✏️🛠️ 7 Keys to Writing a Compelling Personal Essay About Your Family

There's nothing more challenging than putting our love (and, well... other emotions) for family members into words. Here's what to keep in mind when writing the most delicate kind of memoir.

Illustration by Alice Yu Deng

Everyone has a fascinating family story — those dramatic pieces of family lore that we tell over and over again (or that we’ve kept bottled up and are now ready to tell for the first time!). But how do you figure out which stories will resonate with other people? Next month, at Narratively Academy, Kerra Bolton leads Summer Writing Workshop: Mastering Personal Essays About Family. Today, Kerra joins us for a look at how choosing the right topic, framing and storytelling devices can catapult your family story to publication and captivate readers while remaining authentic to your emotional experiences.

1. Choose Moments That Matter

Weddings, births, deaths and illnesses are all meaningful family moments. However, the right moments for personal essays are events that have left a lasting impact on you or your family relationships. It’s not just what happened, but what those events have meant to you and your family. This might be how your parents met, how the wh…