The Lessons We Take From Failure

The restriction to a topic where you have experienced a failure is not easy for some students because one has to know how much is enough to describe everything but keep it simple. Others, on the other hand, think for a long time until they can think of something they can write about. An experience should be credible and not exaggerated. Inventions, imaginations and decorations are not part of the story! It is also important that this essay is written in the past because the experience has already happened. The best way to do this is to make a few notes before writing. For this purpose you should divide a sheet of paper into three different areas: Introduction, main part with highlights and conclusion. To the individual areas you can then record counting points, which occur to you spontaneously. The formulation for the essay comes later. After collecting these fragments, you can check what is important and what not.

 Choose an experience for the story and not several! Make a point for the story before you write sentences. What is the highlight of the experience, what has particularly moved you? In the essay, read all the important details! Do not spoil the experience story with untruths or exaggerations! Make paragraphs in the essay and summarize what belongs together. As with every essay, the classification into three areas is also very important in the case of the experience-counting. After the introduction, the main part of the story follows with the climax and the end of course the conclusion. This sounds quite simple and is actually, because when a story begins with the climax, the reader loses his motivation to read it. The conclusion is, of course at the end of the story. The introduction should be short and a few sentences long. It informs briefly about the persons involved, the place (s), the time and the event. You can be guided by the following questions: Who? Where? When? What?

In the main part, the story is built up to the climax. For the narrative to become more vivid, you should now also use the literal speech. It clarifies what people think and feel. In the closing sentences the story is rounded off and the tension is dissolved. It should not be long as the introduction, and should be limited to one or a few sentences. This should point to the experience, the reader's curiosity, but without betraying the core of the story. Frequently, the professor also expects the student to devise the own history. This is particularly difficult if nothing more than a thematic framework is given. There are many ideas, and exactly there is the problem. Instead of simply listing these ideas and disregarding the actual theme, they have to adhere to a specific framework, just as in an adventure story. Whether the future, the past or a fantasy story in the here and now, the structure of the introduction, the main part, and the ending remain in the story. So the difference to the history of experience is not so important, but the content is. In such a story, you can describe feelings, desires, and dreams. Everything is possible as long as it is the subject of the story.