What I Learned Riding the Skunk Train

Riding the Skunk Train

If you find yourself with a son who loves trains, and if you find yourself in Mendocino County, California, you just might find yourself on the Skunk Train. It's 4 hours round trip, 20 miles up from Fort Bragg to Northspur and 20 miles back down again. As we wended our way through the redwood forest, a man named Malachi played his guitar and sang (what else?) train songs: Casey Jones, Wabash Cannonball, The Wreck of the Old 97, and my favorite for the day, City of New Orleans.

City of New Orleans

No point in trying to describe that song, City of New Orleans, so here is a video of the songwriter, Steve Goodman, performing it:

In case you don't have the time to listen, let's get right to it.

You: "Jon, why are you telling us about a railroad song from 1972?" Me: "Because this song shows you how to use details to make your point."

Thesis vs. Details

As you start to write, you'll notice a couple types of sentences:

"Thesis" sentences. These sentences explain why an experience matters to you. They respond to the "So what?" question. An example of a thesis sentence relating to City of New Orleans would be, "I love trains because they give me a feeling of camaraderie with other passengers."

"Details" sentences. These sentences explain what you saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched during an experience. They respond to the "What happened?" question. An example of a details sentence from City of New Orleans would be, "I was dealin' cards with the old men in the club car - and it's penny a point, there ain't nobody keepin' score."

Your Goal: Go from Thesis to Details

You probably have your thesis sentence in mind. Experience X mattered to me because Y. That's a great starting point. To transform that thesis into a story, however, you're going to have to work on the details. What moments do you remember from that experience? In those moments, what exactly did you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell? Don't be picky - write whatever you remember. After you have it all down, expand on those sensory details that support your thesis.

The framework of thesis-details should be fairly familiar. It's not unlike writing an analytical essay for English class. The two big differences to keep in mind are:

1. The details you cite are from your own life: "I was dealin' cards with the old men in the club car..."
2. The right details communicate your thesis in a unique way: "...penny a point, there ain't nobody keepin' score" stands out more than "Trains make me feel camaraderie with other passengers."

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

Are there essay topics I should avoid?

I’ll get to the video clip at the end, but I first want to summarize what are often considered bad essay topics. I’ve sorted them into three categories.

The first category of bad topics is referred to as the 5 Ds: Drugs, Divorce, Depression, Death, Dating. Why shouldn’t you write about these? I think it’s difficult to write about these topics in an appropriate way.

The second category of bad topics is the cliche essay. These include essays about  parents/grandparents, sports, mission trips, your resume, immigrant experiences, and travel abroad. Pretty much the most popular things high school students write about. Why shouldn’t you write about these? Basically they fall under common tropes and become predictable and boring.

The third category of bad topics isn’t really a topic but an approach and that is writing too broadly and trying to cover too much ground. Covering too much ground doesn’t give you an opportunity to explore deeply. Depth trumps breadth.

All that said, I wouldn’t go so far as to say never write on one of those topics. I’ve read great essays that dealt with death or divorce. And the reality is that coming up with a truly original topic is probably not going to happen. The most important thing is to find a topic that’s meaningful to you and if it happens to fall under one of the “bad” categories you’ll have to work extra hard to make your zeal and voice shine through.

Remember, no one else has your voice.

Phil

Now for the video clip. I love these guys. Bullying is not a new story. But tell it with passion and a unique voice and it will be compelling.

Three Tips from Threes

What Does Threes Have to Do with the College Application Essay?

Threes is the game you see above. A relative of Threes is another tile-sliding game called 2048. I learned about 2048 when one of my sisters texted me that I should check it out.

At first, I thought she was being nice because she knows I like puzzles if they are not too hard. After an obsessive week of sporadically ignoring wife and children, I was less sure. Maybe she was mad at me? Eventually, I prevailed (read: got the 2048 tile before my sister did). And the fact that there are Youtube videos of people winning the game in minutes takes nothing away from my hard-fought victory, in case you were wondering.

After suffering the torment of 2048, I enjoyed coming across this Wired article about Threes' game design. The creative process of developing Threes isn't that different from the creative process of writing a college application essay. The more we know what to expect, the easier it is to start writing. In this post, I'll share three tips I learned from the Threes story.

College Application Essay Tip #1: Greatness is something you grind out.

The Threes article suggests that the central mechanic of the game is so simple and satisfying that we might think it was "discovered" rather than "invented." Then it goes on to explain that is not the case. The game mechanic appeared only after months of work.

I have students tell me all the time that they haven't been working on their essays because they "just don't feel inspired." That is when I tell them to get over it. Lack of inspiration is an excuse, not a real problem. As the article points out, "The fact is, the simple magic of Threes came not from a lightning bolt of inspiration but rather a slow, steady grind."

This sentiment calls to mind my dad singing his favorite line from Mary Poppins to us when we were kids. It's from Bert, the chimney sweep: "You've got to grind, grind, grind at that grindstone." I don't know the rest, and I doubt my dad does either, but that hasn't mattered yet.

Sure, you need a quantum of inspiration. That is, you need an inkling of what makes a good topic. But beyond that, it's about sitting down every day for 20 minutes and grinding out 250 words.

College Application Essay Tip #2: It starts ugly.

The article describes the initial draft of the game as "an ugly, bare-bones affair." And when my students send me early drafts, they usually offer some sort of apology about how it's not that good. Of course it's ugly. It's not done!

Come to terms with this. Writing an essay is like being that grizzled old guy on the beach with the headphones and the metal detector. Most of what he picks up is garbage, but once in a while he finds a gold locket (do people still wear those?).

Most of what you write will be garbage, but once in a while you'll find a gem of insight. And this is OK. You're not going to show colleges the garbage. You're going to show them the polished insight.

College Application Essay Tip #3: Kill the beloved monsters.

When we see Threes now, we see a simple number-sliding game. But earlier on, this game had monsters. Lots of monsters. And how did the creators feel when they ditched the monsters for numbers? About how you'd expect: “We spent so much time on the monster. When we took it out, it just hurt.”

It hurts to spends time on something that doesn't work out. But when you're writing your essay, this is what will happen. You will agonize over a word, a sentence, or a paragraph until it is so clever and so deep. You will lean back in your chair, put hands behind your head, exhale with gusto and puffed-out cheeks, and marvel at your amazingness. Then you will realize your beautiful words don't fit with your essay's theme.

This is where I argue with some students. I want them to let go so their essay can survive. One thing I did not learn from business school, having never attended, is that rational actors ignore sunk costs. The fact that you already spent a lot of time on something shouldn't factor into whether you should keep spending time on it.

Some students are unwilling to abandon their treasured words. They remind me of that crazy lady Indiana Jones kept urging to let go of the Grail so she could save herself. The students that learn to release their favorites tend to develop better stories.

Summing Up the Creative Process

If I had to sum everything up about the creative process, I would say it like this: it's painful. But knowing that in advance makes it slightly less so.

Good luck writing!

Jon

P.S. Since you're going to procrastinate no matter what I say, please, go ahead and play Threes in your browser.

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

Essay Tips from The Known World

About a week ago, I read Edward P. Jones' novel The Known World. In this post, I will share a couple tips I picked up from my reading.

College Application Essay Tip #1: Find a Contradiction

The back cover of my copy contains a single sentence:

"He was thirty-five years old and for every moment of those years he had been someone's slave, a white man's slave and then another white man's slave and now, for nearly ten years, the overseer slave for a black master."

And there we have the contradiction: a black slave-owner in antebellum Virginia. Why did this happen? We don't know yet. The novel tells us the story of that slave-owner, Henry Townsend.

If you're not sure where to start your essay, you might think about your inconsistencies. How do you resolve them? The first time my son hit my daughter, I swatted his hand in response and told him not to hit her.

But after a few more times, I began to ask myself how I could say "no hitting" while using hitting as a punishment. This was a contradiction. Not the most fascinating, but I offer it as an example of the type of personal inconsistency you might work into your essay.

College Application Essay Tip #2: Use Foreshadowing

To foreshadow is to hint without spoiling. Let's make sure we understand spoilers first. When you write an analytical essay, you distill your main point into a thesis sentence. Your thesis sentence is a spoiler. It tells the reader exactly what you will say and, in so doing, dissipates all suspense.

In the application essay context, the most common spoiler I see is, "Activity X taught me the importance of Value Y." Once I see this sentence at the beginning of an essay, I'm bored. So as we think about how to execute foreshadowing, let's remember that our goal is not to reveal, but rather to hint.

Here are three examples of hints from The Known World:

• "The strange thing is it would be the second black person Henry Townsend bought - not the first, not Moses who became his overseer - who would trouble him after the purchase."
• "He was standing less than ten feet from the spot where he would die one morning."
• "It was that boy, along with his older brother and a slave boy named Teacher, who would burst into flames in front of the dry goods store."

These hints share a common word: would. When you use "would," you tell the reader something about "past you" that "past you" doesn't know yet. For example, you might write, "This was the first of two times I would ever see the ocean turn purple." "Past you" doesn't know that she will see the ocean turn purple only twice in her life; "past you" simply knows that she is watching the ocean turn purple. By projecting future knowledge into the past, we get foreshadowing.

Bringing It Together: Say What, Not Why

Contradictions and foreshadowing both create suspense in the same way: by saying what, not why. We hide the "why it matters" to draw our reader into the story.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

What the Wild Things Know

What Can the Wild Things Teach Us about the College Application Essay?

Quite a bit. If you're feeling nostalgic, go ahead and watch the version of Where the Wild Things Are above, which is narrated by Maurice Sendak. If you have no time for that sort of thing, then keep reading.

Wild Thing College Application Essay Tip #1: Story = Desire + Conflict

Stories are cycles of desire and conflict. Like this:

Here's how the desire-conflict cycle plays out in Where the Wild Things Are. Max desires to act like a wild thing. This desire brings him into conflict with his mother. This conflict creates a new desire in Max: the desire to escape. Max's desire to escape brings him to where the wild things are and into conflict with said wild things. After Max wins this conflict and becomes king, he realizes a desire to return home to where someone loves him best of all. And the story ends with the fulfillment of Max's last desire.

If you're trying to think about how to make your story more exciting, first think about desire. As Kurt Vonnegut observed, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Then think about conflict arising out of that desire.

Wild Thing College Application Essay Tip #2: Story = Home + Away

Stories are also journeys from home to away to back home. Like this:

Here's the home-away cycle in Where the Wild Things Are. Max starts the story at home. He ventures away across his private ocean (must be nice). He fights with some wild things, becomes king, and then realizes it isn't as great as he expected. Then he comes back home. Lots of stories follow this home-away pattern. Lord of the Rings comes to mind, and I'm sure you can think of many more. As you figure out the setting for your story, think about the home-away cycle.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.