Personal
and
Reflective
Writing
What is it?
Personal
About you
About your experiences
About your thoughts, feelings, opinions,
ideas…
Reveals your character, personality and
thought processes
What is it?
Reflection
Characterised by quiet thought or contemplation
To Reflect
To think, meditate or ponder
Think about a mirror –
mirrors reflect.
They allow you to look
back at yourself and
consider your
appearance.
Thoughtful reflection
will allow you to
consider yourself or an
incident and examine it
in detail.
Main Requirements
• The essay will aim to interest or give pleasure,
rather than simply convey information.
• It will concern itself with, usually, a single idea,
insight or experience.
• Be thoughtful in tone and convey a sense of
the writer’s personality, authorial voice & stance.
• Reveal the thought processes of the writer and
engage the reader in the writer’s process of
reflection
An Reflective essay is NOT
simply an account of an
experience.
It must contain thoughtful
reflection and be entertaining
for the reader.
Summary
• Take a single personal experience, idea or
insight as a starting point or stimulus
• Show writer’s interesting and/or entertaining
thoughts on this central stimulus
• Develop thoughts and move out beyond
immediate starting point to REFLECT in wider
way on some aspect(s) of the experience, idea
or insight.
• Something of writer’s personality will emerge
from this process of reflection.
Process
• Pick an initial stimulus.
• Explore initial stimulus in an interesting
and entertaining way.
• Move out and beyond initial stimulus to
establish a thoughtful tone.
• Reveal aspects of the writer’s personality
and thought processes.
Reflective Writing is still CREATIVE
• Use your style and specific literary
techniques to create interest and effect
within your essay:
IMAGERY
Word Choice
Alliteration
Sentencing
Hyperbole
Onomatopoeia
Use of the
senses
Symbolism
Punctuation
All Reflective
essays should
focus on some
aspect of this
What is it?
The main
focus of
reflection
should
ultimately
make some
sort of point
about how we
live – what
makes us tick
You should try
to explore it in
a unique and
new way
The human
condition is
about how we
live our lives
and how
human nature
works
It can be
concerned
with positive
or negative
aspects – how
we behave,
obstacles or
challenges we
encounter,
how we react
Your Task
Choose an occasion when you had a moment of
epiphany or made a sudden discovery or
realisation.
Describe this moment and reflect on its
significance in your life.
What is an Epiphany
DEFINITION:
A sudden realization about the
nature or meaning of something.
An epiphany can often come
about due to some experience
that may trigger the sudden
realization.
• Derived from the Greek word
“epiphaneia”, epiphany means
“appearance” or “manifestation.
• In literary terms, an epiphany is
that a moment in the story where
a character achieves realization,
awareness or feeling of
knowledge after which events
are seen through the prism of
this new light in the story.
• James Joyce, the great Irish
writer used this term in his
writings to indicate the sudden
eye-opener regarding the nature
of a person or situation.
• Even insignificant things in our
life can suddenly inspire in us an
awareness that can change our
lives for good.
• Seeing something in a new light.
• Seeing something from a new or
different perspective.
• When the penny drops.
An Example
Let us consider an epiphany of a smoker:
• “I used to smoke a lot. Everyone let me know
that it was bad for my health however, I didn’t
pay any notice. One day I saw my two years of
age offspring trying for a used cigarette within an
ashtray. Seeing this, abruptly it dawned upon me
how terrible smoking was and I stopped
smoking.”
So, this sudden feeling of knowledge brings to
light what was so far hidden and it changes
one’s life is called epiphany.
• Consider a person of your age. What sorts of
‘epiphanies’ or moments of realisation might they
have had throughout their life?
We
Are
Not
Real!
Planning
• Make a list of potential ‘experiences’ in
which there was a moment of ‘epiphany’ or
realisation.
• For each one, note down:
– What you ‘learned’ about yourself and your
own life
– What you ‘learned’ about the way we (as
humans) live or about wider society/the world
Structure
• Opening/Introduction
This should engage your reader with the topic in a subtle
way, without giving too much away.
You Could:
- Explore the notion of epiphanies
- ‘Paint a picture’ of the moment of epiphany – what
it feels like (don’t give away exactly what it is yet)
- Begin describing the setting/scene of the
‘experience’ (again, don’t tell us exactly what it is
yet)
Examples:
The younger we are, the more we think we know but as we
grow, so too does our world. Life goes from being simply
black and white to suddenly exploding in exponentially
increasing shades of colour. Whether it’s ‘sun blush red’ or
‘my granny’s front door green’, we soon begin to realise that
life is about discoveries, and in making those discoveries, we
are forced to continually re-evaluate what we thought we
once knew about the world around us. Not all these
‘discoveries’ are pleasant: some shatter the very foundations
on which our lives once sat and, in allowing us to understand
more about the world, also somehow manage to steal
something precious away; something which can only be
momentarily remembered when fleetingly recognised in the
innocent eyes of someone younger than ourselves. One
such ‘theft’ happened to me when I was only six years old
and I pushed open the living room door to be met by my
father merrily munching into a mince pie.
Examples:
The most vivid memory I have of my early childhood
is of a flood of intense pain washing through me.
However, it is not the memory of the pain that
haunts me to this very day, there was something
else that swept into me and remained stagnant
within, ready to bubble up and pull me under with it
if I ever ventured near a set of precarious stairs
again. Lying on the ground in a broken heap, I
could suddenly understand why my mum had
always tried to spoil my fun and stop me from
exploring the world around me at anything higher
than ground level.
Structure
• Main Body
In the main body you will have to describe the
experience
You will then use it as a starting point to show and reflect
on your thought processes throughout the ‘discovery’
This will lead on to what it taught you about yourself and
life in general.
You should include/cover:
• What things were like before the ‘discovery/epiphany’ e.g. naivety,
blissful ignorance, sense of security etc.
• Description of the immediate build up to the experience
• Description of the ‘experience’ – remembering vivid, engaging
descriptions, use of style
• Thoughts and feelings during the experience and moment of
‘epiphany’ – again, try to describe this as vividly as you can
• Description of the immediate aftermath – how you felt, what the
incident made you begin thinking about/reflecting on
• Your wider reflections about the incident – what the ‘discovery’ had
made you consider and what it taught you about yourself and wider life
in general (The HUMAN CONDITION)
Structure
• Conclusion
This should round of your reflection in an interesting way, leaving the
reader with the main focus of your reflection and how you feel about
the ‘epiphany’ now – or the nature of epiphanies in general.
You Could:
- Revisit an idea or example from the opening and make a final
reflective comment on it
- Consider how you feel about the ‘epiphany’ now, looking back
at it with ’wiser’ eyes
- Reflect on what you learned and why the moment is still a
significant/important part of your life (Rites of Passage) – do
you anticipate other such ‘epiphanies’ in your future
Deadline Date
• Monday 11th November 2013
• Ensure essay is typed, correctly formatted
and printed out, ready to submit during the
lesson
• Word count: 500-1000 words