3 Treats that Will do the Trick in Your Personal Statement or Application Essay

In my meanderings on the web, I stumbled across a short video on screen writing. The presenters are two Emmy-winning screen writers, and they know a thing or two about telling a good story. They boil the story-telling stew down to three words actually 2 dos and 1 dont: The dos: Therefore But The dont: And then. All elements in your story have to connect to what preceded them. They can connect via an implied therefore, for the logical and possible to anticipate, or an implicit but for the unanticipated surprises that life hands you or the changes in direction you may have made. You dont need to explicitly include those words, but the presence of those concepts means you have a story. However, if you have And then, your story doesnt work. Theres a gap not a surprise, but a hole in the chain of events or your logic. What works for viewers of the small screen also works for the   readers of your application essays, personal statement, or statement of purpose. (If interested, you can see the full video at MTVu.) By Linda Abraham, founder and president of Accepted.com //