An interview with Ethan Sawyer
This is a rough transcript of an audio interview. Listen to the audio here.
MIGNON: Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and today I have an interview with Ethan Sawyer, better known as the College Essay Guy. Even if you’re not writing college essays, Ethan has amazing insights about what makes a great story, and therefore good writing. Each year he helps thousands of students and counselors through his online courses, workshops, articles, podcasts, and books, and he works privately with a small number of lucky students. I recommend his book “College Essay Essentials” to all my friends with kids in high school, but I also just really enjoy talking with him. And I hope you will enjoy listening.
MIGNON: Hey, Ethan. Thanks for being here with me today.
ETHAN: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to talk to you.
MIGNON: You bet. Well, gosh, I’m happy to talk to the College Essay Guy. I have friends whose kids are working on their college essays, and I always recommend your book when I hear of people doing that kind of work. And I think that there’s a lot people can learn about general writing just from the kind of work you do with college essay students too. So why don’t you first give a little background about, you know, how long you’ve been doing this, how you got started, and, like, how people can work with you if they want to.
ETHAN: Sure. Yeah. So this started for me. This was kind of my job out of college. I graduated Northwestern in 2003 and really thought I wanted to study screenwriting and moved with my best friends to Los Angeles. Thinking that that was gonna be my career and got a job helping students, you know, work on their college essays and started applying screenwriting structure and teaching them things like narrative structure and what is an inciting incident and how all that works. And that was kind of fun. And so it started off as just being, like, oh look here are these structures that we can use to say things about ourselves. And then over the last I guess 15 years or so, it’s gotten, the work has gotten deeper and deeper. I’ve, you know, gotten a couple of counseling certificates and started to see how this process I think at its best can can be really therapeutic. And I think that the the deadline of the college essay creates this sense of urgency for students, so they’re being asked to do self self reflection, but on a deadline, and to produce something that in some cases I think can be really healing and help them frame the events of their lives in in meaningful, and I think more important, like in useful ways. And I don’t just mean useful for getting into college but, like, understanding what’s important to you and how those values were shaped is, I think, can be really empowering. And so that’s part of why I love this work and I’m still doing it.
MIGNON: That’s great. So you know I imagine most of my listeners aren’t actually writing college essays right now, but it seems like the lessons could apply to other kinds of writing too. So how else do you think the story structure and the things that you teach…what else are they applicable for.
ETHAN: Oh for sure. So I’m going to go, like, heart level first, and then I’m gonna go like head level. So on a heart level, one of the exercises that I love to use, which I think is just a useful exercise for just about anybody, is a simple…I call it the essence objects exercise.
ETHAN: And for folks who are interested in just, you know, finding out for example they’re doing, like, memoir writing or reflecting on what’s personally important to them, it’s generating a list of here are different objects in my life that are somehow connected to a deeper relationship or a memory or, you know, an essence in my life. So one of those for example for me would be like the friendship bracelet that my wife weaves for me each year, and that I’m wearing on my wrist right now, and it represents to me some of my deeper values of, like, my connection to her and ritual because she, like, weaves a new one for me, you know, each year, and it’s sort of, like, in thinking about these essence…these objects, and I could like look around my room right now and go, like, oh these beads that are sitting here that represents my reminder even though I don’t always do it to meditate and in thinking about these objects adn what they mean to us, suddenly we start to see these objects actually have created or are connected to much deeper parts of me. And then the follow up exercise to that is a really simple two minute exercise where I give folks a list of values and I ask them to identify what are your top 10 values.
ETHAN: And if you had to just do that in two minutes it creates again that sense of urgency it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like forced growth the sense of, like, Quick! What what do you care about? And then when you start to pair the objects with the values. You start to go and use…what it does is it starts to kind of do what I think great writing does and, you know, T.S. Eliot once said that like you know he talked about objective correlatives, right? This is a concrete object that we correlate to different, you know, he talked about emotions, but I think in terms of the college essay process or in teams or in terms of just writing about yourself being able to decode those symbols whether it’s an image or a memory and start to think about well, what is the value that that relates to for me. I think can be a really powerful powerful thing. So on a heart level those are two of the exercises that I love to do with folks, and then I like my grandmother really liked that exercise and I did it with her so…
ETHAN: So and then folks can Google those those essence objects and values exercise just because it gives items like well how do I find out about that, but not on a head level.
MIGNON: You have some examples on your website I think don’t you? Is it…
ETHAN: Totally.
MIGNON: Yeah.
ETHAN: And it’s.
Totally.
MIGNON: CollegeEssayGuy.com?
ETHAN: CollegeEssayGuy.com, and there’s like a free one-hour guide that will…for folks who are interested in just doing self explain…like self…like personal statement writing or just thinking about, you know, what what’s meaningful to them in their lives. That’s a really easy way to do it.
ETHAN: And then on it like on a head level…
Yeah, go ahead.
MIGNON: I was just going to say if people want to see more concrete examples go there.
ETHAN: Yeah. There are bunches of examples. If you just Google “personal statement examples college essay guy,” you’ll find some good ones.
MIGNON: OK.
ETHAN: And then on the on the head level, like in terms of helping folks figure out, like, what their writing is trying to do. There’s a really simple exercise that I hit on, and this is gonna sound super basic, but a student emailed me once and she was like “Hey I need to find the flow of my ideas,” and you know, some students I’d like to say are like gardeners where they have, like, the seed of an idea, and they will, like, water it and see what comes up. So that’s kind of like a bottom up way of working, and some are more architects where they need to see the outline and need to know what’s going in the paragraphs and then they can start. And I think, you know, any of us can be either of those kinds. But here’s a kind of, like, an architect style exercise to use is to just basically highlight the first sentence in bold of each paragraph and read it aloud to yourself.
ETHAN: And I know that’s going to start sounding like well you’re just saying, “Yeah. Clarify your topic sentences,” but when it comes to identifying what is each paragraph or what I like to say each chunk of the piece I’m writing trying to do. That’s a great way of doing it. Another secondary part of that is like just highlighting the last sentence in bold and just reading that aloud. And that can lead to really, I think that leads to clearer thinking which I think can lead to clearer writing because there will be times when, like, paragraphs 2 and 3, like, seemed to connect pretty well, and then suddenly 3 and 4 don’t quite. And it’s, like, well why is that. And it’s, like, well the way I’m leading into it doesn’t quite make sense based on what I’ve just said. And so that’s a simple, you know, head type exercise that I think can be applied to students have told me like “Yeah this this help me with all my writing.” So I think that’s a useful one.
MIGNON: Excellent. Well, I know when I have to tackle a big new project like that and maybe something I haven’t exactly had to write before, getting started is a huge barrier for me. How do you, how do you, I mean…I guess the student’s schedule time with you, but in other you have any other advice for just getting over that initial terrifying first step.
ETHAN: Yeah, so a few different things. Usually it’s like I think we get caught in thinking about what our first impression is gonna be. It’s kind of like I described like, you know, getting trying to get dressed and pleasing everybody. Like trying to pick the color, you know, shirt or blouse or, you know, pants that everybody’s going to like, and it’s like I think we get trapped in sort of they thinking, and I think that’s what sometimes leads to writer’s block. And so what I really encourage folks to think about is, like, what is what’s gonna happen in the middle. Like what are some interesting phrases or things that you want to get in. So I mean when it comes to for example writing about yourself, you know there’s a great scene from this movie. Have you seen “Inside Out”? I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this.
MIGNON: Yeah.
ETHAN: So there’s this moment in the movie where Joy the, you know, the main character who’s inside… if you’ve never seen this movie, she’s inside this 12-year-old girl’s head and she represents the emotion of joy. And there are all these other emotions inside the head running around, and she describes something called core memories. And she says these core memories come from really important times in Riley’s life. Riley being the girl in the movie whose brain she’s inside of.
ETHAN: And you watch this, like, yellow ball kind of trickle through this, you know, this representation of her mind. And each one of these, Joy says, basically creates what what she calls one of the islands of her personality. And so one of the things that I can really find it, find useful in terms of thinking about personal writing is thinking about what are the islands of my personality, which is to say, what are these oftentimes what are these core values that are really important to me. And it could be something like, you know, honesty or it could be something like diversity or social justice. And sometimes those are linked to core memories, like I have a particular moment that I can point to where social justice first became like a thing for me, you know. Or it could be that there’s like an area of my life that I’m just interested in and saying some stuff about. And so oftentimes rather than thinking about how do we get started, I ask folks to think about OK well what are some of the things that you know, we’re like if you imagine this is a movie, what are some of the scenes in the movie.
ETHAN: And you start to piece together three to five of these, like, scenes and sometimes then the opening will reveal itself. And so I’m kind of sidestepping your question by going “Don’t think about it too much,” but in terms of actually thinking about you know what is the opening, I often think that folks just need more stuff, like, oftentimes they’re working from sort of incomplete pieces, like we don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet, and we’re trying to like, you know, pluck something out of thin air, and I think that’s dangerous because oftentimes we get trapped with, like, an opening that we really love but that isn’t like elastic enough, which is to say like stretching enough, to talk about all the cool stuff that we want to do in the middle of the piece of writing whether it’s again, like, a personal piece of writing or or even something you’re, that you’re critiquing if you’re having to like you know, critique a piece of literature or a movie, you know, being able to understand what are those important things in the middle that I want to say. I think that can more often lead us to the opening.
MIGNON: OK, we’re going to take a quick break for our sponsors, and when we come back, Ethan is going to tell us about some of his favorite essays, and the four main types of essays that he says hold something for every student.
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And now, back to our interview.
MIGNON: What are some of your favorite examples of essays that you’ve worked on with people?
ETHAN: So last year, a student that I met with was was talking about these different areas of her life, and she kept using the word “home,” and I was like you keep saying “home” like where do you find home? And she gave me, like, four to five different examples and I was like Whoa. She’s like “Do you think that could be a…” I use this term “focusing lens,” which is like an organizing principle. And I was like, “I think that’d be rad.” And so she wrote this home essay. And in each paragraph, she identified a place that she found comfort and basically expressed and explored her core values. So that one was cool. That’s what I call like the montage structure. And then in terms of the narrative structure, which is basically a student overcoming a challenge. There was an amazing essay by a student I worked with a few years ago who was undocumented, and in the opening of his essay he reveals he just basically focused on one of his essence objects, which was like a tube of toothpaste that he held in his hand on the day that his dad was taken away for domestic abuse. And so as like, this loud commotion was happening, he’s just like focusing intently on this tube of toothpaste. And he ends that paragraph with like you know, we did what we had to do.
ETHAN: Meaning like he and his brother and his mom kind of coped, and then there’s this theme in the essay of, like, doing what he had to do just to kind of get by. And then it shifts in the middle of the story to talk about how without a father figure he had to learn to become resourceful, and he gives this beautiful, like, list of things that he had to learn to do. Like I had to learn how to talk to girls and learn how to, you know, fix my shoes. And then at the end, I’m kind of spoiling it but it’s I think it’s okay, that he says you know, there’s so much that I’ve been able to do, because he ends up just being a rock star and learning a whole bunch of stuff, but he says there’s so much that I have yet to do. I have yet to like solve a Rubik’s cube and see the World Trade Center. And it’s…that was connected to his core value of like hunger. He really wanted to get that into his essay, and then the ending of this essay says and “I’ll get to do these things not because I have to but because I choose to.”
ETHAN: And so that value of, you know, autonomy comes through really clearly there at the end. And so I really love when this is going back to that narrative structure when a student has been in a certain situation, you know, we call that the “status quo” when we can really see that growth and there’s a clear line or image at the end that gives us a sense of of where that student has has ended up. And another quick resource that folks can check out if they’re like hearing that and going oh, I’d like to write a something about some of the challenges I’ve faced. There’s an exercise that you can Google what’s called a feelings and needs exercise and it’s an exercise based on nonviolent communication strategies that that student used to write that essay. And then I think in about 15 minutes can help you map out a personal statement or story that I actually think can be useful for job interviews and for so many other different things. You know when people say, like, what’s your story? That I think, that’s an exercise. It can help people figure out how do their experiences affect them. And how did they met…I like to say metabolize those experiences? Like how did they process those and turn them into something valuable.
MIGNON: Well, yeah, that story just gave me shivers, and I imagine, if I remember right you know, I mean some students will have had extraordinary circumstances in their lives and others may have had kind of dull boring. If I remember right you have something like a quadrant that helps them identify, sort of, which kind of story, your story structure, they can tell depending on what they have to work from in their lives.
ETHAN: Totally yeah. So once a student has gone through some brainstorming process, and I mean I give them the essence objects and values exercise and then there are a couple others in that free guide that I mentioned, then it’s time to talk about structure and in terms of structuring I asked two questions. One is have you faced challenges in your life? And there is a separate question about whether you want to write about them or not, but the first question is just like how do you face challenges or not? And then the second question is do you have a vision for your future? Like do you know what I want to be or do? And the answer to those two questions map out on the four types. So the four types of…I call it the four types of essays: Type A, we’ve got a student who has faced challenges and who knows what they want to study or do and who wants to write about both those things because that’s an important caveat that we can talk about in a second. And the Type B category, we’ve got students who have not faced challenges or choose not to write about them but do have some sense of what they want to do in the future and want to write about it. C is basically yes challenges don’t know or don’t wanna write about the future, and type D is no challenges and don’t know what to do in the future.
ETHAN: And all of those are totally great and awesome, and I’d say probably most essays end up in that D category where students aren’t writing about their challenges and aren’t writing about what they want to do or study in the future. But I think each one of those kind of takes a different approach. And sometimes when students go through that, they start to feel shame because of just the framing of like, oh I haven’t faced challenges. And to those students, I want to say, don’t worry there is an approach for you, and same to the students who don’t. What they want to study in the future like there is an approach for you. And just broadly speaking if you write about a challenge the next step is, I think, that feelings and needs exercise to sort of see how that challenge has, you know, manifest in your life. And then for the montage, you know, students who are writing about basically anything but challenges, it’s kind of like or anything else that I have these this other exercise which is called the montage exercise, which helps you figure out what are–to use the “Inside Out” metaphor–what are the islands of your personality, and then what is an organizing principle that can sort of help connect those different parts of who you are.
ETHAN: So those are the the four types and broadly speaking those the way those paths can map out.
MIGNON: Wow. I find myself wondering how many essays you’ve read in your life, and do you feel like you’ve read as many as as college admissions counselors or maybe fewer, but…
ETHAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
ETHAN: I mean, so you know they’re they’re churning through some of them like you know, on my own podcasts I had an interview with Park Muth who read for Virginia for years, and he’s like here’s what I’ve learned from reading over 10,000 essays. And so I imagine it’s probably under 10,000. But I think it’s probably more than like three or four thousand, so if I had to like gut check guess it’s probably somewhere between four in ten.
MIGNON: Yeah.
ETHAN: But, and some students like it’s funny…It depends what you mean by essays because it could be drafts like some students will go through six drafts and some, one student that it was trying to write about her love of makeup and was trying to like work against the stigma that’s often attached to make up, sent me a draft that was like draft 21, and I don’t think you should necessarily write 21 drafts of your essay, but some students like work that hard on it. So I guess in that sense I don’t think I read all 21 drafts, but I would count that as like multiple college essays, just because of the different iterations I went through.
MIGNON: Right. And I get you’re probably reading them much more deeply than the people who are reading them once their final because they they have so many to go through they’re probably just reading them quite quickly and putting them into like a yes/no file.
ETHAN: Yeah.
ETHAN: And that’s, that’s what, I’m you know, my friends you read for the University of California for example call it “shoe making” sometimes because they’re like just jamming through so fast and reading the applications within a few minutes, and you know which raises the question certainly like well if they’re reading them through this fast, like what’s the point? What’s the point of, you know, spending so much time and trying to craft these? And my answer to that is, like, if you’re having someone over for dinner, you know, and you knew that they were going to have to eat fast. Yeah, maybe you would jam and, like, do it really quickly but there is something to be said for, like, taking time to like craft something because I think that readers even though they are reading fast, they are super tasters, and they can read through and know what they’re looking for and know if it’s a well-written well crafted thing even if they’re not getting every single nuance that you want them to get. And they’re, like, that’s this is what they’re trained to do right. And so I think it’s really worth it, not just on a for-getting-into-college level but on a personal level because I think that you can learn a ton about yourself and a ton about writing in this in this like sweet spot of time. you know, that for for students is oftentimes a period of great great growth and development.
MIGNON: I know that when you’re writing a novel they say the first page is is critically important. You know someone might just look at that and decide whether to read your book or buy your book. Do you feel like the first paragraph is maybe extra important in an essay like that?
ETHAN: Sometimes. I mean I say that because some of my favorite essays like it was that as you say the meaty middle that was like really the thing for me.
ETHAN: And I don’t care too much like I read the opening I’m like. It’s fine, but it’s that middle that just crushes it and all that. Or that final line that’s just amazing. I think, and I think part of the reason I say that is I think there’s sometimes too much an emphasis on finding that perfect hook. And I think it really stresses kids out, you know, and they’re kind of like I gotta find that perfect first line. And like I said that I think that oftentimes leads students to, like, over like, falling in love with with an opening that may not be elastic enough to talk, and I think I said this, but like you know to talk about other parts of themselves. So yes, it’s great to have an awesome first sentence or a first paragraph even, but I don’t think it’s like a hundred percent necessary for the personal statement. I will say though for the “why this college” essay, which is like a very particular. How are you and this school a perfect match? in which some schools care more about than even the personal statement. I think that first paragraph is super important, and I think the first impression that you make, like, if you start off by saying you know, I can’t wait to go to USC because it’s in Los Angeles, it’s kind of like, or I’m excited to study abroad, which is another misstep because it’s like I can’t wait to show up at your school so that I can take off, you know, I think that instead, you know, giving for example a specific academic thing that’s particular to that school can make a great first impression, and I think actually the first impression matters a little bit more in that in that particular essay definitely.
MIGNON: So are there other kinds of essays or personal essay? Why you this school essay? or are there any other kinds that you work with a lot.
ETHAN: Yeah, for sure. So there’s, like, the extra curricular activity essay, which I think also the narrative and montage structure is useful. So some students, for example, have worked on a community service project, let’s say they have been trying to create a recycling program in their school, and if they use a narrative structure then, you know, that might be sound something like “here’s a problem that we were trying to tackle and here’s what we did to tackle it.” And then here was the impact of that and that could be a great structure for that. And that actually works for whether you’re writing about soccer or Model United Nations or debate any of those extracurricular activities if you can identify a problem that you’re trying to solve and shows how you worked through it that can be really cool. Oftentimes though students don’t have that. So I again suggest that montage style and just thinking about, OK, based on this activity, whatever it was, whether it’s wrestling or my you know Girl Scout Gold Award, like what are the islands of my personality that this thing ended up helping me connect with. Like how did, you know, we’re doing debate for example, help you realize the importance of diversity or healthy boundaries or you know democracy? And I and I’m kind of mentioning uncommon values because I think oftentimes students will start with some common values like “Basketball taught me hard work discipline and perseverance,” and I think that those values are going to blend in, right? That’s going to be it’s going to sound just like every other essay. So the frame that I offer for that is like a boring essay chooses a common topic, makes common connections.
ETHAN: In other words common values and uses common language. Whereas a more interesting essay is going to, if possible, choose an uncommon topic, make uncommon connections, and use uncommon language. And for students or folks who are listening or know maybe parents and going “Well all we’ve got to write about is soccer,” which is a common topic, then I think it’s all the more important to make those uncommon connections because the reader is going to be reading a hundred soccer essays. And so, you know, what’s gonna be more interesting? The one that’s on hard work, discipline, perseverance or the one that that is about, you know, like I said healthy boundaries or how soccer helped me connect with spirituality, or the environment, you know? And so those kind of connections make for more interesting paragraphs. And I joke that like, you know, better ingredients, better pizza. And your connections that you’re making, those uncommon connections, are like up leveling the ingredients in your pizza essay. And you know, by doing that that’s what’s going to provide the thing..something like what we call insight, and maybe like your readers just had an experience of that when I just use the metaphor of like “better ingredients better pizza.” It’s like, O”h I see how that applies to like college essays,” If you got that when I said that just now, that’s an example of like insight, where I’m using kind of like I’m making an uncommon connection. And so that’s a great thing to strive for whether it’s your personal statement or one of these supplements.
MIGNON: Great. Well, to finish up I’m curious you’ve been doing this for so long, and when you started you were coming at it from a screenwriting perspective. Do you still think that writing essays is a lot like writing screenplays?
ETHAN: In some sense yeah, I mean because I think that storytelling and in particular this kind of like…I will call it “creative nonfiction.” I think that thinking visually and thinking about this is like a short movie can be really useful. And I think that’s true and in personal writing as well, right? Like what are these images and what do they mean? And I think that that’s basically what movies are doing. ETHAN: Like you’re basically creating a montage of these series of images, and what’s exciting for the viewer or exciting for the reader is the space between the images or in personal writing the space between whatever image you’ve presented and the insight that you’ve gained. And it’s that, like, that exciting, like, mental leap that you’re making. And the ways that you’re making those mental leaps that are, that are going to bring the reader in. And that’s why I’m such a fan of, like, show first and then tell. Like students oftentimes have been trained to tell first, like give me the thesis and then show me some examples. And for personal writing, I think it’s often flipped. So yeah, on the sense of like it being a visual art form, I think it’s a useful. I think it’s a useful analogy, but I think as I’ve gotten older, the more and more that I’ve seen, that you know that’s sort of like the sort of presenting thing, that’s the how. What’s most interesting to me about this process is is the way that it allows students to dig dig deep, you know, and ask really tough questions about themselves and the world. And I think that’s, that’s why it’s, it’s so much more than a college essay. That’s the feedback I often get. It’s like, “Wow, this was a lot more than just like applying to college,” and I’m like “Yeah.” And then when they say that I’m, like I feel like you get something about me and about why why I love this work.
MIGNON: I’ve always like your insights were incredibly valuable. So if you…
Oh, thanks.
MIGNON: If these people want to learn more from you, what’s the best way for them to find you?
ETHAN: Yeah, it’s really easy. Just collegeessayguy.com, and there’s a bunch of stuff there. I’ve got courses. All my courses to “pay what you can,” which is one of my core values is like access. And so one of the things that I really want folks to know is that all my resources are free and anything on there is “pay what you can,” which which, which you know take that at…that’s like a sincere offer, and there’s a bunch of, you know, podcasts there’s a bunch of guides for like pretty much every part of the process. So, yeah.
MIGNON: Wonderful. Thanks Ethan.