2.1 - HOW TO BRAINSTORM A NARRATIVE ESSAY (optional)
| This lesson covers... | six questions (with an optional seventh question) that can help you map out your entire personal statement… in about 20 minutes. |
| By the end you should... | feel ready to start a draft. |
| Time | 15-20 minutes |
| College Essay Essentials | paperback: pages 121-130 | ebook: pages 118-136 |
(Note: this module is labeled “optional” because many students either haven’t faced significant challenges in their lives, or have, but don’t want to write about them for their college essay. If you’re one of these students, we’d recommend exploring the montage approach.)
This is one of the most effective exercises I’ve ever come across.
All you need is a blank sheet of paper and a pen.
My advice: take your time with this exercise, pausing the video when you need to.
Some basic notes on how to guide this exercise:
1. I like to request silence from students for this one. This allows students to be fully in their own thoughts without getting distracted by others’. I usually say something like, “I’d like to request silence for this exercise—it’ll allow the exercise to better work its magic.”
2. I’ll sometimes let this go longer than 20 minutes, especially if students are really writing. And I’ve found that if each of the questions (for each column) have been clearly expressed, the right environment has been created, and students are given time to write, they’ll write.
3. If watching via video, encourage students to pause the video when needed. If leading it yourself, spend 3-5 minutes on each blank. Their papers should be pretty full by the time the exercise is through.
4. Once it’s done, it’ll be time for a break.
How to Outline a Narrative Essay
The Narrative Essay / Feelings and Needs Exercise
In College Essay Essentials: pages 121-130 - paperback | pages 118-136 - e-book
The gist: I believe there are six questions (with an optional seventh question) that, if asked in the right order, in the right environment, and with the right timing can totally unlock an essay for a student. Why? I see it happen each year with this exercise.
Four Different Uses for the Feelings and Needs Exercise:
1. This exercise can help students see certain events in their lives as being essay-worthy. Typically, students do not see life events as being “essay worthy” for one of two reasons.
Either they see certain events as being a.) not important enough to write an essay about or b.) the events feel too personal to write about.
For students who feel their experience is “not important enough,” this exercise can in some cases help students see that an event actually affected them in ways that were profound and far-reaching.
For students concerned that an event is too personal, in some cases students have yet to process the challenges they experienced, or the experiences are connected primarily to shame, sadness, anger or regret. A student might wonder: Why would anyone want to put forth such an image to an admissions committee? But what students can learn through this exercise (and the larger process of writing their personal statement), is that a.) it is possible through this experience to process and learn from their experience, and b.) they have already done some processing of their experience (perhaps more than they know), and in almost every case c.) they have even become more creative and resourceful in their efforts to get their needs met. Put another way, this exercise offers students an opportunity to reframe their experiences and construct for themselves a new narrative. (For more on this technique in therapeutic practice, check out the book Narrative Therapy: Responding to Your Questions, by Shona Russell and Maggie Carey, which you can find at this link. If it’s sold out, there are many great books written on narrative therapy.)
2. I’ve found no more efficient way to help students who have undergone challenges outline an essay fast. In fact, this is my go-to exercise if I just have 15 minutes with a student. But not only that...
3. I’ve found no better single exercise for helping students identify a topic that feels deep and true to who they are.
Quick example: Two years ago I was meeting with a series of students one-on-one at a public high school in 15-minute speed sessions to review essay drafts. After reading one of the student’s drafts aloud (I like students to hear their essays aloud), the student said she felt her topic was a bit superficial. I asked if she’d be willing to brainstorm another possible idea and she said they would, so I led her through the Feelings and Needs exercise. Once we’d finished the exercise, she had an essay mapped out. She told me, “Wow, that’s not at all what I was thinking I’d write about, but, yeah, this feels a lot deeper.” I led five more students through the exercise that day and it worked each time, and each story was different.
One student told me, “I’ve never really talked to anyone about this.” This brings me to the third (and arguably most important) use:
4. This exercise equips students (and counselors) with a tool for processing other difficult experiences in their lives. Students and counselors have both told me this exercise “feels like therapy.” And with good reason. We’re asking deep and difficult questions and providing students the opportunity to process the effects of those events on their lives.
This requires us, the question-askers, to be brave. There will be plenty of reasons to not get too deep, or too personal. And that’s likely to lead to essays that aren’t too deep, too personal—that are, in a word, safe. So here are...
A Half Dozen Tips for Leading This Exercise:
1. Be brave with your questions. Don’t let your students (or yourself!) off the hook. What do I mean? It can feel vulnerable for you, the counselor, to ask a student, “How did that experience make you feel?” especially if the students’ challenge was particularly harrowing. Rest assured, though, that even though in some cases we are asking students to remember unhappy experiences from their past, we are following up with questions that will lead them out of the darkness, and lead them to make connections that in some cases they haven’t made until the workshop. These revelations can be life-changing.
Quick example: I led this exercise with a group at a public HS and afterwards asked, “Anyone make any realizations?” With wide eyes, one student nodded slowly. “Care to share with the group?” I asked. She shook her head slowly, eyes still wide. “No problem,” I said. I found out later, in private, that she’d realized an important truth about her relationship with her father. “That just blew my mind,” she said.
2. Use paper and pen. When possible, I highly recommend having students write on a blank sheet of paper (not, in other words, on a computer screen) because near the end of the exercise I ask students to draw arrows connecting different elements to one another and it’s a lot easier to do so on paper.
3. Don’t let students sit out of this one. Some students may believe that they haven’t been through any “real” challenges. It’s still useful for students to explore this exercise, even if montage may offer a better approach for them, as the exercise pushes students to practice reflection. It may take them a few minutes to find a challenge, or what I call a “big experience,” but I encourage students to try and write *something* down. Most students report being grateful they participated anyway.
4. During the “Challenges” portion, encourage them to be brave. I do this by saying, “If a challenge occurs to you but it feels too personal or not essay-worthy, consider writing it down anyway, just for the sake of the exercise.”
5. Take your time. Life-changing realizations can happen in an instant, but students often need a few minutes to process them. So pause for a few minutes on each column. I’ve actually found that the more time I take with this the better the exercise goes—which is to say, the more they write and the richer the post-exercise conversations tend to be.
6. Once the exercise is over, I’ll often ask my students, “Raise your hand if you’ve identified a story you could potentially write about.” Pause, they do. Then I ask, “Does this feel like your story?” This second question is an especially good one because it builds confidence in their ability to get started on a draft based on the outline they’ve created… and I can’t tell you how important that is for some students. Sometimes what holds a student back from getting started is the sense that this may/may not be The Perfect Topic. But here’s the thing: there is no Perfect Topic. The key is to get started with a Very Good Topic and see if it works. I can’t tell you how many “perfect topics” didn’t pan out once the student started writing. To reiterate, though (because it’s an important point), asking “Does this feel like your story?” at the end of this exercise can give them the confidence and push they need to get started on a draft using a Very Good Topic.
If you haven’t already, watch me lead the exercise in the video above. That’ll help contextualize these notes.
Important notes:
There is a moment toward the end of the exercise when I ask students to turn their paper sideways so they can see that the columns can become an outline for their essay. For students who have been through challenges, this moment can come as a revelation—I have a story!—and this moment has drawn “oohs,” a round of applause, and one student even said, “It’s a magic trick!” Call it what you will, but this has proven to be an important moment in the workshop, as it can help a student see a path toward a first draft, so I encourage you to keep this “paper-turning” moment in your workshop.
Although the 2-hr or 3-hr versions of the workshop won’t allow time to go further, you’ll find the more detailed version of how to write Narrative essays in College Essay Essentials (pages 121-130 in paperback, pages 118-136 in ebook) or lesson 2 of my How to Write a Personal Statement course
It’s important to note, however, that most students who have been through challenges will be able to take the results of this exercise and write a first draft.
For students who have not experienced challenges, tell them to hold tight—the next exercise is for them.
1. I like to request silence from students for this one. This allows students to be fully in their own thoughts without getting distracted by others’. I usually say something like, “I’d like to request silence for this exercise—it’ll allow the exercise to better work its magic.”
2. I’ll sometimes let this go longer than 20 minutes, especially if students are really writing. And I’ve found that if each of the questions (for each column) have been clearly expressed, the right environment has been created, and students are given time to write, they’ll write.
3. If watching via video, encourage students to pause the video when needed. If leading it yourself, spend 3-5 minutes on each blank. Their papers should be pretty full by the time the exercise is through.
4. Once it’s done, it’ll be time for a break.
How to Outline a Narrative Essay
The Narrative Essay / Feelings and Needs Exercise
In College Essay Essentials: pages 121-130 - paperback | pages 118-136 - e-book
The gist: I believe there are six questions (with an optional seventh question) that, if asked in the right order, in the right environment, and with the right timing can totally unlock an essay for a student. Why? I see it happen each year with this exercise.
Four Different Uses for the Feelings and Needs Exercise:
1. This exercise can help students see certain events in their lives as being essay-worthy. Typically, students do not see life events as being “essay worthy” for one of two reasons.
Either they see certain events as being a.) not important enough to write an essay about or b.) the events feel too personal to write about.
For students who feel their experience is “not important enough,” this exercise can in some cases help students see that an event actually affected them in ways that were profound and far-reaching.
For students concerned that an event is too personal, in some cases students have yet to process the challenges they experienced, or the experiences are connected primarily to shame, sadness, anger or regret. A student might wonder: Why would anyone want to put forth such an image to an admissions committee? But what students can learn through this exercise (and the larger process of writing their personal statement), is that a.) it is possible through this experience to process and learn from their experience, and b.) they have already done some processing of their experience (perhaps more than they know), and in almost every case c.) they have even become more creative and resourceful in their efforts to get their needs met. Put another way, this exercise offers students an opportunity to reframe their experiences and construct for themselves a new narrative. (For more on this technique in therapeutic practice, check out the book Narrative Therapy: Responding to Your Questions, by Shona Russell and Maggie Carey, which you can find at this link. If it’s sold out, there are many great books written on narrative therapy.)
2. I’ve found no more efficient way to help students who have undergone challenges outline an essay fast. In fact, this is my go-to exercise if I just have 15 minutes with a student. But not only that...
3. I’ve found no better single exercise for helping students identify a topic that feels deep and true to who they are.
Quick example: Two years ago I was meeting with a series of students one-on-one at a public high school in 15-minute speed sessions to review essay drafts. After reading one of the student’s drafts aloud (I like students to hear their essays aloud), the student said she felt her topic was a bit superficial. I asked if she’d be willing to brainstorm another possible idea and she said they would, so I led her through the Feelings and Needs exercise. Once we’d finished the exercise, she had an essay mapped out. She told me, “Wow, that’s not at all what I was thinking I’d write about, but, yeah, this feels a lot deeper.” I led five more students through the exercise that day and it worked each time, and each story was different.
One student told me, “I’ve never really talked to anyone about this.” This brings me to the third (and arguably most important) use:
4. This exercise equips students (and counselors) with a tool for processing other difficult experiences in their lives. Students and counselors have both told me this exercise “feels like therapy.” And with good reason. We’re asking deep and difficult questions and providing students the opportunity to process the effects of those events on their lives.
This requires us, the question-askers, to be brave. There will be plenty of reasons to not get too deep, or too personal. And that’s likely to lead to essays that aren’t too deep, too personal—that are, in a word, safe. So here are...
A Half Dozen Tips for Leading This Exercise:
1. Be brave with your questions. Don’t let your students (or yourself!) off the hook. What do I mean? It can feel vulnerable for you, the counselor, to ask a student, “How did that experience make you feel?” especially if the students’ challenge was particularly harrowing. Rest assured, though, that even though in some cases we are asking students to remember unhappy experiences from their past, we are following up with questions that will lead them out of the darkness, and lead them to make connections that in some cases they haven’t made until the workshop. These revelations can be life-changing.
Quick example: I led this exercise with a group at a public HS and afterwards asked, “Anyone make any realizations?” With wide eyes, one student nodded slowly. “Care to share with the group?” I asked. She shook her head slowly, eyes still wide. “No problem,” I said. I found out later, in private, that she’d realized an important truth about her relationship with her father. “That just blew my mind,” she said.
2. Use paper and pen. When possible, I highly recommend having students write on a blank sheet of paper (not, in other words, on a computer screen) because near the end of the exercise I ask students to draw arrows connecting different elements to one another and it’s a lot easier to do so on paper.
3. Don’t let students sit out of this one. Some students may believe that they haven’t been through any “real” challenges. It’s still useful for students to explore this exercise, even if montage may offer a better approach for them, as the exercise pushes students to practice reflection. It may take them a few minutes to find a challenge, or what I call a “big experience,” but I encourage students to try and write *something* down. Most students report being grateful they participated anyway.
4. During the “Challenges” portion, encourage them to be brave. I do this by saying, “If a challenge occurs to you but it feels too personal or not essay-worthy, consider writing it down anyway, just for the sake of the exercise.”
5. Take your time. Life-changing realizations can happen in an instant, but students often need a few minutes to process them. So pause for a few minutes on each column. I’ve actually found that the more time I take with this the better the exercise goes—which is to say, the more they write and the richer the post-exercise conversations tend to be.
6. Once the exercise is over, I’ll often ask my students, “Raise your hand if you’ve identified a story you could potentially write about.” Pause, they do. Then I ask, “Does this feel like your story?” This second question is an especially good one because it builds confidence in their ability to get started on a draft based on the outline they’ve created… and I can’t tell you how important that is for some students. Sometimes what holds a student back from getting started is the sense that this may/may not be The Perfect Topic. But here’s the thing: there is no Perfect Topic. The key is to get started with a Very Good Topic and see if it works. I can’t tell you how many “perfect topics” didn’t pan out once the student started writing. To reiterate, though (because it’s an important point), asking “Does this feel like your story?” at the end of this exercise can give them the confidence and push they need to get started on a draft using a Very Good Topic.
If you haven’t already, watch me lead the exercise in the video above. That’ll help contextualize these notes.
Important notes:
There is a moment toward the end of the exercise when I ask students to turn their paper sideways so they can see that the columns can become an outline for their essay. For students who have been through challenges, this moment can come as a revelation—I have a story!—and this moment has drawn “oohs,” a round of applause, and one student even said, “It’s a magic trick!” Call it what you will, but this has proven to be an important moment in the workshop, as it can help a student see a path toward a first draft, so I encourage you to keep this “paper-turning” moment in your workshop.
Although the 2-hr or 3-hr versions of the workshop won’t allow time to go further, you’ll find the more detailed version of how to write Narrative essays in College Essay Essentials (pages 121-130 in paperback, pages 118-136 in ebook) or lesson 2 of my How to Write a Personal Statement course
It’s important to note, however, that most students who have been through challenges will be able to take the results of this exercise and write a first draft.
For students who have not experienced challenges, tell them to hold tight—the next exercise is for them.
