The personal essay is a broad category. Our writing styles and the way we present ourselves vary widely depending on the piece’s intended purpose. For example, my goals are very different in a personal statement for an MFA application and a creative essay I might submit to a literary magazine. As a wise poet once said, I contain multitudes. Still, there is one thing you should strive for in any personal essay: a killer first line.
Many of you have likely heard that strong essays always have a “hook” – the line that propels readers forward and makes them excited to keep going. It’s true. Particularly when it comes to personal statements, admissions committees are reading tons of applications, so you want to grab their attention as quickly as possible.
Here are some tips for writing an engaging opening sentence:
Start in the middle
Also called in medias res – Latin for “into the middle of things” – this writing technique involves opening your essay in the middle of the action. Let’s look at an example from famed nonfiction writer John McPhee. His essay “The Search for Marvin Gardens,” about the board game Monopoly, begins: “Go. I roll the dice – a six and a two.” McPhee plops us right into the action, which creates a sense of narrative momentum and intrigue. Now the reader wants to know: what game is he playing? What are the stakes? Who is his opponent? This is a much more compelling opening than something like: “One day, I sat down to play a game of Monopoly in a competitive tournament.” This sentence feels more static and isn’t as likely to pique a reader’s interest.
Starting in medias res often means that the writer will give additional context and background information throughout the essay, rather than all at the beginning. This makes for a much more interesting and engaging structure than if you were to weigh down the early paragraphs of the essay with too much exposition.
Start with a strong image
The more specific the opening line is, the easier it will be for the reader to visualize the narrative. This helps readers to get invested in the story. A specific opening line also helps to make your essay feel like something only you could have written. You never want an opening sentence to feel generic or overly vague. A great way to be specific is to open with a unique, attention-grabbing image. We see this with the dice in the John McPhee line. Let’s look at another example, from Michelle Zauner’s memoir Crying in H Mart. It begins (as the title might suggest): “Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” Despite its short length, this line contains a ton of information that sets up the story to come. We immediately learn the personal stakes of the narrative (her mother’s passing), and we’re given a powerful and distinctive image (Zauner crying in the aisles of an Asian grocery store). This allows us to situate ourselves in the narrative while showing us that Zauner has a unique story to tell. The book focuses on Zauner’s relationship with her mother and with her Asian American identity, and she establishes these themes for us in the very first line.
Establish your voice
Your opening sentence sets the tone for the rest of the essay (literally), and you want to make clear that you have a distinct voice. The reader should feel that there is a real person behind the words. The amount of “personality” you want to infuse into the writing depends on the purpose of the essay – some require a more formal tone than others – but it’s valuable to demonstrate an individual style and a unique perspective as early as possible.
Let’s take a look at an example from another master of the form, Joan Didion. Her essay “The White Album” begins with the now-iconic first line: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” In many ways, this sentence breaks the other rules I’ve laid out (rules are only guidelines, after all). Didion doesn’t start in the middle of any action, nor does she include a specific image. So then why does it work? It’s an assertive and captivating claim, and she doesn’t qualify her ideas with “maybe,” or “I think,” or “some might say.” She cuts right to the chase: we do x in order to do y. Her voice is confident and authoritative, which makes us want to pay attention to what she has to say. Didion distills a profound, nuanced idea – storytelling as an act of survival – into a clear and straightforward sentence. From the get go, we know that Didion’s voice is direct, precise, and deceptively simple, with a dash of understated drama.
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