How to write my life story essay

This article was co-authored by Alicia Cook. Alicia Cook is a Professional Writer based in Newark, New Jersey. With over 12 years of experience, Alicia specializes in poetry and uses her platform to advocate for families affected by addiction and to fight for breaking the stigma against addiction and mental illness. She holds a BA in English and Journalism from Georgian Court University and an MBA from Saint Peter’s University. Alicia is a bestselling poet with Andrews McMeel Publishing and her work has been featured in numerous media outlets including the NY Post, CNN, USA Today, the HuffPost, the LA Times, American Songwriter Magazine, and Bustle. She was named by Teen Vogue as one of the 10 social media poets to know and her poetry mixtape, “Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately” was a finalist in the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards.

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Last week I wrote two posts related to memoir, 10 Ways to Use Life Story in Nonfiction Writing and How to Use Life Story or Personal Experience in Articles. Today, I’d like to add to these with a post about how to use life story and personal experience in essay. For the memoirist, it makes total sense to branch off into personal essay since this form lends itself well to anecdote and vignette.

Essays tend to be short pieces written from an author’s personal point of view about a subject.  While many types of essays exist,  the personal essay offers those who like to write about life story and personal experience a chance to describe and expound upon these things.  Indeed, they can also analyze their experiences and offer information from their own lives that might prove useful to others in a much more artistic manner than an article allows. However, unlike memoirs, essays tend not to read like fiction, although they can contain dialogue.

Basic Personal Essay Format

I like to write personal essays in a three-part or four-part format. Begin with an anecdote or vignette. Set the stage. Describe a scene. Depict an issue with which you are struggling. Tell a story.

Next, explain why that experience or story was important to you. How did it impact you. Are you still struggling with that particular experience? What did you learn. How did you deal with it? How did it change you?

Now, can you discuss why the experience might be important for your reader? How can your life story and experience relate to them? What can they glean from it? How can they put your lessons to use in their lives?

Last, take the subject broader than just you or your reader. Find a universal lesson or principle you can discuss. End with a paragraph or two that makes your story appeal to more people or makes it relevant to anyone anywhere. Or tell another story that drives this point home…or that simply drives your

You know yourself better than anyone else, but writing about yourself can still be tough! When applying for scholarships or to college, essay prompts  can feel so general (and yet so specific!) that they leave us stumped.  So we’ll show you 8 tips to write an essay about yourself, so that you can land more scholarships. (Psst – Going Merry makes applying easy.)

Let’s start with some examples of personal essay prompts:

• Tell me about yourself.
• Describe a challenge or event that made you who you are today.
• What are your short and long-term goals, and how do you plan to achieve them?
• Write about a time you failed at something. How did it affect you?

These are just a few of many scholarship essay prompts that require you to look internally, to answer a question, solve a problem, or explain a scenario in your life.  

We get it. You might not be a big fan of bragging about yourself, or you might want to keep your personal stories to yourself. But by opening up and sharing your story, you can show scholarship providers, colleges and universities who you are, and why you’re deserving of their scholarship.

(Don’t just take our word for it – check out our scholarship winners page full of students like you who were brave enough to share their stories with us).

To get started, check out these 9 tips on how to write an essay about yourself:

1. Create a List of Questions

After reading through the scholarship essay prompt, breathe, and make a list of smaller questions you can answer, which relate to the big essay prompt question. 

Let’s say the main essay prompt question asks you, “What were challenges or barriers you had to work to overcome?” Then the smaller questions might be something like:

• What is your background? Family, finances, school.
• What was challenging about that background?
• What’s your greatest accomplishment? How did you get there? How have previous challenges influenced your goals?

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Aspiring autobiographers often email us asking, 'How can I write my own personal story?' or 'How can I craft a compelling narrative?' It can seem like a daunting task writing and researching your life experiences.

It can be a challenging writing project, but a valuable and creative one. It's a chance to organise the narrative arc of your life, key impactful moments in your life, reappraise where you've been and where you're going. You'll also see what life lessons you have experienced and can share that with readers. It can be a rewarding creative writing project. 

There are several book genres to consider when writing a life story: autobiography (a whole sweep of a life), memoir (which tends to focus on a theme, or a particular time in one's history), or an essay collection. 

Try these seven life writing tips to start:

1. Decide whether you'll write non-fiction or fictionalize

There are many ways to approach life writing. You could follow a non-fiction approach and set down dates, facts and memories as close to events as they occurred as possible.

Another option is to fictionalize and blur the line between fact and fiction. This approach to life writing may be useful if you want to:

• Protect your identity or those of others while writing about trauma or difficult subject matter
• Experiment with elements of fiction and a playful approach even if you are wanting to write it as a nonfiction book of real-life events. 

Hedi Lampert, one of our writing coaches, takes this approach in her fictionalized memoir, My Life with my Aunt. Although it's based on a true story, there are many fictionalised elements in it.

Although you might go with a non-fiction approach, add all the elements of fiction that you need to. For example, include strong characters (build them up in the reader's mind), flesh out the supporting cast, include description, use the five senses as much as possible, include dialogue, and so on.

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