Module 2 lecture: Getting a draft. Presented by Ayaan Bhatia.

GETTING A DRAFT

Hi everyone, so as of today we are planning on moving from planning your essay to actually getting a draft onto the page. The goal here is not to leave with the perfect personal statement that is miles away as of right now. The goal here is to understand the mechanics of making a personal essay feel like a story and use those mechanics to produce something which is complete enough to revise. So this distinction matters because students often spend hours and hours polishing an opening before they know what the essay is actually about and by the end of this session I want you to have the architecture of the whole piece, you know, what changes, what drives it, the shape it takes, where the scene goes, how it ends, how it opens.

THE CHANGE OF MIND

So the first thing I would want to talk to you about is the change of mind and that's the very first idea which is relevant to writing your Common App essay. So the module makes a simple but important distinction. A topic is not your story. A topic is an event, you know, it could be a hike, a job, a competition, moving abroad, changing your school, falling sick, anything on those lines. A story, however, is the change in understanding produced by that event. So admissions readers see the same broad topics constantly. They would have read thousands of essays on, you know, winning a sports competition or getting over an injury. But what distinguishes an essay is the mind they get to watch changing. You know, the personality traits, they see you as a person develop. The change in demeanor, the change in personality, which, you know, eventually produced a better person or a better version of yourself, which is, again, the main goal or the main thing you want to showcase for admissions officers to see.

So it's important to understand that the situation is not exactly your story. And before drafting, you should always separate the two. The situation is the plain plot, you know, what literally happened. The story, on the other hand, is internal. You know, what did you believe before this? What became harder to believe afterward? There is a Water Break example. You know, the situation is just a hike with the writer's father. The real story, on the other hand, is the writer's changing definition of manhood and vulnerability. The external event is ordinary, but the internal movement is what makes it worth reading.

And just to stress a bit more on this example, it was about how a father and son took a hike. The dad asked him for water and the son realized, you know, what, how much effort his dad has truly put into providing for him and, you know, how his understanding of his father as a person changed. So it was just a mere act of his dad asking for water. But, you know, the internal dialogue showcases a much more, a much different story, one that is so much deeper than the mere action. So again, that's how you differentiate between the situation and story. And, you know, as students, you can all think of a topic, and then you can always convert it into a before and after story sentence, which I found pretty helpful while I was writing my essay.

Moving on, it's important to avoid the lid. As the slide says, a common mistake is what the module calls a lid. And it's when we take an event and immediately put a moral on top of it. So, you know, we say the shelter taught us compassion, the loss taught us resilience, or the job taught us hard work. And the problem is that those are usually beliefs that we already approved of, you know, those are all qualities that are universally or unanimously agreed upon to be positive. Nothing here is being discovered. You know, a stronger essay is willing to begin with a belief that is incomplete, uncomfortable, or even unflattering, and then let the experience complicate it. If the material involves genuine hardship, the module also warrants against pretending everything resolved perfectly. You know, smaller, unfinished change is a lot more credible, and for the most part, what admissions officers wish to see.

THE ENGINE

Talking about the engine now, once we know what changes, or the internal dialogue that takes place, we need an engine. The difference between an anecdote and story is that in a story, somebody usually wants something and cannot easily have it. And that creates a question in the reader's mind, will the writer get what they want, or, and, you know, what will it take?

And the engine has three pieces. The first being the want, you know, what you are genuinely after. The second is the obstacle, you know, what prevented you from simply taking it, what stood in your path, or, you know, what you had to get over in order to, you know, achieve your goal or get what you wanted. And the third is the cost, you know, not necessarily what getting it, but what also, or like, if you fail to get it, or change your mind about demanding something, you know, what was the cost of this? And the cost can often be emotional, it can be guilt, embarrassment, regret, or even giving up a comforting belief. And it doesn't have to be dramatic. Small stakes can still create a compelling essay if they are real and from the heart. What I like to do before writing my essay is often write my want, my obstacle, and cost in three separate sentences. And that sort of gives you a blueprint to write your essay on. It's something handy to keep side by side as you write to, you know, structure it around that and not lose track of, you know, what you actually want to convey to your essay.

The empty room test, as the slide says, helps us identify a real want. So what a lot of you can do is just imagine for a second that nobody's watching. Would you still want that thing? Wanting to be seen as impressive, brave, independent, or a leader often depends on an audience. And that is usually a reputation, not the deeper want of you as a person. So ask what sits underneath it. Maybe you want control, or maybe you want to never need help. Or maybe you just want to prove something to yourself. You know, the private want gives the essay somewhere to go. And once you determine that through the empty room test, it's much easier to move forward.

THE SHAPE

Next is the shape, you know, the order in which the reader encounters the material. So the module recommends making a simple decision rather than inventing a complicated structure. And you can ask one question, you know, can you name the day or even the particular occasion when your understanding changed? If yes, then use a single narrative that turns. You know, stay inside one main episode and let the change happen within it. If the change was gradual, on the other hand, you should use a montage.

You know, several separated moments held together by one recurring thread. House of Dreams, for those of you who have watched it, moves through different ages inside the same book, sorry, inside the same house. The repeated house and vacuum give the memories of an order rather than making them feel like a scrapbook. So yeah, I mean, you should ask yourself, can you name the day it changed? And use that answer to choose narrative versus montage. So like I mentioned, it's important to, if you're using a montage, if you have several separate moments, they need to be held together by one recurring thread.

So the key word there is physical, you know, a montage thread cannot just be an abstract value like perseverance or ambition. It should be something the reader can see or hear. You know, maybe a vacuum, a poster, a pair of shoes, a physical object can disappear and return. An abstract value, on the other hand, can only be repeated and repetition starts to sound like a theme statement instead of structure.

THE TWO GEARS

So now we get into the drafting part itself. And personal essays use two gears, scene and summary. Scene is the camera. You know, we watch something happen in physical time. Summary is the writer at the desk. It can move across months or years quickly. And it is where reflection can enter. Strong essays shift between the two rather than staying in one mode. And the module here, you know, suggests roughly two-thirds scene and one-third summary and reflection. But treat that as a guide rather than a formula, which you have to follow.

To differentiate between scene and summary, scene gives us evidence, you know, a crooked hat, a soaked shirt or a gesture. Summary, on the other hand, compresses what does not deserve a full camera. And lets present you explain what younger you could not understand. Reflection works best in small doses after or around scenes, not as a final paragraph explaining what everything meant. So, while writing the, your Common App essay, what I practiced is, I labeled two beats of mine scene, and the rest summary. Because it's pretty important that, you know, a big, bigger chunk of your essay is the summary. You know, what, not exactly what happened explicitly or what the scene looked like, but what you made of it as a person or how you comprehended it. Because again, that's exactly what you want to show the admissions officers, which is why it's important. That's primarily summary.

Which brings us to my next point of scene being expensive. A properly developed scene can easily take around 120 words. So, in a short personal essay, you can not afford more than two or three. So, pick the moments where the belief changes or the pressure peaks. Everything else can become a sentence. Dialogue also is something that's pretty expensive. And one revealing change, exchange, sorry, is usually stronger than a transcript. Because it leaves room for the reader to infer what is unsaid. Which is why using dialogue for your Common App essay is always tough. If you have to refer to a conversation, you know, mentioning or giving the full transcript. Even though that's what you might want or see yourself doing, it's important to use just one or two sentences. Primarily because of the word limit. And like I said, reiterating this, one revealing exchange can be a lot stronger than a whole transcript. Because it leaves room for the reader to infer what is unsaid.

THE CALLBACK

Moving on to the callback. After the middle, write the ending before the opening. You know, the module's most reliable ending technique is the callback. Something introduced earlier returns at the end. But it means something different because the writer has changed.

To give you my own example, my Common App essay was about how through Desi music, I, you know, learned to accept my culture and my identity as an Indian. So the opening here was how I used to, I was always pissed off when my parents preferred to play Indian music in the car. And I used to fight with my sister to go first to play the songs because I always wanted to play something Western. That was how the scene started. I used a scene there. I described the exact picture. After four or five paragraphs, however, my, after the entirety of my Common App, I said the last paragraph was about how I was the one volunteering to play, you know, Indian music. Because of how my perception of my country and my own self had changed so much throughout the essay. And again, it was bringing back something from the introduction, which was, you know, the fact that I didn't like that music. And now I myself was volunteering, which, you know, show was a callback and did show the change explicitly. And, and yeah, like pretty well. So that is why callback is important. It wraps up your essay pretty well.

Moving on again, the Water Break example, which I referred to before this, this does this with the water itself. So again, just delving into another example. Early on, the son proposes a break while managing and judging his father. At the end, he reaches for the water again. But the relationship behind the gesture has shifted. The essay doesn't need to announce the lesson. The changed action enacts it. And that here is the principle, you know, plan something physical early, return to it later, change the wording or context and trust the reader to notice. Because, you know, these are admissions officers. There are thousands of these essays. They will pick up on the implicit cues. They don't need you to say everything outright. They don't want you to, they don't want a moral of the story towards the end. But trust me when I say they will pick it up as long as you end by enacting and not announcing.

Moving on to the four false endings. The module identifies four endings that often feel false. One, which is stating the lesson. The second is scheduling an epiphany exactly at the end because the word count requires it. The third is suddenly pivoting to what you will do in college. The fourth is, you know, zooming out from one specific life to a claim about humanity. You know, a personal essay usually gets stronger when it stays specific and allows some tension to remain unresolved.

So moving on, sorry, or delving deeper into the four false endings. Like I said, the first one, you don't want to just state a moral of the story. It's not a fable or a fairy tale which you're writing. And if you outright just mention, oh, this is what I learned. This is what I'm going to be like now. That's not human, right? There's never just one line worth of learning. Or there's never something which you will consistently do because of a lesson you've learned. Which is why just outright stating exactly what you've learned seems pretty inhumane. It seems like something you just want to highlight for the sake of it. Which is why it seems it gives more of a false ending type scenario.

Again, scheduling an epiphany. At the end, admissions officers usually see right through those. If you're scheduling one because the word count is ending, it's pretty clear because those aren't as well written. You don't have the space for a callback. You don't have the space for, you know, what it was like after you came to that realization. And if it ends right with the epiphany or right with the learning, it's actually pretty evident that you were just running out of words. So it's important not to do that.

If you pivot to what you will do in college, admissions officers, again, they don't like that a lot. Because it just seems like you are... Rather than showcasing the type of person you are becoming or the way in which you change, it just seems like you're trying to receive credit from the college or appeal to them specifically for the sake of admissions, which again is something they really don't want to see. And lastly, zooming out from one specific life to claim about humanity. Again, this is something about you. You know, this is a chance to showcase yourself as an individual, as a person, not to give a generic message, you know, advocating for world peace or advocating to end world hunger. Because that really steals essence away from you as a person or what you've done or what you've accomplished to this Common App essay. And it steals... And yeah, it just diverts the lesson you've learned, which doesn't go... Which isn't the best way to conclude your Common App essay.

THE PROMISE

Moving on to the Promise. Only now do we write the opening, after all of this. And why do we do that? Or why do we write it this late? That's because the opening is a promise. Until you know where the essay ends, you do not fully know where the beginning needs to promise. Or what the beginning needs to promise, sorry. The first sentence has unusually high attention, so it should create an expectation that the rest of the essay actually pays.

And there's two tests you can use for your opening. The first one being the promise test. What question or expectations does this line create? And does the essay answer it? The second is the transplant test. Could this exact line open another student's essay about another subject? If it could, it's probably generic. The module recommends drafting several openings quickly rather than falling in love with just one. Sometimes your real opening is already sitting in sentence two or three beneath unnecessary run-up.

THE PERMISSION

Moving on to the Permission. So the final idea is, as the slide mentions, Permission. Draft one is supposed to be bad. More precisely, it's supposed to be complete enough to diagnose. A first draft is not the performance, but it's the object we need in order to revise.

I mean, one of my friends who had a very beautifully written essay. Her first draft was up to 4,000 words. Because even though every single word was super relevant to the topic, she just poured every emotion, every scene, every dialogue possible in order to, you know, make the essay stand out. And that was the first draft. Obviously, it was 4,000 words. It was far from perfect. But they revised or she revised that into a 650-word version of the same essay with the same message, which was one of the best essays I've read. So it's, yeah, it's important to remember that the final idea is Permission and draft one is supposed to be bad. Don't worry about this.

So that is why ugly and whole beats polished and partial. You know, a beautiful 400-word opening gives the reader very little useful feedback beyond, you know, keep going. A rough, complete draft exposes the real problems. You know, maybe the middle has no pressure. Maybe the turn is missing. The ending is too tidy. Or the callback just isn't there. You know, those visible weaknesses are useful because they can be revised.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

So put the whole workflow together in this order. The first thing you should do is define the situation and the change of mind. The second thing you should do is identify the want, obstacle, and cost. Then choose the narrative or montage and map the beats. Draft the middle using scene and summary. Write the ending as a callback. Generate several possible openings and test their promises. And lastly, assemble the entire draft and leave the joints ugly for now.

So this, before you send the first draft, you should always run this checklist. You know, can you state the change of mind without relying on a virtue word? Is the want private enough to survive the empty room test? Is the structure clear? Have you spent scenes only where they matter? Does reflection appear throughout rather than, you know, as just a moral in the end of the story? Does the ending return to something? And does the opening promise the essay you actually wrote? And most importantly, is the whole thing there? You know, you want to make sure it's just not a 500-word opening about something and then super unbalanced like that. You have, it's vital to avoid that.

And here's the practical starting exercise. Before writing prose, write five lines. The situation is… I used to think… and then… I wanted… And what stood in the way was… It cost me… And those five lines will not appear in the final essay. But if you can answer them honestly, you have a skeleton of the story already. From there, you can draft the middle first and give yourself permission to make it rough. Revision comes after there is something to revise. So thank you, guys. That is the draft of the essay. This is all very vital to, you know, developing a skeleton or a blueprint for your essay. And this is the first step. It just gets better and better from here. You know, this is just a rough version of what you might send. And the more important and the more stressful work comes after this, which is to actually trim the essay, revise it, perfect it, and, you know, eventually send it to colleges. So thank you. I hope this was helpful. And see you guys next time.