Let's talk about how to build your

essay from the bottom up, and I'm

going to use an example from the

essay bank that I call Tourné.

The first draft of Tourné has two parts.

The author is in the army culinary

school and he fails his cooking test.

Then he passes his cooking test.

At first blush, the

essay seems pretty good.

It's interesting and it's dramatic.

The problem is that law schools

don't admit people on the

basis of their cooking skills.

They admit people on the

basis of their character.

If you think about the essay pyramid,

this draft has two out of three, so

it's got the events, something happens,

the author fails and then passes

his test, and it's got the emotions,

sad face, face with tears of joy.

But there's no lesson.

What does the author learn?

He passes his cooking test

just by trying harder.

A really successful obstacle-overcome

essay cannot just be about some

external obstacle like the cooking test.

There has to be an

internal obstacle as well.

That way, the solution encompasses

more than getting more skillful.

The solution is about becoming more

mature or adjusting your attitude.

It took us several drafts to

discover that this was actually

an essay about overconfidence.

But once we did, we were able

to recast the entire thing to

articulate a lesson about humility.

So now the beginning isn't just

about how hard cooking school is.

It's about being overconfident and

being unprepared for that challenge.

When the author writes about

failing the test over here, he's not

emphasizing how hard the test itself is.

He's really emphasizing

how unprepared he was.

Again, it's about his

internal challenge.

He was overconfident, and that means

that the key moment is not over

here like we thought; it's in here.

Let me read to you from the scene.

"Being bested by a French potato

football was a lesson in humility.

I realized that it would take

hard work to compensate for my

evident lack of cooking talent.

I began to bring sacks of potatoes back

to my hotel room and set up in front of

the TV for long sessions of carving."

In other words, the author realizes

his problem, he adjusts his

attitude, and then he takes action.

Now this moment of triumph, which

we used to think was the key moment,

is actually more like an epilogue.

The author vanquishes the test

because he's already vanquished his

inner challenge, his overconfidence.

In order to make things tidy, the author

restates the lesson in his conclusion.

"My time in culinary school was

both humbling and empowering.

On the one hand, it showed me that

talent won't always see me through.

On the other hand, it showed me that

I can make up for my shortcomings

with discipline and practice."

But this conclusion is baked

into the structure of the story.

The author had to learn his lesson right

here before he could pass the test.

We're only restating it in slightly

different terms in the conclusion

in order to reemphasize it.

Now, in this essay, the external

stakes were actually significant.

If the author failed the test, he might

have been kicked out of culinary school,

but you can write an essay in which the

external stakes are almost nonexistent,

and only the internal stakes matter.

That means that the

key moment can be tiny.

I've spoken before about an essay built

around exactly such a small key moment.

The narrator looks at someone in

a coffee shop who's being rude

to her and just says, "Excuse

me, why do you have to be rude?"

And even though, from the outside,

it doesn't seem like it mattered,

it really mattered to her.

Let's review.

When you build your essay from

the bottom up, you start with an

event that's significant to you.

Then you add your setup, the before

circumstance, which in this case was

that the author was overconfident.

You fit another event to it to fill

out your story, and finally, you

cap it with a lesson at the end.

What did you learn or

how did you change?