Help them forget they’re reading by using rich, specific detail. You need to make your tired, overworked reader LEAN IN. This is reason number one you want primarily to show, not tell. In fact, it maybe even lulls your reader to sleep or pushes them away enough that they have to remind themselves to focus and try to see you in the middle of all this vagueness. It doesn’t help them see how you’re a different human from the 50 other humans they’ve read about today. But your college admission reader just skims right over it, eyes glazing. ✓ Salient: cool, unique adjective, right?Īnd technically, you’re not wrong. “I harness salient people skills to connect deeply with others.” All they have to go on in order to geta sense of who you are and what you value, to understand how you see the world and how you want to explore your place within it, is what you’ve put on the page.Īnd in your first paragraph, they read this: Now imagine that your essay is number 51.Īnd remember that your reader knows almost nothing about you. And they’re not bad words-they have their own place in good writing but they’re frequently just the wrong kind of words for this gig. Passion and excellence are those telling kind of words: they’re general, abstract nouns that sound pretty and often mean little. (Notice that we could have just said “This person is tired,” but that would kinda’ miss the point of this guide.) They have seen it ALL today.Īnd by “all,” we mean every general, vague, lofty phrase out there: passion this and excellence that. Their eyelids feel like sheets of sandpaper. Their shoulders feel like someone took a jackhammer to them.
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