Writing Workshop: The Expressive Essay

1. Writing Workshop: The Expressive Essay

2. The Expressive Essay • A type of descriptive writing, expressive writing expresses your thoughts, feelings, a reflection on something. • Written in first person (I, me, we, us) • Less formal (rigid) style • Use of descriptive language (think with your five senses)

3. Get Organized • The point of an essay like this is not to fit your feelings into a formula thesis and then prove your feelings in the body of your paper. Instead, you want to communicate a strong impression of something personal. • You will, however, want to have some type of organizational structure so that your readers understand why they are reading your essay. • In addition, you should lead them through your thoughts and impressions without losing them.

4. Conveying Your Feelings • Use feeling words like: love, happiness (joy), sadness, pain (hurt), anger (fury), fear, pleasure, loneliness, excitement, comfort (safety, relaxation, contentment), shock, pride, scorn (contempt), shame (guilt, regret, modesty, shyness), boredom, fatigue (exhaustion, feeling tired, sleepiness), jealousy (envy, greed, ambition) and interest (curiosity, desire), or verbs describing these feelings.

5. Cut the Fat • When writing to impress, we often think more is better…therefore, we overuse adjectives and adverbs and large vocabulary to “fluff” or “fatten” our work. Make sure that your words have meaning, and aren’t just verbal filler. In this type of writing, every word of every sentence should pull its own weight within the piece. (This doesn’t mean skimp on powerful words or descriptive language. Just make it count!)

6. Be Active • Use ACTIVE verbs! • Active verbs include almost every English verb except the “verb to be” (am, is, are, will be), the verb “to go” (go, going, went) and the verbs “to have“ or “to get.”

7. The Challenge • What does freedom mean to me?