I had the pleasure of reading twenty student essays submitted to the Northern Marianas Humanities Council for their contest about “My Marianas”–focusing on student experiences of the Marianas as home, through a core experience or memory, with sensory detail, and development of a “journey.” Wow. That was a big ask by the Humanities Council, trying to pack a lot into a 3 to 5 page essay.
Unfortunately, the responses are mostly glib, shallow, and trite. By glib, I mean they are impersonal chatter. By shallow, I mean they don’t touch on deep feelings or really core experiences. By trite, I mean they are boring, repetitive, cliché, unoriginal.
So here’s a share of the comments I wrote last time I judged. Wish students would read this and take it to heart. https://marianaswritersmovement.org/blog/5-tips-for-student-writers/
And here’s a fresh look at tips for student writers. Use these for your school essays. Refer to them when writing for contests. Check your college application essays against these. Writing can be improved! Don’t settle for easy or quick. We all have so much room for improvement.
- A good essay digs deep. It cuts. It reveals. It doesn’t just skim along the surface and pretend everything is glorious. Nearly every essay in this batch steered away from the storm, instead of heading into it. A reference to home as a “safe space” but no description of what dangers await elsewhere? A metaphorical road trip but no bumps in the road, no flat tires, no getting lost? An essay about being forced to leave home, but no explanation of why or how or when or what age or even really the negative effects.
- There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of imagery. Pretty words about what something looks like is not enough to create imagery.
- Imagery is more than descriptive phrases that paint a picture. Some students did run through the sensory storehouse, but did so as if cataloguing.
- Imagery evokes emotion. It connects mental pictures described by words with feelings captured perceptually described through connotation.
- In writing, journey means something specific. This is not a road trip, although that can become a journey. It is not a look back through time, although that also could show a journey. But the essential element of journey in narratives is growth or change of the main character or narrator or subject of the essay, story, or novel. For the personal essay: What did you believe before? Who were you? What were you like? What happened? How did it change you? Coming of age novels are novels of “journey.” Most novels show character development and journey of the character. Show your journey.
- Do students learn literary devices? The easiest—alliteration—was used most frequently, but that still was in fewer than half of the essays. Motif and repetition were popular in a few essays. There were some similes and metaphors. One student used parallelism, one time. But from the vast world of literary devices, so few were used. What happened to onomatopoeia? Or oxymorons? Or puns and satire? Assonance? Consonance?
- My two favorites from the essays this time (loved “maelstrom;” loved “kitchen consonance”):
- From essay: “Six Paddles, One Pull.” Metaphor: the idea of a storm outside, a different kind of storm inside. “I felt as if I was going to drop my paddle as the wind violently thrashed around me and my crew. A maelstrom of thoughts ran across my mind.”
- From essay: “Life Entwined with the Oceans.” Sound simile. “The clinking of pots and pans, the sizzle of the grills, and the rhythmic chopping of ingredients create a harmonious medley of kitchen consonance.”
- Vocabulary counts. Most of the essays used a fair mix of vocabulary and some demonstrated greater facility with it than others. Some used colloquialisms and dialect, usually Chamorro words. Generally speaking, use of vocabulary was one of the stronger points of the essays. This is a great improvement over the last essay contest I judged. So, yay! Words matter. Stories matter!
- Grammar rules! Too many phrases posing as sentences. (Did you notice how I did that? It was intentional!) At times, when done intentionally, phrases instead of sentences work in the informal essay style. But at other times, it seems the student doesn’t know what a sentence is. Other grammar issues included mixing past and present tense not using paragraphs, and having unclear antecedents when using pronouns.
- An essay (story, novel, chronicle, etc.) needs details. The student essays made references to flowers, animals, fish, trees—without identifying them. If a specific type of flower or tree was mentioned, it often had no further detail than just the name. A few key details are all that is needed. But many of the essays were long, run-on paragraphs of vague or general description with talk of lush greenery and the sound of waves and glowing sun (rises, sets, skies). We got the aroma of bbq over and over, but so much so it was cliché. Details need to be interesting, beyond the travel brochure picture of tropical islands.