make you sound smart and interesting. By the end of this post, you’ll be a pro at writing creative essays about yourself.
What Is a Creative Essay?
Students fear creative essays because they don’t understand what’s hiding behind the ambiguous assignment. The truth is much less frightening than you might think. Creative writing doesn’t require you to compose a sonnet or write a screenplay, though you definitely can try either.
Instead, a creative essay is a writing assignment that gives you the freedom to choose the best form for your story. Unlike other academic assignments, creative writing makes most of the literary devices. In your essay, you can use:
- character and plot development devices;
- dialogue or monologue;
- vivid descriptions;
- idioms and figures of speech;
- emotionally charged language;
- alternating points of view.
As you see, creative writing can be exciting and fun, especially when you have to write a piece about yourself.
10 Tricks to Writing a Creative Essay About Yourself
There is no perfect formula for writing about yourself. The prompts, style, and formatting requirements can be drastically different. So instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, we’ll share a few creative ways to write an essay. You can use the trick you like best or combine a couple for maximum effect.
Skip Examples
You will be tempted to check out winning essays online, but that’s a trap to avoid. For one, it’s easy to get sucked into reading winning entries and procrastinating your writing. For another, after seeing successful pieces, you may get discouraged instead of inspired. Once you decide you can never write as good as a random person online, you ruin your chances of producing an outstanding piece. Besides, you will never find a story that mirrors yours, so there’s no point in looking.
If you absolutely have to see samples, choose three to five examples and skip the rest. Then, stop yourself from searching for more creative essays. After all, you can only become a better writer by writing.
Do an Interview
Even if you have a prompt to help you write a creative piece about yourself, it can be challenging to put together a compelling story. Most of us get stumped thinking there’s nothing special or exciting to tell. To help you get into the right frame of mind, write a list of questions you would ask a celebrity or a personal hero. The questions can range from something like your favorite ice cream flavor to the most embarrassing moment of your life.
Once you have the list, go ahead and fill in the answers. Don’t hurry through your ‘interview’. Instead, take the time to think back over your experiences and come up with exciting answers. Your life is much more interesting than you think; you just have to dig the excitement from underneath your daily routine.
The answers you find should get you on the right track towards completing your essay. You may even format the whole thing as an interview if the professor allows it.
Switch the Point of View
In most cases, professors and admission boards expect you to write a paper about yourself in the first person. This makes the task easier and harder at once. On the one hand, writing a first-hand account of your life seems like a no-brainer. But, on the other hand, you can get stuck on small, irrelevant details or try to cram too many events into the story. Sometimes, you can get confused about writing in the first person, and you run into horrible writer’s block.
If you can’t seem to find the words, switch to third-person storytelling. Imagine watching a movie or reading a book about your life and retell it in the third person (refer to yourself as he, she, or they). Once you get into the flow, complete the story and leave enough time for editing. You can switch to first-person storytelling once the piece is done.
Turn on All Senses
Humans perceive up to 90% of all information visually. That’s why we often focus on what we see when telling stories. However, we have other senses for a reason, and stimulating them through words can be a powerful tool in your writing arsenal.
When adding a description to your creative piece, remember to engage hearing, smell, touch, and even taste wherever appropriate. For example, you can describe the way the ticking of the clock got on your nerves in a hospital waiting room or how the smell of French toast woke you up every Sunday morning. You can even explain why you prefer good-old vanilla ice cream to all other flavors.
If you decide to use this trick, do not go overboard with sensory descriptions. A couple of strong images are more than enough to add depth to your story without weighing it down. There’s no reason to squeeze a smell or a sound into every sentence.
Zoom In and Out
Ulysses is one of the most prominent examples of zooming in on every aspect of a story; after all, the book describes a single day. So if you find an interesting enough day or event for your creative essay, you can follow in James Joyce’s footsteps and tell the story in excruciating detail. Just make sure every detail you include in your piece serves a purpose. For instance, if you mention missing your morning cup of joe, it should translate into you feeling lethargic later in the day.
If you can’t think of a single event to describe, you can go the other way and zoom out on your life. Use wide brush strokes to describe the course of your life so far and highlight key events that fit together to paint a picture. In this case, you have to make sure these separate events can be tied together logically. Otherwise, your essay will look like a disjointed mess.
Set Limits
Getting outside the comfort zone is a great creative exercise, and you can make the most of it by setting limits for yourself. There are several possibilities for you to explore:
- Time limit. Set a timer for 30 minutes or less and start writing. Don’t go back to edit typos or mistakes. Just write as much as possible within the time limit. You will be surprised by how much you can achieve in under half an hour.
- Word count limit. Write a passage for your essay, then try retelling the same message in twice as few words. Go through several rounds of summarizations until you can squeeze the whole paragraph into one sentence. This technique can help you make your story richer and more dynamic.
- Part of speech limit. Go without adjectives or adverbs or both. Either can be valuable when writing a story, but an overabundance can make your story unreadable. So try going without adverbs or adjectives, and you can always add them later.
- Rhythm limit. Make sure no two consecutive sentences are the same length. Instead, alternate long, medium, and short sentences to give a lively rhythm to your writing. You can mix up the rhythm by changing the number of short, medium, and long sentences in a sequence.
Raise Your Voice
There are many differences between your creative writing paper and other college assignments. For example, most essays call for a formal writing style, rigid formatting, and a host of references to support your arguments. Creative writing doesn’t need any of that. Instead, it highlights your personality, brings out the feelings, and may allow for formatting frivolities.
Considering you’re supposed to write in the first person, using the formal writing style would make you sound stilted and unnatural. Instead, try writing the way you talk, emphasizing your tone of voice. If you’re a joker, don’t be afraid to bring out irony and sarcasm; just do it tastefully. If you like lists, go for it. And if you like sports metaphors, no one’s stopping you from using as many as you like, as long as your essay remains understandable to people who aren’t as into sports as you are.
Know Your Reader
This trick is extra important if you’re writing a college admission or a scholarship essay. In both cases, you need to research the organization and use your newfound knowledge to your advantage.
For example, if a scholarship sponsor values leadership skills, you want to include at least a smidge of leadership experience into your story. It shouldn’t be a blatant attempt to butter up the reader but a subtle hint that you’ve done your homework. The same applies to college applications, as most schools have a clear portrait of an ideal applicant, and you want to be as close to that image as possible to increase your chances of successful admission.
Plan for Post-writing
As you’ve probably noticed, most of the tricks we suggest don’t work if you plan on submitting your first draft. And that’s never a good idea. Instead, leave your creative piece alone for a day or two and come back with fresh eyes and mind to look over the essay. Ideally, you want your post-writing routine to take as long as your writing does. So if you write an essay in eight hours, you should spend eight hours editing and proofreading. Of course, that’s not realistic, so set aside at least a couple of hours and go from there.
First, make sure your writing exercises did not make it to the final draft. Then, delete redundancies, repetitions, and anything that stands out too much from the flow of the paper. Switch to proofreading only when you are happy with the contents of the essay. Finally, wrap up with a quick formatting session. It shouldn’t take too long, as creative papers don’t call for many references, unlike academic essays on creativity.
Take Risks
Creative writing is about breaking the rules and experimenting, so don’t be afraid to bend the norms and try something new. Even if your readers don’t appreciate your boldness, your writing will only become better for it. Use this assignment to push yourself beyond the standard five-paragraph essay, and you won’t regret it. And if you need help, you know where to find it, any time of day or night.
How to Write About Yourself in an Essay
The academic reality of today makes every student learn more about personal essay writing. Regardless of the essay’s purpose and type, it is crucial for an applicant, a current student, or a graduate to know how to show their best achievements yet without praising themselves too much. That’s the balance you surely should maintain to write an essay about yourself well.
Newbie alert: although the task to describe and discuss the experience and achievements you’ve got frequently looks like an easy deal, in most cases, things are not that simple. One should consider the varieties of guidelines and writing manners depending on the purposes that a particular paper has to correlate with.
Check the professional guide below to find out more about writing a personal essay. Here, you will get expert explanations on paper types, features, points to pay attention to, and tips to write them all well or even excellently. Regardless of the type, patience, attention, and thoroughness are key to success in personal essay writing.
Essay About Yourself: What’s That?
That type of academic paper is called to serve as a showcase of your most remarkable experience that is required to demonstrate or just seems worth being shared. Such essays are built around one’s challenge, event, or a life situation that affected the life of the paper’s author. Consequently, it is a first-person story.
Mostly, they will ask you to come up with an essay about yourself to describe and prove your main skills, personal qualities, ability to learn new things and reflect on past experience, and, of course, greatest achievements. Still, the purpose of every personal essay depends on the circumstances and organizations making you write it.
Before we proceed with more details on personal paper writing, you should know one more thing. In 2021, it is possible to get professional assistance with any kind of academic assignment for students. It does not matter if you are studying in high school, college, or university. Even if you are a postgraduate student or a qualified professional looking for your next job, pro writers can craft truly customized writings for you at any time of day and night.
Now, let’s move up. It’s time to find out more details on writing an essay about oneself.
How to Talk about Yourself in an Essay: Personal Writing Purpose
We’ll begin with the very basic aspect of every academic paper. The goal an essay is called to help you achieve is the turning point that determines how you are going to write it. What is the purpose of an essay about yourself?
Actually, there are some of the goals. The most frequent one is when you feel the need (or your professor asks you) to tell about a remarkable, special event that happened to you in some period of your life, or about a person that impressed you with their behavior, wisdom, lifestyle, or a lesson they taught you.
You’ll usually be asked to complete a personal essay to back up your resume while applying for a new job. Students usually need to invest much time to compose a high-quality well-processed personal essay when applying to some college or university to increase their chance of getting an invitation letter. Both purposes just mentioned have one thing in common: they make papers serve as perfect handmade tools to make you stand out from the crowd of your competitors.
Personal Essay Types: Defined by Things to Write About Myself
Regarding the paper’s purpose, a personal essay should have the writing manner and tone adjusted according to the circumstances. The two most frequent types of this paper that the student may face at some stage of their academic career are:
- a cover letter;
- a high school personal essay.
Let’s take a closer look at each of them to find out more about the difference between the two. When you understand the features of each type, it will be easier for you to avoid confusion. As a result, you’ll be able to craft worthy papers that suit their purpose perfectly.
Cover Letter
The first writing about yourself example paper is a cover letter. Its other name is the one you know for sure – admission essay. What’s that?
A cover letter that a student has to compose is a formal paper called to introduce a student to the committee officials when applying for college admission, scholarship, internship, exchange program, etc. There, you reveal some additional info about your personality, goals, past achievements, and values.
Many employers also want job candidates to provide cover letters as their vacancy feedback. The function of that paper remains the same as above.
High School Personal Essay
Another personal paper writing assignment can be a part of your studying program at college or high school. The goal of this essay is to show the student’s personality. While composing it to reflect your valuable experience or some impressive event, you can make several steps aside from usual academic assignment formalities and go in for some storytelling tricks and humor.
It is vital to know the difference between the two essay types just described. Regarding the kind, you come up with a suitable writing manner, mood, and tone. You’ll also choose suitable literary devices, facts, topics to discuss, etc. Most probably, you wouldn’t like the final draft of your paper to look too informal and funny if it is aimed to bring you a scholarship place in the college of your dream.
Okay, we dealt with the kinds of personal essays and their features. Now, let’s discuss two separate guidelines. One is for cover letters, and the other one shows how to write an essay about yourself as an academic assignment.
Cover Letter: How to Compose It Well
Before you start thinking about how to start a letter about yourself that should be as effective as possible, please, check these short tips by professionals. Writers who composed them are the experienced admission committee members, so they know what the educational officials and business employers want to see in cover letters.
So, how to craft a worthy cover letter? There are seven steps to consider.
Divide and Rule
It does not matter if you are writing a cover letter for a college application, scholarship, internship, or job vacancy here. Most probably, they’ll provide you with the main question (or a list of them) to answer there. In case there is a list, then your plan is already known. If that is a single question, then professionals surely recommend dividing it into several narrower topic elements. That is how you come up with a basic outline and find out the direction to go before writing.
Outline is Essential
Our experts always recommend perceiving an outline as a skeleton of one’s essay, regardless of the paper’s type. Just like the muscles of human bodies need bones to have something to rely on, a student needs a thoroughly composed and thought-out outline to have solid ground while writing their paper. That’s how you stay on track with the paragraphs, concepts, and proofs you provide in your writing and keep them all connected with the use of clearly understandable logical chains.
Focus on Education or Job Experience
When the paper is called to determine whether or not you are going to get a place in the college of your dream or a new job, being topic-driven is vital. There is no point in devoting the main part of an essay to describe your childhood or musical hobbies when your goal is, for instance, to get a scholarship.
It should be the showcase of your educational achievements, insights, paths chosen consciously or randomly, experiences gained during the process, etc. In case it was a particular person or event that made you choose the faculty or the school you are applying to, it makes sense to come up with a paragraph containing your reflections on that past episode or person. In this case, it’s valuable information. However, stay cautious, and try not to overuse reflections and narrative techniques here.
Capture Their Attention
Yes, while writing an essay about yourself, you should make the main impact on your skills and the best achievements you’ve got. However, this does not mean you should start your essay with something too general and pointless. Use the cover letter intro to hook the admission committee members’ attention at once. The best way to go here is to come up with statistical data, numbers, or uncommon, intriguing facts. It is also possible to begin your writing with a challenging question you are going to answer in the final part of the paper.
Ambitions and Purposes
In case it’s a cover letter to become a part of your college or scholarship application, don’t be too shy to demonstrate the skills and talents you’ve got, along with the studying and career purposes you’ve got so far. The admission committee members want to see why you are a good choice for their college, so share what you can contribute to their local academic community in particular and the chosen field of study in general.
Formatting Matters
No, seriously. It matters a lot. Find out all you can about the requirements and recommendations about the cover letter writing from the chosen school or organization and stick to them strictly. Organize and structure that essay as they want to demonstrate your ability to find, process, and use the required information successfully. And, of course, it will be another mark of your sincere interest in the school or company.
Check It Twice
The fact that you finished writing doesn’t mean you can instantly send the paper to its recipient. It’s because it’s not complete yet.
Distract from the document, and spend some time resting or doing other critical things. Then, read the essay again attentively to notice and fix potential typos, grammar mistakes, orthography errors, etc. Don’t be too lazy or shy to use the specialized software applications to help you here. Also, ask your friend or two to read the paper through and offer some ideas about improving or fixing it. That effort will pay off for sure.
Personal Essay Writing Recommendations
Now we are switching to the next personal essay type. How to start a paper about yourself in college? That’s easier than you might suppose. Though, as we mentioned above already, this essay has significant features making it stand apart from cover letters. Here they are.
Come Up With Something Worth a Story
A college essay about yourself should mostly be built around some exceptional event that affected your personality, lifestyle, goals, behavior, etc. Additionally, a personal college essay is about moving from a single case to a general concept. It is a good idea to use a challenge, a failure, a particular lessor, or an achievement success story as the core of your writing here.
Truth Is the Key
When thinking about how to write a paragraph about yourself, you should not forget that a person going to read your paper is, most probably, your high school teacher or college professor. That means they want to know more about a life episode that actually happened to you. As a result, there is no place for fiction or fantasy.
Be Straightforward
A well-written essay about yourself does not work as a list of achievements or a thread for self-promotion. It is focused on a particular episode, challenge, or event at a time. So, avoid trying to connect topics that are too distant. Keep up with the single, straightforward storyline.
Don’t Go Too Private and Sensitive
Make sure that the experience you are going to describe won’t be the reason for your professor or groupmates to feel uncomfortable. Issues connected to politics, races, religions, genders, any type of abuse, and so on are not to be shown here. You better go in for something more common, even when your goal is to describe a challenging moment of your past.
Check This One, Too
Just like the previous type of personal essay, a college one should be carefully proofread and edited. Frequently, students are too lazy to perform editing thoroughly, and that is the most common reason for an excellently crafted essay to bring them lower grades. Be attentive until the very last moment, don’t let a simple grammar error or typo spoil your academic performance.
Afterword
Now you know how to craft a worthy essay about yourself perfectly. That type of academic paper wants you to understand its purpose, use the first-person semi-formal style, and keep up with the required structure.
Once again, if you are not confident enough about your ability to craft an essay about yourself well, or you feel there is no way for you to finish it on time, just ask the pros for help. They are always online and waiting for the chance to take care of your college grades.