A Guide on how to craft a creative, reflective essay example
As a high school or college student, you will encounter a wide range of different academic courses, including a reflection essay. When writing this piece, you critically examine your experiences and reflect. Therefore, you should prepare with the necessary tips to craft a top-notch reflective essay. You can also consider online creative writing reflective essay examples.
For instance, here is a detailed guide to help you create an impressive article easily and fast. With its guidance, you get to understand creative writing, reflective essay examples, or illustration. Sure, you ought to polish up on how to choose and write a self-reflection piece. It also reveals the purpose and other tips to consider when writing an original reflective article.
What is a reflective essay?
Generally, a reflective essay talks about experiences or events. Here you analyze the incident, its meaning and the lessons learned. The essay format needs you to open up your thinking aptitude and emotions to paint a picture of background, personality, mindset and traits of character. Besides, your reflective article should capture a description of the event as you explain your feelings, thoughts, and reactions.
Furthermore, creative reflective essays are very subjective with a vivid summary of skills and personal. They must maintain a formal tone that a large percentage understands. Moreover, you should organize your thoughts in a certain manner to wow the reader. Remember that you should make the audience feel the experience from the bottom of their hearts.
Most writers take the reflective paper as a personal opinion because you share personal ideas and thoughts. In most cases, you can perform this piece in form of a movie, play or any other artwork. Besides, this essay does not require extensive research as its focus is more on personal experience assertion and reflection.
How to write an excellent reflective article
Pre-writing tips
Since you have a clear picture of what is a reflective essay, you should figure out how to craft one. As a student, you should study to understand how to connect reflective piece paragraphs. You can start by coming up with a decent plan to develop your work. Sure, this creates a clear view on further development of your essay.
Crafting a reflective article is a great chance to enhance your creativity as well as general writing skills. Sometimes it can be quite challenging and confusing to write a great piece. However, you should go in sequence to get everything right. Below are tips to consider for you to start and write a perfect essay.
Choose a Topic Carefully
Above all, this is a vital step to a great piece of writing. Most of the academic essay instructors provide a topic while others leave it for you. If you are offered the chance to come up with a suitable topic go for the good and trending ideas. Indeed, this will capture the reader’s attention before you begin your discussion.
Besides, when writing a reflective essay, make sure you pick a topic that is not too narrow or too broad. Such topics will take you nowhere. For that reason, always choose a topic that you’re interested on, not broad, not narrow but has a focused appeal.
Study your subject
Just like any other piece of writing you need to study on the picked topic. Close your eyes and remember, watch, read, imagine or listen. In other words, you ought to spend a few minutes re-experiencing or thinking about your subject. Think of how the event will turn out.
You can also ask yourself how it affected or didn’t affect your life and the reason behind. Ask yourself how you feel about such experience as it helps create a strong thesis. Moreover, it will serve well as a focal point of your article. Gather all the information related to the selected topic.
Brainstorm
Once you have all the information, it is time to write down what you think about your subject. You need to describe your topic as vividly as you can. For that reason, think about tastes, smell, taste alongside what you see and noises. Come up with vivid adjectives describing these kinds of experiences. Make sure you answer the selected question.
Likewise, you need to recognize your experience meaning since it is the thesis statement. Look up some sense while describing words for help. Note down as much phrases or sentences on the topic question as you can. At the end, they turn up into a paragraph. Sometimes you may overlook what you note down but it can be very useful.
Write a draft
Well, this is one of the sections where many fail as it may seem unnecessary. You need to make a mind map as it draws a circle around your question. Create a proper plan or structure through a precise outline. Think of it like a road-map to a top-notch essay. Specialists recommend that you write a detailed sketch out including all the crucial paper elements.
Identify your main ideas and arguments to support your thesis statement. Moreover, this helps the reader follow the evolution of your experiences and thoughts throughout the essay. Ensure you group your ideas into paragraphs to write later. Creating this kind of flow diagram enables you to see the overall structure more clearly.
Finally, make a decision on the logical sequence of the highlighted sections and arrange them accordingly. It also saves time since the outline serves as the essay skeleton. Besides, you will have tremendous amount of time because you are familiar with what you need to present. You’ll also be able to allocate more editing time to ensure it is of a higher standard.
Writing tips
Since you have a clear outline and a sequential flow of ideas, it’s time to present what you have been preparing. It can be considerably different from the other types of essays mostly because of the varying subjects. However, what remains the same is that you must begin with an introduction, body and conclusion.
The introduction
Just like any other article, a reflective essay must start with an introduction. It must include the hook and thesis statements. Besides, it should be brief, informative and catchy enough to capture reader’s attention right from the beginning. Portray the interesting and exciting aspects in the first paragraph to stand the best chance to grab audience mind.
The thesis statement reveals summary of the entire essay. For instance, in this piece you will focus more on a particular experience and one that influenced your success. Do not forget to give a clear and quick review of your skills. As this is your chance to map your ability, discuss as much reasonable points as possible. However, do not exaggerate your experiences because they leave the reader disinterested.
Body
Since you have completed the introduction part, it is time to move to the body. Sure, this is the largest section of writing a creative reflective essay example. Pay a close attention and present what you promised in the beginning. Here, present your experiences in a detailed manner but not in a long story of pointless words. The key factor in the body part is to spend plenty of effort and time to plan your self-reflective essay.
Besides, try to adopt a chronological approach. Meaning you should touch upon everything as it happened in time. Sure, this kind of reflection ensures that your work is more coherent and systematic. Working in a sequential manner prevents you from presenting a messy recall of your skills. Always, keep in mind that it is not compulsory for a creative reflective essay to be linear. Just lay out crucial elements of your experience in a certain order. It helps you see how to put your narrative together.
Likewise, ensure your essay’s body is well focused, and contains the necessary reflection and review. The body must cover not only a summary of your experience but also explore the impact of these skills in real life. It should also reflect on the lessons you learned from such experience. In other words, you should emphasize more on reflection unlike to summation. Remember, a reflective essay provides the reader with insight of personality, your skills and the ability to survive of adapt certain situations.
The end
Here comes the last part of writing a creative reflective essay example. It should focus more on summarizing the points made throughout the piece and the lessons learned from the experience. Moreover, include some of the points on how and why your behavior or attitude changed. Also talk about the effect on your skills and character.
For example, speak out of what conclusions you can draw from your problem-solving skills. What to conclude about your approach to particular situations? Talk about what you can do differently in similar situations in future. Also, note the steps you have to consolidate all the lessons you learned from past experience. Remember that the instructor will look out for reflection evidence at a high standard.
You should end your paper in an effective way. Besides if you craft a great wrap-up, you will show how you are an expert in your story. Moreover, try to leave a picture or something for reader to mull over with the final message.
Post-writing tips
As any other kind of articles, you have to read, edit and re-read. Take a break after completing the first draft, even if it’s a day or two and proofread your work. Sure, this enables you to have a fresh point of view. It does not matter how many you read through your piece. After all, you are after good grades and experience in essay writing. Remember, that your article will be worthless if you submit it with errors.
Revise your work to fix punctuation mistake, misused words, grammar errors, logical errors and typos. In this section, do not be in a hurry. Take all the time you need to polish up your piece but do not submit the essay late because of editing. Consider online editing services to check grammar in your text.
What to write in a reflective paper
Since crafting a creative reflective essay you talk about personal experience, choose whatever you like. Sure, think of it as a diary where you write your thoughts about a specific event in your life. It can also be a topic that makes you think more about a book or a place. Besides, here some of creative topics you can use to write a self-reflection piece.
- It can be a place you have been. A good example is the mountains, desert, beach, a museum, countryside, a special room or hideaway, your home or a relative’s home.
- Also you can talk about life-altering events such as a special date, new experience, something new, a failure or success in something.
- Similarly, you can focus on recurring or important thoughts. Indeed this can be dreams, a talk you wish to have or you had with someone or a strong emotion. You can also reflect on an embarrassing moment, a person you would like to be or a story about yourself.
- An impactful experience like a movie, book, song, play, T.V, social media posts, article or magazine, vacation, or a concert.
- You can also focus on important people like family members, your best friends, someone who upset you, a life coach or teacher.
- Consider public speaking. People are either bad or good at public speaking. So, talk about how you felt to address a group of people.
- You can also talk about moving away or into a college. Try to reveal how the move affected your life. Still, talk about what you learned in the college and has it helped you become the person you are.
- Likewise you can discuss about your first year in college. Sure, this is a large event full of self-reflection.
Other tips to consider in creative writing reflective essay examples
- Do not be too personal. Although a creative writing reflective essay focuses more on personal experiences, always remember that you are writing an academic paper and not a memo to a comrade. In other words, do not write an autobiography.
- Do not talk about all your life experiences in only one essay. Instead, pick the most crucial or touching moments.
- Similarly, do not try to write all of your ideas in one paragraph. Compose your mind and come up with an outline or a road map which gives a clear direction and continuous flow of thoughts.
- In any case, don’t make your piece a free-flowing analysis. You don’t have to include all your unstructured insights and ideas. Instead, sort out your thoughts in a sequential order.
- Above all, make sure you follow the outlined structure as it results to an organized, coherent essay. Remember that the main objective is to capture the reader’s interests.
- Do not be too informal. Creative writing reflective essay examples keep a formal tone. Sure, you should use the first-person narrative. To get a feel for tone and format, read widely on other self-reflection articles. It can be from a magazine or a newspaper.
- Ensure you support every point you write about a certain event or experience. For instance, you can describe how the events impacted your life. Use specifics rather than vague words to convey your story.
- Besides, consider starting your essay with an anecdote, other techniques like flashbacks or a specific quote to capture reader’s attention.
Useful tips to create an excellent reflection essay
Make sure you use your vocabulary carefully to express your emotions and feelings clearly.
- Remember, creative writing reflective examples have a descriptive component with a wide range of adjectives to reflect.
Avoid words such as ‘okay’ and ‘nice’ because they don’t offer a reliable insight on your personality and feelings. For that reason, try as much as possible to be specific to make your essay more engaging. Also do not use abbreviations.
- Besides, be honest with your opinions and feelings. Keep in mind that this is a reflective essay, and it is the place to admit your thoughts without any consequence. As you craft your article, remember that your instructor expects a deep reflection not a simple review.
To show a deep expression, go beyond the descriptive part. Likewise, ensure your piece is critical about experience as well as response. In your analysis, make reliable judgments.
- Ask yourself questions reflecting on your experience. What exactly did you learn from your incident? How successful are you after the event? Think about how the past experiences differ from current. You ought to show the deference between the two situations. Remember, the main aim is to produce an effective and efficient reflective essay.
- Furthermore, do fail to use a variety of punctuation as they keep your piece dynamic.
- Since you need to awaken the reader’s attention, use imagery style to create a vivid picture of your event.
- Remember to keep recap the lessons you learned from that specific event.
- A typical reflection essay can be about 300 to 700 words. However, make sure you confirm with your instructor about the word count.
The purpose of creative writing reflective essay examples
Generally, teachers and tutors assign these type of essay to make scholars think about what they learned class and to boost their writing experience. In fact, most of the internship students must write a reflective piece. Apart from school task, self-reflection essays are also used in professional sphere. Here is how students and experts use this type of articles.
Medical students
As medical students, you will have to write about all the patients you see. The reflective essay is the key as it describes the patient and thoughts while determining the correct treatment. Students often reflect on how they interacted with patients and draw conclusions on what helped or what failed. Sure, this builds a better communication scheme with the sick.
Doctors
Similarly, doctors use the reflective essay to boost their ability to offer effective healthcare. As a result, patients develop the sense to believe and follow doctor’s advice. Self-reflection article reveals how well their body language is, words, and the tone which convinced a certain patient to make good lifestyle changes. Still, it shows how a doctor helped a patient deal with a particular sickness.
Nurses
Medical assistants such as nurses write about their patients. By considering different cases and response to patient’s wishes, nurses are able to know how to help with illness, pain or stress. Besides, this type of essay helps the nurses conquer stress as they handle both doctors and patients requests.
Teachers
The reflective essay helps teachers do a case study for each learner and teach experiences to their students. They can also review their emotions about teaching. Similarly, they can examine patterns of what worked or didn’t. Teachers can also plan their lessons and take care of problems with students.
Social workers
Likewise, social workers can use this sort of essay to analyze the environment and problems associated with clients. They can also motivate the ir clients to note their skills. Sure, this helps them see the effects and causes of a certain situation or behavior and see how to change.
Business people
Investors use this sort of essay to examine and analyze their interactions all through a business setting. In this way, it helps them come up with a plan to better their goods and services.
Learning
Sometimes, instructors will ask you to respond to a particular lecture or other institution assignment to show what you understand. Writing about what you study creates a sense of sharing and interacting with other student or instructor.
Personal benefit
Sure, this is the sort of essay to help you learn how to analyze and understand your life experiences. It also boosts emotional feeling as you get to understand yourself better.
Conclusion
At this point, you have a clear picture of how to craft creative writing reflective essay example. Hopefully you can tackle any self-reflection topic. Sure, this is the chance to reveal your personal experience. So follow the outlined tips to create a top notch essay.
Even with this guide, a reflective essay can be a bit challenging for some. If this is the case, you can reach out to brand- the best online essay help service. We’ll provide you with a model essay for you to study and prepare before tackling your piece.