How do you know whether your personal essay will stand out?

An important acid test for your personal essay is whether or not it’s memorable. In other words, can the reader tell you what your essay was about after having read it once? This is a tall order which is very different from the way you write your resume.

When reading your resume, you expect the reader will find what s/he is looking for, skimming for predefined keywords and topics, in well know categories. The resume reader is looking for structured information that follows a pattern. This information includes specific and familiar skills, years of experience, positions similar to the one you are applying for, and educations that fit a profile. The reader reads your resume with this checklist in mind, attempting to mark a critical mass of matching items as possible. To satisfy a resume reader you obviously want to cram as much experience onto the page as possible.

Can you imagine a resume reader who simply reads resumes without a template they are trying to fill? Can you imagine a reader who is not familiar with your professional field reading your resume and remembering what you have done and what you know? Well, that’s exactly the way you should think about the reader of your personal essay. All you are allowed to assume is that they are intelligent human beings who love good stories that provoke thought and stir emotions.

Your personal essay is a very different type of writing. The reader is looking for something that s/he has never seen before. The more unique it is, the better. The trap to avoid is assuming that the more experiences you put on the page the more unique and impactful the essay becomes. This is a flawed assumption because such writing will only resonate with the reader for the duration of short-term memory. By the time the reader is finished with a paragraph the chances are they will not remember what the previous one was about. Think that every experience you add erases the previous from the reader’s memory.

People love stories and hate lists. Your challenge is to write a very short story that the reader will remember after s/he is done reading it, and for a long time to come. In practice, you can ask yourself whether you expect the reader to remember your story after s/he has read five others. If you’re not sure, then you have not told a memorable story.