College essays is all we do.
We want to help. We’re Pity the Applicant. We use the techniques of fiction writing to help students turn material from their own lives into compelling personal essays. The techniques come from fiction; the stories come from life.
We’re offering a free, one-hour Zoom talk. Invite your college-bound seniors and college-obsessed juniors (and their parents). We’ll explore three connected elements of writing—first lines, scene, and detail—and how students can use them to tell a story all their own.
The editor Gordon Lish called the first line the “attack sentence”; it’s where writers have the chance to establish their voice and arrest the reader’s attention. For a college essay, it’s also a chance to sound like yourself from the start.
We’ll look at how an opening can draw a reader in—and give the writer somewhere to go.
Scene-writing is a valuable skill because it allows a reader to live in the world you’re describing—but how do you go about building a scene? We’ll talk about the raw materials involved and how you put them together.
We’ll explore this tricky craft element so that writers wind up giving readers something true to experience, not just bland information to absorb.
The way someone folds a napkin, a stain on the wall in the shape of New Jersey, that one thing your mom always says before she gets on a plane: these aren’t just details, they’re little gifts for the reader to unpack.
We’ll explore what writers call “authenticating details”—the particulars that make a person or a moment believable—and how students can find them in their own lives.
One talk, with practical advice students can take back to a blank page or a draft in progress. We want your college-bound students to leave the hour excited to write.
Schuman has years of experience as a creative writing teacher and directed a top MFA program. He understands what it takes for a piece of writing to shine among hundreds of others. There’s nothing he likes better than helping young writers find their own unique voices. His short stories and personal essays have been published in many magazines and anthologies.
Koch holds an MFA and founded an award-winning literary journal. He taught literature and writing at several colleges for over a decade before going to law school. At federal clerkships, he wrote decisions for judges; at white-shoe law firms, he wrote briefs for clients. Across those different forms, the work has always been writing. Dave’s unique approach to coaching helps students find material they didn’t realize they had.
, and we’ll work out the details. The college essay comes with enough pressure; we’ll make the writing part feel more possible.