This essay is about one writer’s visit to one place. It is also about a kind of hunger that people often feel to see the world more clearly and to understand it more deeply. His visit is a learning expedition, and he’s driven by a hunger for reality, a desire to shake off drowsiness and to be fully awake and alert, to know who he is, where he is, and what’s happening. It’s the desire that makes us want to learn.

Students should read a model essay of place.

The goal is to write a story about a particular place. The emphasis is upon experiencing the site and the people there, as well as taking in sensory detail that funds a well-rounded story.  The events of the story must be realistic and believable.  This is not a time for the fantastical.

Here is an example of the Tale of Location: Library Tale.

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“A few nights in your life, you know this like the taste of lightning in your teeth: Tomorrow I will be changed. Somehow in the next passage of light, I will shed reptilian skin and feel the wind’s friction again.”

Kim Stafford

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What is a story? Any sequence of events doesn’t necessarily make a story any more than any arrangement of words makes a sentence. Cognitive scientists have found that children, from a very young age, can tell when a narrative is a story and when it isn’t. We’ve all heard people who narrate without ever telling a story. One thing after another happens, but there’s no point to it all. It just keeps going without reaching meaning. It’s like a joke that has no punchline.

To make a story, you need to include three elements: a protagonist who cares about something, events that touch upon what he or she cares about, and a moment at which some new meaning is made. Or, in other words, character, plot and theme. Or, in still other words, emotion, action, and meaning.

Since the foundation of a personal essay is your first-hand experiences, you will want to tell the story of your search for the meaning of a place. In an essay, you, the writer, will be the protagonist. So, we have the character. Now we need to know what you care about.