Writing Instructions: Key Points In A Reflective Essay
Reflective essay writing is much simpler than other formats. Here you will have to narrate a personal experience and then reflect on it. You will also have to write how the experience has changed your views. Here are a few key points that will help in the process. It is no different than other forms of writing and you will have to follow a linear line of storytelling i.e. you will be writing in the same order as the events unfolded. There are other complex ways of narrating your reflections and pondering but it is best left for a time when you have mastered the linear method of storytelling.
Steps to be followed when writing a reflective essay:
- The first task will be choosing a topic for your paper. Now unlike other sorts of writing where you have to dig for a topic here you can start off with a much simpler theme. It however not recommended starting off with the first title that comes to your mind. Give it some consideration and determine whether you have enough knowledge about the subject to write about it.
- The next stage is finding out more about the incident than you already know. Even when it is self reflection it does not have to come from a personal experience. You can always make it up and as long as you are writing in first person narrative, you are good to go.
- After you have gathered all the information you will have to decide on the format of the paper. You can follow the example of other reflective papers if you want. The basic structure is more or less the same. You will be writing how you felt or your views before the incident took place. Then you will write about the incident followed by your reflection of what happened after. That is the most important part where you will write how the incident changed you and made you reconsider your views.
- After you have made a rough draft of how the paper will be like, you can begin putting all the facts together. Make sure you write in a narrative fashion where one incident will lead to the next. The flow and consistence is very important in this kind of a paper. The reader may feel disoriented if you jump from one recollection to another that has nothing in common with the previous.