Thing Essay

Your essay should center on a thing. What that ultimately means will depend greatly on the genre you choose to write in. If you’re writing a memoir, you will likely write in a more reflective tone, and try to give your audience a sense of why a particular thing means what it does to you (and by extension how they might recollect about the things in their lives). If you’re writing a journalistic or academic piece, you will want to think about how to incorporate research and likely some theoretical perspective. In other words, the genre you select is going to go a long way in terms of helping you make certain writing decisions.

With that said, I’ll be expecting pieces that are consistent with most of the features of your chosen genre, that demonstrate a clear focus on a place, that have a voice and style of their own, and that try to say something meaningful, interesting, noteworthy, and/or entertaining to a particular audience. You should, in other words, write something that shows you’ve made choices about your topic, your genre, your writing, and your audience.