How to Write a Personal Essay
Joyce Maynard
Lessons
Class Introduction
15:43 2A Short Story About a Big Idea
04:09 3What Do You Want to Write About?
08:54 4Look What You Can Do with 806 Words
16:09 5Stories of Change
05:26 6Big Ideas to Small Stories
06:34 7When You Have Too Many Stories
27:42 8Writing About Loss & Exploring Secrets
09:001 Story 5 Ways
04:49 10Deconstructing an Example Essay
11:55 11The Importance of Language
29:07 12My Favorite Writing Tool
04:54 13Choose Your Words Carefully
17:14 14What's Wrong With Being Shameless?
12:51 15Handling Two Stories At One Time
29:06 16The Opening and Landing Place
12:51 17Finding the Through Story
31:38 18Picking the Story You Should Tell
28:21 19How I Write a Personal Essay
13:10 20'Letting It Fly' - Workshopping Joyce's Personal Essay
16:58 21The Privacy Question
22:10Class Description
Bundle this class with How To Write a Full-Length Memoir and save!
How many times have you read the Modern Love column in The New York Times and thought, “Wow, I wish I could write an essay like that!” If you feel you’ve got an incredible story to tell but don’t know how to transform it into a powerful piece that can win a prized spot in the Times or another major publication, this is the class for you.
Celebrated essayist and memoirist Joyce Maynard will take you on a guided journey through the process of writing a kick-ass personal essay that will get you noticed and published.
Maynard will go through the steps of figuring out your big theme, creating a strong outline, identifying the beats of your narrative and writing a compelling column. By the end of this course, you’ll not only have an amazing essay, you’ll have a whole new skill set that will make your writing the best it’s ever been.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
- Identify a single big idea and weave it through your narrative.
- Focus on a small event or moment to make your abstract theme concrete.
- Build an outline so you can structure your story and identify the beats.
- Figure out the stakes, conflict, discovery, transformation and redemption.
- Create interesting characters and understand their motives.
- Wander off course but not too far—and only for a good reason.
- Add cinematic elements to your story, including a climactic turning point.
- Write a concluding scene that emphasizes your final discovery.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Wonderful high points from this class for me: - Very generous analysis of one critical scene in At Home in the World - super gripping and a good scaffolding of how the scene works - Lovely and generous live critiques of her students’ work - first sentences shown on a projected screen. Maynard does a great job procuring from the students why the information is important, what the material means, how they can stretch themselves as writers. - Helping the students to identify a theme that runs throughout their stories is very actionable and is certainly something I took away from this class as I could see how one susses it out from an ordinary paragraph full of sequential events and other information. - The way Maynard shows how she categorized themes for her memoir The Best of Us was an excellent tactical show-and-tell. The pricepoint for the class, roughly $150, seems more than fair given the material, the rare and intimate looks Maynard offers on her own writing and the coaching she does for several writers in various stages of memoir writing. The course contains 25 live lessons — that’s just over $5/lesson with a master teacher. The added benefit of being able to rewatch the videos makes CreativeLive such an excellent venue and I am considering purchasing Maynard’s Personal Essay course next.
Kati Nagy
This was an excellent course on so many levels. Joyce's way of imparting her knowledge with such verve and humor really captivated all of us. Ii was so thrilled to work with her one-on-one and the way she helped me develop my story via her whiteboard really helped me see how I can get started on it. She is truly inspiring and I loved her insights and guidelines.
Anne Caverhill
Highly recommend this class, not only for the insights about writing and some of the technical information as to why something does or doesn’t work—but I would recommend this for anyone who loves stories. There was so much depth to the participants stories and I loved how Joyce M gently takes them apart and asks probing questions, almost like a good therapist. Well. Maybe that is what good writing is all about anyway. Facing and getting at and then writing those emotional truths as she puts it. Joyce Maynard is the queen of making that happen. Take this course.