50+ Personal Essay Terms You Should Know
In my classes on classes on personal essay writing, students are often a bit befuddled by the words I’m using. So I’ve created this rundown of the common lingo that relates to the art and business of writing personal essays. (NOTE: along the way I’ve tossed in terms of my own, made up by me—and noted them).
Essay Structure and Style Terms
Graf: In journalism and elsewhere, the word “graf” means paragraph, which is confusing because obviously you should write “graph,” but I don’t make the rules.
Hook: The method you use to draw your reader into the essay, usually in the first few paragraphs. Your hook should be compelling enough to force the reader’s engagement, attention, and interest. Originally found in journalism. NOTE: this also happens to be the name of my newsletter, so there!
Kicker: The final few paragraphs of your essay that help sum up and provide a pithy, interesting ending to your piece—hopefully circling back to your initial hook or introduction.
Literary personal essay: A personal essay that may stray outside the bounds of traditional narrative essay, and often features finely constructed sentences. This is one of the nine types of essays out there.
Mode-shifting: This is my term for when someone is alternating between scene and summary and physical description and backstory and thinking on the page, etc. Really good essays tend to involve a lot of surprisingly fast mode-shifting.
Narrative arc: The assembly of nonfiction details that follow a traditional, expected Western storytelling pattern of exposition, inciting incident, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, and conclusion. While the narrative arc traditionally unfolds chronologically, it doesn’t do so necessarily—particularly in literary or creative nonfiction.
Narrative essay: A narrative essay is a nonfiction work that describes an experience following the traditional narrative arc. Often, the story is of critical importance. You’ll see narrative essays in a wide variety of publications.
Reported essay: An essay that mixes statistics, facts, and interviews with your personal experiences.
Scene: this is a bit of what it sounds like. A moment described in detail, often involving dialogue. Time slows down, the narrator tells us blow by blow what happens.
Summary: When you summarize something. Also called exposition. Everyone thinks this is “bad” because it’s “telling,” but actually most good essays involve a lot of summary.
Takeaway: The ultimate point of your essay, which may be obvious or more oblique—but the reader must have a sense of what your essay is really about.
Submitting Your Essay: Terms to Know
Before submitting your essay, review the publication’s guidelines, where you may see terms like the below. Read more on editors’ tips for submitting an essay.
Cover letter or cover page: A short email or letter that briefly describes your essay, your writing experience, and why you feel your essay is a good fit for publication.
Deadline: The date by which you must submit your essay or other work. Pay close attention to the deadline and even the publication’s time zone—last-minute West Coast submissions may miss a deadline if the publication is East Coast-based.
Document types: Publications will often specify document types acceptable for submissions. Unfortunately, few take Google Docs at this point, for example, Common document types accepted include .doc, .docx, .rtf, .odt, .wpd, and .pdf.
Double-spaced: The spacing between the lines of your essay. Double-spacing helps editors read and make notes after printing the piece out.
Font: The typeface you select for your submitted work. It’s important to choose a font that’s easy for editors to read, without unusual colors, sizes, or types. For example, black, 12-point Times is a solid choice.
Length: How long your piece may be. Some publishers have strict length requirements you can’t go beyond. Others allow you to push the boundaries by around 10% or so.
Word count: How many words you must or can use for your piece. Most publications have a stated maximum—for example, a 2,000-word maximum. The piece’s title and your name aren’t part of the maximum, usually.
Margins: The space between the text on the page and the edge of the page. Margins ensure a printed or online document is more readable for the editor.
Essay Publication Terms
Acceptance: When an editor agrees to publish your work, often in exchange for money or print copies of the publication.
Assignment: More typically seen in journalism, this is the editor’s description of the work they’d like you to perform to write and complete an essay, usually a reported essay.
Award: The prize you win if you enter your essay into an essay or nonfiction contest. This may involve a cash amount but is typically also a resume-enhancer.
Bio: A description of your past work, publishing history, notable achievements and education, and personal notes. It may be interchangeably used with a byline, but often longer, a paragraph or so.
Byline: A short one- or two-line description of you printed alongside your essay. This includes your past work, notable publications and awards, and personal information, such as where you live. It can be interchangeable with a bio but may be much longer.
Compensation rates: How much a publication pays for a piece of work, usually a flat rate per word, per page, or per word. However, compensation rates can vary due to complexity or form—poems may not be compensated at the same rate as a short story or flash essay.
Contract: The legal document between you and a publisher that describes your essay's pay, rights, and publication.
On spec: The process of submitting an essay as you’ve already written it. The essay was not requested or solicited by the publication. You are not sure whether you’ll be paid for the essay.
Pitch: An idea for an essay. You send this pitch to editors at the publication you’re targeting. Typically, it briefly describes the essay idea and why it fits the publication well. It is not as common with personal essays as with reported essays.
Publication: Online or print matter for distribution or sale; publications that print essays include literary journals, newspapers, online websites, and print magazines for the general public.
Query: An email containing a pitch or idea to a publication to find out if they’re interested in your idea. The publication may ask you to change your essay idea or encourage you to get to work. Typically, a query letter is 2-3 paragraphs long. However, a query letter can contain more than one pitch. It is more frequently used in general-audience print and online publications.
Reading period: Many journals only read submissions within a short period, as busy university MFA programs manage them.
Response Time: How long does it take between sending an essay to a publisher and the publisher to either accept or reject your essay? A literary journal can take a few weeks to a year or more for a response. General interest publications—particularly online—tend to move a little faster.
Rights: The legal ownership of a piece as described and divided between yourself and a publisher. A publication may request or require one-time rights, all electronic rights, exclusive rights, or work for hire for a piece.
Simultaneous submissions: When you send your work to more than one publisher at the same time. Publications will often be very clear about whether they accept simultaneous submissions. Literary journals generally tend to accept simultaneous submissions, as they take longer to respond to submissions. General interest publications discourage the practice but tend to respond much faster.
Slushpile: The pile of unreviewed essays, short stories, and poems, as well as publication reviews for potential acceptance.
Submission fee: Most literary journals charge this fee to help sustain the journal and compensate the journal’s editors for reading unsolicited submissions.
Submission guidelines are a publication’s requirements for sending in your work—not necessarily acceptance, however. Variable requirements typically include the font, margins, spacing, page size or orientation, and word count. For example, requirements might say: Letter 8.5 x 11, single-sided, double-spaced, normal 1-inch margins. They can also describe submission fees, reading periods, and response times.
Submission window: The time when a magazine is accepting submissions. Often, with popular literary magazines, this is just one month per year or even less.
Submittable: Most publishers use an online content management system to accept submissions for upcoming publications.
Unsolicited submission: When you send your essay or manuscript to an editor without the editor first requesting it from you or without the help of an agent.
Withdrawing a submission is the process of informing a publication that the piece you’ve sent is no longer available, usually because it has been accepted elsewhere. After getting a lot of rejections, I found a kind of exquisite but probably petty pleasure in writing an email to a publication saying that they couldn’t have a piece because someone else wanted it.
Other Essay Terms
Prompt: Publications may offer prompts to help you focus your essay, which helps to collect essays on a specific theme or topic. For example, a prompt might ask you to write about an item you’ve lost.
Anthology: A collection of essays or stories based upon a theme. Best American Essays is an annual anthology. However, many are collected around a style or subject.
Contest: A competition where you can submit your essay for prizes and accolades. Sometimes, a journal or publication will submit your essay or short story for you. As an example, see the Pushcart Prize. Read more on how to prepare to enter an essay contest.
This is an asynchronous class, which starts on Monday, July 8, 2024, is for anyone struggling with a book. Although that first sprint of fifty pages into a book—either novel or nonfiction—can be exhilarating, it’s hard to sustain. Sooner or later, you’re likely to find yourself in a creative ditch, wheels spinning. We’ll take a look at when to revise and when not to, as well as which questions are productive and which are not. We’ll seek out ways to reinvigorate ourselves for much more writing. The final class will be a tutorial on the business of finding an agent and/or publisher for your book.