Turning a Personal Experience into an Article

by Kathryn Lay

Have you ever read an article that touched you in a special way? You think, "That happened to me" or "That’s the way I feel" or even, "Maybe I could write about my experience with..."

Someone else’s story has communicated a feeling or emotion that relates to your life, or has shown you how to solve a similar problem. Personal-experience articles can be humorous, sad, informative, or thought-provoking. They remind readers how they felt in a similar situation, or they warn others how to avoid a problem. Many times, readers learn how to cope with or overcome similar events. And most often, personal-experience articles offer hope.

If something special has happened in your life that you think would touch others, there are several ways in which you can turn it into a publishable article. Personal experiences can be written in as few as fifty words or run to several thousand. Here are the three most popular types:

Your Story

This is an account of something you or someone close to you has experienced that will interest other people -- something they can relate to or identify with.

After I went through a false pregnancy following years of infertility, I wrote the article, "No Less a Woman," which has been published four times. Many readers wrote to say it touched, encouraged, helped, or educated them.

Your story may be as deep as surviving a crisis or loss. As personal as understanding an emotion. Or as simple as the result of a momentary encounter that leaves you changed in a small or a large way.

I have written about: my fear of heights, a lost friendship, sharing Christmas with others, dealing with honesty, the relationship with my husband as my dear friend, a bite from a Brown Recluse spider, my husband’s second proposal, the pain of infertility, the one time we picked up hitchhikers, learning to say thank you, an event in a restaurant concerning our daughter’s adoption, my husband’s heart surgery, his bout with Bell’s Palsy, a camping experience, working with refugees, getting in and out of debt, dealing with anger, being falsely accused of a crime, and many more personal experiences.

Real-life Drama

Most people have not had the experience of being mauled by a bear or surviving a plane crash, but the fact that someone else went through this adventure or trauma and survived can make compelling reading. "As told to" articles are one way to write someone else’s dramatic story. You must first, of course, get the person’s permission.

The most difficult part of "real-life dramas" is capturing the emotion and description as if you were there when the event happened.

The How-To

In this type of piece, you share what you’ve experienced emotionally and/or physically while you were pursuing a particular goal, and show others how they might achieve a similar goal.

For instance, has an experience with your children, friends, relatives, or even strangers, or your success in a new venture, given you insight and information that would be valuable to others? Use anecdotes, emotion, and firsthand experience to write your how-to personal experiences.

In "Make a Date to Plan Together," I described how my husband and I set up planning sessions that helped us reach our goals and strengthened our relationship. The article was originally published in Sunday Digest and has been reprinted many times.

Once you have identified a personal experience you want to write about, study different magazines to find where your story would fit best; each publication has its own needs and style. For example, women’s magazines have specific preferences, most often dealing with women’s or parenting issues. An article on how you or someone you know overcame bulimia might find a home in Family Circle or Woman’s World. And a personal experience how-to about your camping trip through the Rockies would have a good chance of acceptance by a travel, outdoors, or regional magazine, as long as you give it an unusual twist. Inspirational magazines could be the market for a personal-experience piece on a battle with cancer, domestic abuse or violence, or the death of a family member.

Personal-experience articles aren’t necessarily about momentous events. They might deal with a more common experience, such as your relationship with your mother-in-law. Or, in an informative article, you may explain how your runaway dog gave you an idea for a new business. Humorous personal-experience pieces are always in demand. For example, most people can relate to the problems of moving. In an article I wrote about my own move, there was nothing deep or life-threatening, yet readers could understand and laugh along with my misadventures.

There are four basic steps that will help you write a successful personal-experience piece:

1. Hook your reader immediately.
My article, "No Less a Woman" begain in this way:

" 'You are about six weeks pregnant,' " the doctor informed me. After two years of waiting to hear those words, I wanted to laugh, to cry!"

This tells the readers at the outset what the piece will be about. If it concerns your struggle with a disease and readers are facing the same problem or know someone who is, there is a good chance they will want to read on about your experience.

2. Follow the hook with a statement that expalins what the article is about.
In "Make a Date..." I let the readers know right away what to expect:

"Four times a year my husband and I spend time alone planning creative ways to meet common goals. There are five steps to setting up such goal planning sessions."

Once you have captured your readers’ attention or stirred their memories or longings, they will want to know whether your article will give them a story of hope, or solutions to a problem.

3. The body of the piece must be well organized and interesting.
Get your experience down on paper first. During the rewrite see if it can or should be structured differently. Describe your experience as it happened; leave out unnessary details, but include emotion and tension.

Did you reach a point of no return? Did you give up hope at any point?

Readers who may have struggled with the same problem want to laugh or cry with you; they want to see that someone else feels as they do. Imagine how you would tell your story to a special friend, not to a reporter who wants "just the facts."

4. Wind your article up by returning to your beginning idea.
Give your readers something to think about after they’ve finished reading your article -- an idea, a feeling, or a plan of action they can follow for a similar problem. I ended "And Baby Makes Three," a piece about our daughter’s adoption, by bringing readers back to a common emotion.

"When others see Michelle, they speak of how wonderful it is that she has parents who love her. But I always correct them. We are the ones who have been blessed."

At the end of "No Less a Woman," I went back to my original problem of infertility and the emotional change I’d experienced.

"Does my infertility make me less of a woman? It may seem to, if I allow the world to tell me what a woman should be. I know, however, that in the eyes of my loving husband, I am no less a woman."

Everyone has had at least one personal experience; perhaps many that would make good articles. Keep a journal. Reflect on events of the day or week. If you think something has the potential for a personal-experience piece, ask yourself these questions:
• Can others relate to my experience?
• Could an article about it encourage, teach, warn, or help others, or is the audience too limited?
• Can I write it with emotion, yet step back from it so that it won’t become a "self-portrait account" or a "soap-box tirade?"
• Is there a market for this? Maybe more than one?

These questions can later be used as guidelines when you begin to write. Once you know your target audience and what you hope to give your reader, the piece will flow more easily.

How to submit personal experience articles

Although many magazines will accept unsolicited manuscripts, some prefer query letters first. For several reasons, this may be the better approach for the writer. If there is a limited market for your personal experience, you may not want to spend time writing the complete article. And if, after reading your query, an editor does ask to see the manuscript, you will be able to gear it toward that magazine’s audience. An editor may ask to see your article and give you ideas of what slant or information they prefer. Your chances of selling your article will increase if you know in advance what the editor expects.

As with your article, begin your query with a "grabber" sentence, stating what your piece will be about. If it is humorous, say so in a funny way. If it is meant to be dramatic, make sure the opening sentence is intriguing. Make sure your query reflects whatever emotion you expect your article to evoke in your readers.

Your query should also stress the unique angle of your article, mention expert sources, if any, and state why your personal experience may help or make a difference in the lives of the magazine’s readers.

Example: A writer’s sister recently lost her husband. Literally. Because of having a disease that often affected his memory and ability to think properly, he drove off to the store one day and did not return. Three days later a trucker found his van on the side of the road, a couple of hundred miles away. He had been sitting there since he arrived, with no food or water, waiting for his family to find him. He died a few days later. As a result, the writer wrote about the need for better approaches from the police about missing adults who have such problems. She interviewed doctors and organizations who deal with this issue. She was able to say in her query that she had had experience with this and had consulted experts.

Show the editor that you will give his or her readers accurate, authoritative information, and that what you have to say will touch them. If you have had articles published previously, send tear sheets, especially if they were personal-experience pieces.

Even after you receive a go-ahead to your query, your article may not sell to that magazine. . . but don’t panic. Submit it to the next magazine on your list of possible markets. Some of my personal-experience articles and essays have sold the first time out; others have sold after ten or more rejections. As with all writing, persistence and market research will increase your chances of selling.

Writers of personal-experience articles must be willing to open their lives, their emotions, and their thoughts. Does it bother you to know that hundreds, thousands, even millions of readers are going to take a peek into your life? Will it bother those you write about or include in your writing? These are considerations when deciding how personal you will get.

But when you open yourself in this way, you will reach others. You may save a life, bring laughter, teach a truth or dispel a myth, give instruction, build hope, take away fear, or give someone the joy that there are others experiencing the same thing as they have and that they are not alone.

If you enjoy reading personal-experience articles, there is a good chance you will enjoy writing them, and get satisfaction from touching readers’ hearts and lives.

-- KL
©1999 Kathryn Lay