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Mentor texts
Telling Short, Memorable Stories From Your Life: ‘My Secret Pepsi Plot’
An invitation to students to tell a meaningful story in a limited number of words, with an example from The Times’s Lives column to help.
By Katherine Schulten
Our new Mentor Text series spotlights writing from The Times that students can learn from and emulate.
This entry, like several others we are publishing, focuses on an essay from The Times’s long-running Lives column to consider skills prized in narrative writing. We are starting with this genre to help support students participating in our 2020 Personal Narrative Essay Contest .
Our Personal Narrative Essay Contest is inspired by The New York Times’s Lives column, which ran from 1996 to 2017 and featured “short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences .”
The editor of the column once posted some advice on “How to Write a Lives Essay” to guide those who submitted to the column annually. Much of that advice applies to our contest as well.
For example, several points boil down to reminders to keep it simple, including tips like:
Don’t try to fit your whole life into one “Lives.”
Don’t try to tell the whole story.
Tell a small story — an evocative, particular moment.
Better to start from something very simple that you think is interesting (an incident, a person) and expand upon it, rather than a large idea that you then have to fit into a short essay. For example, start with “the day the Santa Claus in the mall asked me on a date” rather than “the state of affairs that is dating in an older age bracket.”
This advice is similar to advice often given to high school seniors writing college essays : You have only 650 words to show admissions officers something important, interesting or memorable about who you are and what matters to you. A list of awards you’ve won won’t do it, but an engaging story about making brownies with your stepbrother just might.
As you’ll see when you read the texts below, none of them try to tell the whole story of a life, but, instead, illuminate an important aspect of it through focus on one event or moment. Yet that one focus ripples out, and says so much more.
Before You Read
Use the sentence starter below to write for a few minutes about whatever comes to mind. You will return to this writing in the “Now Try This” section.
A moment I’ll never forget from my childhood is …
Mentor Text: ‘ My Secret Pepsi Plot ,’ a 2014 Essay From the Lives Column, by Boris Fishman
This essay describes a memory from when the writer was 10 years old and his family had just immigrated from the Soviet Union to Brooklyn. “In the Soviet Union, we were secretly wealthy, but we arrived in Brooklyn as paupers,” he writes.
Somehow, his family ends up with 24 Pepsi-Colas in their refrigerator. The story of what happens next is Mr. Fishman’s short, powerful story:
Around this time I learned that American supermarkets gave back 5 cents for every returned empty. (Some states, like Michigan, its very name like a granite monument, gave you 10 cents.) I decided I would return those cans and give the money to my parents. My secret — a surprise.
Read the essay, focusing on how Mr. Fishman anchors the whole story in this one goal he had at age 10 — to return the Pepsi cans and get money for them.
As you read, you might trace the structure of the story. What does each paragraph do? What does each add to the telling of this small story?
Then, consider these questions:
How do the first two paragraphs set the stage for the story and give some necessary background?
How does telling this story allow the writer to show readers a particular time and place through the eyes of a new immigrant?
How does he pull you into the action, minute by minute, in the three paragraphs that begin “On Saturday afternoon …”?
How is money a theme throughout, in both stated and implied ways? What other ideas recur?
What is the role of the last paragraph?
Now Try This: Find Your Own Short, Powerful Stories
Look back at the writing you did before reading the mentor text. What is strongest about it? Could it become a short essay like the one you just read? If so, what would you need to do to shape it?
What other small stories — or “evocative, particular moments” — from your life might make wonderful short essays?
In a 2010 lesson plan, “ Going Beyond Cliché: How to Write a Great College Essay ,” we suggest students first make a timeline of their lives, or of one period in their lives, brainstorming at least 20 events, big and small, that were significant to them for any reason.
You might try that, or you can brainstorm answers to this list of prompts — or both:
-A time I took a risk: -A time I learned something about myself: -A memory from childhood I think about often: -Something that happened to me that still makes me laugh: -Something very few people know about me: -Something I regret: -A time when I felt rejected: -Something I am really proud of: -Something that changed the way I think or look at the world: -How I am different from most people I know: -Some of my fears: -A time I felt truly satisfied: -A time I failed at something: -An object I own that tells a lot about me:
Once you’ve chosen a topic, you might try to free-write for 10 minutes or so, asking yourself as you go: What was most interesting or memorable about this? What images come to mind when you think about this topic? Do you picture a person, a scene, a place? Do you hear a conversation or a bit of music? Do you smell, taste or feel something?
Finally, if you are still stuck, we have a list of prompts from our site that can inspire narrative writing . Take a look and see if any of them spark ideas for you.
More Mentor Texts for Telling Short, Memorable Stories
While the entire Lives column is devoted to “short, powerful stories,” the pieces we chose below are especially student-friendly in terms of both their subject matter and the way the writers focus on “an evocative, particular moment.” Below each title, an excerpt from the piece.
“ How Ramen Got Me Through Adolescence ,” a 2014 Lives essay, by Veronique Greenwood
When I was in fifth grade, I developed an intense dislike of eating around other people. The cafeteria was a place of foul odors, gelatinous spills, horrific mixtures of chocolate pudding, fruit cocktail and ketchup consumed on dares, and I found myself fasting from breakfast, at about 6 in the morning, until 3:35, when I walked home through the woods from the bus stop. Each step up our hill, a narrow ridge in rural California, I fantasized about the big bowl of ramen I would make myself when I reached the top.
“ Charmed ," a 2015 Lives essay, by Laila Lalami
‘‘Wait,’’ I said. From my pocket I pulled out a brown suede pouch bearing the name of a little jeweler in Rabat, the kind of place you send your friends to and say, tell him I sent you. In the pouch was a necklace with a silver khamsa — a charm in the shape of an open palm.
“ Montana Soccer-Mom Moment ,” a 2010 essay from the Lives column, by Laura Munson
I live in northwest Montana, and I have a teenager, and my teenager plays sports. That means a lot of driving — over-the-Rocky-Mountains-and-back-in-one-day kind of driving. I think about Meriwether Lewis every time I cross the Continental Divide, usually with sleeping soccer players wearing headphones in the back of my Suburban. I want to say, “Can you imagine everything depending on your horse and your ability to dream of an ocean past the mountains?” But it isn’t worth the eye-rolling.
“ All the Single Ladies ," a 2014 essay from the Lives column, by Jen Doll
“Single ladies to the dance floor!” came the cry, a masculine voice urging us forward. Wedding guests parted, creating a narrow path for the train of unmarried women to parade through in their finery. But we single ladies no longer looked so fine as we had that morning. We were worn and tired, sweat beading down our necks, sand crunching unpleasantly in our shoes, which were wearing raw the backs of our heels. We should have been lying down in cool rooms elsewhere, but the wedding was not over. We were 28. We knew what was next.
“ Working the Reunion ,” a 2008 essay from the Lives column, by ZZ Packer
My residential college always hosted the 45th reunion, one of the most well attended, I suppose because you just might not be around for the 50th. To my eyes, these guys were the picture of old money. Although they may have mastered physics or appraised the sharp beauty of “King Lear” in school, at reunions they reminisced about football glories and practical jokes. I sometimes felt less like a Yale co-ed who happened to be black than a black waitress who happened to be bringing them an extra fork. But after their dinner we reunion workers would drink up all the leftover bottles of wine while cleaning the dining hall.
Related Questions for Any Short, Narrative Essay
What is the one small moment or event this piece focuses on? Why do you think the writer might have chosen it?
What do you learn about the writer and his or her world through this moment or event? How? What lines do this well? What is implied rather than stated?
How is the piece structured? What does each paragraph do? How does each contribute to the story?
Look closely at how the writer tells a complete story in a limited number of words. Where, in terms of time and place, does the story begin? Where does it end? How does the writer weave in necessary background even while keeping the action of the story moving forward?
What else do you notice or admire about this essay? What lessons might it have for your own writing?
Home — Essay Samples — Life — Personal Experience — An Unforgettable Experience In My Life
An Unforgettable Experience in My Life
- Categories: Death Personal Experience
About this sample
Words: 719 |
Published: Sep 19, 2019
Words: 719 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read
Works Cited
- Barry, M. (2010). The death of a loved one: A primer for grieving. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 48(11), 12-15.
- Davis, C. G., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Larson, J. (1998). Making sense of loss and benefiting from the experience: Two construals of meaning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(2), 561-574.
- Goss, K., & Gilbert, P. (2002). Bereavement following traumatic death: A conceptual analysis and review. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 15(3), 181-191.
- Holland, J. M., Currier, J. M., & Neimeyer, R. A. (2006). Meaning reconstruction in the first two years of bereavement: The role of sense-making and benefit-finding. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 53(3), 175-191.
- Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. Macmillan.
- Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Davis, C. G. (1999). "Thanks for sharing that": Ruminators and their social support networks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(4), 801-814.
- Parkes, C. M. (2015). Bereavement: Studies of grief in adult life. Routledge.
- Schut, H., & Stroebe, M. S. (2005). Interventions to enhance adaptation to bereavement. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 8(S1), S140-S147.
- Stroebe, M. S., Schut, H., & Stroebe, W. (2007). Health outcomes of bereavement. The Lancet, 370(9603), 1960-1973.
- Thompson, L. W., Gallagher, D., & Breckenridge, J. N. (1989). Comparative effectiveness of psychotherapies for depressed elders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57(3), 403-407.
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