Person Essay

Your essay should center on a person. What that ultimately means will depend greatly on the genre you choose to write in. If you’re writing a piece of feature journalism on a person (usually called a “profile feature” – for instance, this article from the Guardian), you’ll need to discuss their history, likely interview them, contextualize them, etc., so you’ll be writing about events as much as you’re writing about the person. If you’re writing about yourself in a memoir format (like this piece from Narratively) you will end up talking about events in your life to fill in certain characteristics about yourself. 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 person, that have a voice and style of their own, and that try to say something meaningful, interesting, noteworthy, 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.