How to Background an Anecdote

(Includes 5 writing examples at the bottom!)

If you’ve done your homework on how to write an effective college application essay, you probably know the place to start is with your real-life stories.

The idea is to find moments, incidents and experiences from your past that illustrate a larger point you want to make about yourself in your essay.

Often, the best place to share an engaging mini-story (also called an anecdote) is at the very start of your piece.

The anecdote (mini-story) serves to “hook” or grab your reader’s interest at the start—something you always want in a standout application essay.

However, once you share that little moment, incident or mini-story (anecdote) that you have plucked out of time with little to no introduction, where do you go after that first paragraph or two?

When working with students on using this approach in personal essays, I advise them to take the reader back to the beginning and give some context to the moment they described in the anecdotal introduction.

HERE’S HOW YOU USE A RECORD SCRATCH

Recently, a student I was working with helped me discover a new way to explain this “backgrounding” of the anecdote.

When I told him about the process of rewinding that moment to describe the broader context of what it meant, he said, “Oh, you mean it’s like in a movie after something big happens, and they stop the action with a record scratch or freeze the frame, and someone says, “Oh! You are probably wondering how I got here?”

Exactly! I told him.

 

Watch This Clip to See Record Scratch in Action

In movies from the ’80s and ’90s, and even earlier, a cliche trope was to use what’s called the “Record Scratch” or “Freeze Frame” after the initial exciting moment (often plucked from the middle of the storyline; a device described in writing circles as en media res) to indicate the shift back to the beginning of the story’s timeline to explain how it all started.

I know all this writing lingo and terminology can start to sound confusing. But it’s actually really simple:

Start a personal, narrative-style essay by retelling something that happened to you, in a paragraph or two at the most (called an anecdote).

Use fiction-writing techniques, such as setting the scene with a few sensory details and including a line of dialogue (someone saying something.) Watch my short video on How to Write an Anecdote!

The moment or incident will only have lasted over the course of a few minutes.

There is little to no build-up or explanation; you start as close to the crucial point of action as possible.

Then, in the following paragraph, you shift gears (Can you hear the needle scratch a vinyl record–the Record Scratch?) and take the reader back to “It all started when….”

In this paragraph you explain the context and meaning of that moment or incident you started with as an anecdote.

Get it?

Here’s how it works in a personal essay:

1. Anecdote that recounts something that happened to you
2. Record Scratch: Shift BACK IN TIME so you can start at the beginning and explain what it means.

3. You then continue with your essay to explore, examine, analyze, reflect upon more about that thing that happened and how it           reveals something about how you are, your personality and character.

4. A big part of the rest of the essay is more introspective, where you dig deeper to think about and share what you learned about yourself in the process of whatever happened.

5. Wrap it up.

I think you will get this process if you read some examples.

Here are the starts of FIVE sample essays from my collection, Heavenly Essays, written mainly by former students who used this approach. I identified the ANECDOTE and RECORD SCRATCH/BACKGROUND in red text: