Module 4 lecture: Voice and image. Presented by Ayaan Bhatia.

VOICE AND IMAGE

Hi everyone. So as of today, we're going to be moving forward from the structure into the sound aspect of things. So a draft can definitely have a very strong story and a topic and still feel anonymous if the sentences sound like an application form or a resume for that matter. However, the aim of this module is not to make you sound literary or improve your vocabulary. It's to make the page sound recognizably more like you as a person.

So as to what this module fixes, we're going to work through seven linked problems. The first being whether a person is actually present in the prose. Then the level of seriousness you can credibly hold, how humor works on the page, what makes prose feel machine generated, the correct relationship between showing and telling, how imagery earns its place, and finally, how to cut writing that might be trying too hard.

THE FINGERPRINT

So moving on to the fingerprint, Walker Gibson gives us a crude but useful diagnosis. I talk, you talk, and it talk. So real writing mixes all three, but personal statements often fail by sliding into it talk. That is a register where abstract nouns start doing the work and the applicant disappears. The reader feels as if they're reading prose about a student instead of prose by a student.

So put people back into the sentence is key because look at the difference here. The weak version says the job provided insight, the role required management. Grammatically, there's nothing wrong with this sort of sentence, but there's nobody alive in it. There's no essence within the sentence. The stronger version, on the other hand, gives us a sticking bell or a regular customer or an uncle and the writer counting bills. The editing move is pretty simple here. Whenever an abstraction is a subject, ask whether a person or physical object can perform the verb instead.

Students often try to manufacture voice through vocabulary, and that usually makes the problem worse. Voice is more strongly carried by syntax, you know, how long your sentences are, where you interrupt yourself, whether you use fragments, whether you repeat a structure, and where you stop. Your natural rhythm already exists. The goal is to stop suppressing it under a formal school essay register. The first exercise here is the voice check. So all of you should take one paragraph from the draft and put it next to a text you sent a friend. And obviously, we're not trying to make the essay sound casual. You definitely should not include OMG or LOL or lowkey in any of your personal statements. But we're asking whether the same mind is audible in both. You should then identify three sentences where an abstraction is acting and rewrite them so a person performs the verb.

THE REGISTER YOU CAN HOLD

The second thing here is the source gives us a useful ceiling. You can be completely serious about something specific that happened to you, but broad declarations about life or humanity become difficult to sustain. That is not a ban on heavy subjects. It's a rule about vantage point. The heavier the material, the more useful it is to stay close to what you actually saw or thought you did.

The weak version here climbs immediately to very broad generic topics like humanity, wisdom, uncertainty. The stronger version stays with one boy at one table whose words dry up. That smaller claim is actually more powerful because the reader believes he has authority over it. A useful question is, am I speaking from my own chair or have I climbed onto a podium? The second exercise here is to lower the camera. You know, you can search the draft for sentences about people in general, society, humanity, everyone, or what, quote-unquote, we all do. Try rewriting each one as a statement about one person in one moment. If the idea disappears when you make it specific, it probably was not earned yet.

THE HUMOUR BUDGET

Moving on to the humor budget, this is actually something very vital to your essay. And that is understanding the fact that humor in an admissions essay is not stand-up. Humor can be integrated, and in my opinion, should be integrated. But it's important to do so in a limited way and one that doesn't, you know, destroy the structure or the essence of your essay. The reader is moving quickly and is not waiting for any sort of punchline. Again, this isn't stand-up. What survives is understatement, precision, and a writer being exact about something slightly absurd.

The safest humor is also usually at your own expense, and one or two moments of those are usually enough. What I mean by your own expense here is that it's okay to accept your own shortcomings or acknowledge them through your personal essay with a sense of humor. You know, if there's a funny story which highlights a shortcoming of yours within the word limit, it's more than okay to go for it. Because not only does that show that you are open to learning and that you're open to the fact that you are not the perfect person, but it also adds, it just makes the essay more fruitful. It makes it more complete, which is why humor can be utilized. But again, keep in mind the budget and keep in mind that this is not stand-up.

And in the same vein, this is the central rule from the section. You know, don't try to be funny, try to be exact at slightly greater length than the subject deserves. The Toilet Paper Alarm example works because the writer borrows the grand language of economics and public crisis for an empty toilet roll and never breaks character. The disproportion creates the humor.

And what usually fails here is there's four subjects which are especially risky. A visible setup and punchline. Again, like I said, it's not stand-up. It's not a sitcom where you're setting up jokes for yourself. And quite frankly, you don't have the word limit to do that. And the second thing here is that obvious puns don't really float that well. Because at the end of the day, your essay is going to higher academic institutions. You aren't trying to impress them with your humor, but rather with your writing and with, you know, your story. And you don't need puns to, you know, make it interesting or make it fun. So, yeah, it's just, it's recommended that you avoid them in their entirety.

Announcing your own quirkiness is a little different from accepting your shortcomings. If you repeatedly announce your quirkiness or, you know, try to sound different or try to sound overly funny, that kind of, first of all, it obviously leaves a very negative aftertaste of your essay. And it also feels like you're trying too hard to be funny, which takes away the essence of your essay. And lastly, making somebody else a joke is also a very bad idea. Because this is your essay. It's about you as a person. It's about how you have changed the traits you have unlocked within yourself and the way in which you have become a better person. By ridiculing someone else, not only are you taking attention away from yourself, you also come off as selfish in a way because, you know, you're just ridiculing someone else for the sake of the story, which is in no way relevant to your essay. So just don't do that.

Also cut signals like, ironically or funnily enough, because if the sentence is funny, it should survive without a sign telling us to laugh. Yeah, this sentence always reminds me of sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory, you know, with like thousands of laugh tracks just reminding the audience to laugh. So don't do that. And whenever possible, place the comic word at the end where English naturally gives it emphasis. And sorry to all the Big Bang Theory fans out there. Moving on to the third exercise, build one funny fact. So find two facts in your material that is funny because it's specific. This relates a lot to accepting your own shortcomings, which I mentioned before this. And write this in three ways. You know, move the funny word, remove the signal. And the best version is usually the one that looks like it looks least like it is performing. And trust me, once you have it, you know, which goes a long way for your essay.

THE MACHINE VOICE

Moving on to the machine voice. The problem described here is not simply that generated prose can be competent. It is that competent prose converges towards a shared middle. In an admissions pile, sameness is expensive. You know, the more the pile sounds average, the more valuable an actual individual voice becomes.

So there are diagnostic tells, not absolute bans. Sorry, these are diagnostic tells, the seven machine voice tells. There are not absolute bans. So watch repeated triplets, not just X, but Y. Abstraction without a physical object underneath it. Suspiciously even sentence lengths. Generic closing sentences. Vague phrases like many people say. And most importantly, prose in which the writer never admits anything uncomfortable. The last one matters a lot because genuine personal writing usually costs the writer something.

So specificity is the defense. And I feel like this is something that matters even more now in a time where AI is, you know, heavily used to write such essays or to take help. So, you know, compare generic lessons with something like clock times, names, cities, objects, and even awkward admissions. You know, a detail that could be false is valuable because it creates stakes for the sentence. The piano essay, for example, does not tell us music filled the house, but it gives exact hours, floorboards, a brother, bad jokes, and a creaking seat. The page becomes hard to confuse with anybody else's. So it's important to make your essay your own. Be specific. You know, point out small stuff like a broken clock, a juice box. Whenever it's possible for you to be specific, you should do it because, again, this is your essay. This is your representation as a person outside of your grades and your extracurriculars, which is why this is very important. And specificity is the defense.

The fourth example here is the machine order. Run the tells through the draft mechanically. Circle the repeated construction. Underline physical objects. Then ask the non-mechanical question. What did I risk by writing this? If there's no concession, embarrassment, uncertainty, contradiction, or difficult admission anywhere, that is more important than any stylistic tic. Moving on.

SHOW, THEN TELL

So show, don't tell is a little too crude. It's incompetent advice, as the slide mentions. Telling is how an essay moves across time and how reflection truly happens. So the better rule is that the evidence should arrive before the conclusion. Show, then tell is a better way to put it. You know, once the reader has seen the thing, you can often be surprisingly direct about what it means.

What is, sorry, when a sentence feels flat, adding adjectives is usually the wrong repair. Replace the noun. You know, a 1994 Volvo tells us more than quote-unquote old unreliable car. You know, the blue Hoover in House of Dreams is not just vivid. It becomes structural. Specific nouns are shorter, more credible, and more memorable.

A brand, a number, or a proper noun can anchor an entire paragraph on its own. The source's Jackie May example uses a zip code, a marina, and the registered name of a boat. The point is not to sprinkle brands everywhere. One natural detail that nobody would bother inventing can make the reader trust the rest of the paragraph, which is why one detail can truly buy credibility for your essay. And it's important to be specific, like I mentioned before, and add details for every paragraph.

THE JOB OF AN IMAGE

So, imagery is very vital for your essay. And every image has to earn its word count, unfortunately. I mean, I wish there was no word limit for the Common App essay. I think it would make life so much easier. But if you are using imagery, then every image has to earn the word count. You know, you should ask what it does before integrating it into your essay. Establish place, carry a value, mark time, contradict an earlier belief, or return later as a callback. You know, it is pretty is not enough a sentence to justify something which you might feel is beautiful or something which you want to integrate into your essay. Decorative images are especially dangerous because they're often the sentences writers become most attached to. And even though it sucks, it is probable that you might have to remove them to cut the word count down or, you know, not be as stylistic as possible just in order to fit within the count. And, like I said, it does suck because those are truly some beautiful sentences. They come from the heart. But the word count is obviously priority. So, you know, just be careful when writing such sentences because at some point you might always have to cut them out.

So, most students default to solely sight. You know, strong essays often also remember sound, texture, smell, temperature, or balance. So, you know, think of the whirr of a vacuum, the groan of the floorboards, the rattle of poker chips, the buzz and gurgle of a coffee machine. Those details place the reader inside a body rather than in front of a photograph. And it's important to duly convey the situation you were in, your emotions at that point, and nothing does that better than, you know, elaborating more than what your eyes saw. You know, how your brain felt, what images it processed, what sounds take you back to that moment, whatever possible. Just integrate all of this into your essay while being mindful of the word count.

So, camera distance is another useful diagnostic. Wide shots cover context and years. Close shots give full resolution to one moment. A good essay often moves wide, close, wide. If every paragraph is wide, the essay becomes summary. If everything is close, the reader loses larger shape.

If you have one controlling metaphor in your essay, commit to that one. You know, Tetris can organize an essay around falling blocks. Poker can organize another around a hand. Adding competing frames makes the reader hold too much. And also run the picture test on familiar phrases. If open doors or broaden horizons produces no literal picture anymore, either replace it with what you actually saw or say the idea plainly. It's not that deep.

THE PURPLE DIAGNOSTIC

Moving on, purple prose is not simply beautiful writing. It's actually also redundancy. You know, two stylistic devices doing the same job. The module gives us three excellent cuts. You know, delete adverbs and restore only those that change meaning. Find sentences with two images and keep the stronger one. Then check how long the reader waits between a subject and its verb. A strong verb already carries a lot of information. You know, whisper does not need quietly. Ran does not need quickly. And if 20 words separate my grandmother from cooked, the good material in the middle deserves its own sentence. Clarity often makes the image stronger, not plainer.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

The final point here extends beyond the personal statement. Your supplements and activity descriptions should sound like the same person. If the essay is specific and lively, but the activities become corporate HR language, the file fractures. Write down a few concrete rules for your voice now, so you can reproduce it under deadline pressure.

So this is the practical sequence I would use on a finished draft. Restore people to abstract sentences. Lower claims that go beyond your own evidence. Keep humor scarce. Run the machine tells. Put evidence before interpretation. Make each image justify itself. Cut redundancy. Then compare the voices across every part of the application. And lastly, the goal, the target is not prose that sounds beautiful or impressive, but it's more for recognizable prose. After 650 words, the reader should have a sense that a particular person made these choices and that another applicant could not simply swap their name onto the essay. Okay, thank you so much. I hope this lesson was helpful and I will see you guys next time.