How to Craft a Creative, Reflective Essay Example

As a high school or college student, you will encounter a wide range of different academic courses, including a reflection essay. When writing this piece, you critically examine your experiences and reflect. Therefore, you should prepare with the necessary tips to craft a top-notch reflective essay. You can also consider online creative writing reflective essay examples.

For instance, here is a detailed guide to help you create an impressive article easily and fast. With its guidance, you get to understand creative writing, reflective essay examples, or illustration. Sure, you ought to polish up on how to choose and write a self-reflection piece. It also reveals the purpose and other tips to consider when writing an original reflective article.

What is a Reflective Essay?

Generally, a reflective essay talks about experiences or events. Here you analyze the incident, its meaning, and the lessons learned. The essay format needs you to open up your thinking aptitude and emotions to paint a picture of background, mindset, and traits of character. Besides, your reflective article should capture a description of the event as you explain your feelings, thoughts, and reactions. 

Furthermore, reflective essays are very subjective, with a vivid summary of skills and character. They must maintain a formal tone that a large percentage understands. Moreover, you should organize your thoughts in a specific manner to wow the reader. Remember that you should make the audience feel the experience from the bottom of their hearts.

Most writers take reflective paper as a personal opinion because you share your ideas and thoughts. In most cases, you can perform this piece in the form of a movie, play, or any other artwork. Besides, this essay does not require extensive research as its focus is more on personal experience assertion and reflection.

How to Write an Excellent Reflective Article

Pre-Writing Tips

Since you have a clear picture of what is a reflective essay, you should figure out how to craft one. As a student, you should study to understand how to connect thoughtful piece paragraphs. You can start by coming up with a decent plan to develop your work. Sure, this creates a clear view and further development of your essay.

Crafting a reflective article is a great chance to enhance your creativity as well as general writing skills. Sometimes it can be quite challenging and confusing to write a great piece. However, you should go in sequence to get everything right. Below are tips to consider for you to start and write a perfect essay.

Choose a Topic Carefully

Above all, this is a vital step to a great piece of writing. Most of the academic essay instructors provide a topic while others leave it for you. If you are offered the chance to come up with a suitable theme, go for the good and trending ideas. Indeed, this will capture the reader’s attention before you begin your discussion.

Besides, when writing a reflective essay, make sure you pick a topic that is not too narrow or too wide. Such text will take you nowhere. For that reason, always choose a subject that you’re interested in, not broad, not narrow, but has a focused appeal.

Study Your Subject

Just like any other piece of writing, you need to study the picked topic. Close your eyes and remember, watch, read, imagine, or listen. In other words, you ought to spend a few minutes re-experiencing or thinking about your subject. Think of how the event turned out.

You can also ask yourself how it affected or didn’t affect your life and the reasons. Ask yourself how you feel about such experience as it helps create a strong thesis. Moreover, it will serve well as a focal point of your article. Gather all the information related to the selected topic.

Brainstorm

Once you have all the information, it is time to write down what you think about your subject. You need to describe your topic as vividly as you can. For that reason, think about tastes, smell, taste alongside what you see, and noises. Come up with clear adjectives describing these kinds of experiences. Make sure you answer the selected question.

Likewise, you need to recognize your experience meaning, since it is the thesis statement. Note down as many phrases or sentences on the topic question as you can. In the end, they turn up into a paragraph. Sometimes you may overlook what you note down, but it can be beneficial.

Write a Draft

Well, this is one of the sections where many fail as it may seem unnecessary. You need to make a mind map as it draws a circle around your question. Create a precise plan or structure through an accurate outline. Think of it as a road-map to a top-notch essay. Specialists recommend that you write a detailed sketch out, including all the crucial paper elements.

Identify your main ideas and arguments to support your thesis statement. Moreover, this helps the reader follow the evolution of your experiences and thoughts throughout the essay. Ensure you group your ideas into paragraphs to write later. Creating this kind of flow diagram enables you to see the overall structure more clearly.

Finally, decide on the logical sequence of the highlighted sections and arrange them accordingly. It also saves time since the outline serves as the essay skeleton. Besides, you will have a significant amount of time because you are familiar with what you need to present. You’ll also be able to allocate more editing time to ensure it is of a higher standard.

Writing Tips

Since you have a clear outline and a sequential flow of ideas, it’s time to present what you have been preparing. It can be considerably different from the other types of essays, mostly because of the varying subjects. However, what remains the same is that you must begin with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

The Introduction

Just like any other article, a reflective essay must start with an introduction. It must include the hook and thesis statements. Besides, it should be brief, informative, and catchy enough to capture the reader’s attention right from the beginning. Portray the exciting aspects in the first paragraph to stand the best chance to grab the audience’s mind.

The thesis statement reveals a summary of the entire essay. For instance, in this piece, you will focus more on a particular experience and one that influenced your success. Do not forget to give a clear and quick review of your skills. After all, this is the chance to map your ability. So discuss as many reasonable points as possible. However, do not exaggerate your experiences because they leave the reader disinterested.

Body

Since you have completed the introduction part, it is time to move to the body. Sure, this is the extensive section of writing a creative, reflective essay example. Pay close attention and present what you promised in the beginning. Here, give your experiences in a detailed manner but not in a long story of pointless words. The critical factor in this part is to spend plenty of effort and time to plan your self-reflective essay.

Besides, try to adopt a chronological approach. Meaning you should touch upon everything as it happened in time. Sure, this kind of reflection ensures that your work is coherent and systematic. Working in this manner prevents you from presenting a messy recall of your skills. Always keep in mind that a creative, reflective essay doesn’t need to be linear. Layout the vital elements of your experience in order because it helps you see how to put your narrative together.

Likewise, ensure your essay’s body is well focused, containing the necessary reflection and review. The body part covers not only an analysis of your experience but also explores the impact of these skills in real life. It should also reflect on the lessons you learned from such exposure. In other words, you should emphasize more on reflection as opposed to summation. Remember, a reflective essay provides the reader with an insight into personality, your skills, and the ability to survive or adjust to certain situations.

The End

Here comes the last part of creative writing reflective essay example. It should focus more on summarizing the points made throughout the piece and the lessons learned from the experience. Moreover, include some of the points on how and why your behavior or attitude changed. Also, talk about the effect on your skills and character.

For example, speak out of what conclusions you can draw from your problem-solving skills. What to conclude about your approach to particular situations? Talk about what you can do differently in similar cases in the future. Also, note the steps you have to combine all the lessons you learned from such experience. Remember that the instructor will look out for reflection evidence at a high standard.

You should effectively end your paper. Besides, if you craft an excellent wrap-up, you show how you are an expert in your story. Moreover, try to leave a picture or something for the reader to mull over with the final message.

Post-Writing Tips

Like any other kind of article, you have to read, edit, and re-read your work. Take a break after completing the first draft, even if it’s a day or two, and then proofread your task. Sure, this enables you to have a fresh point of view. It does not matter how many times you read through your piece. After all, you are after good grades and experience in essay writing. Remember that your article will be worthless if you submit it with errors.

Revise your work to fix punctuation mistakes, misused words, grammar errors, logical errors, and typos. In this section, do not be in a hurry. Take all the time you need to polish up your piece, but do not submit the essay late because of editing. Consider online editing services to check grammar in your text.

What to Write In a Reflective Paper

Since creative writing reflective essay examples talk about a personal experience, you can choose whatever you like. Sure, think of it as a diary where you write your thoughts about a specific event in your life. It can also be a topic that makes you respond more about a book or a place. Besides, here some of the creative themes you can use to write a self-reflection piece.

• It can be a place you visited. A good example is the mountains, desert, beach, a museum, the countryside, a particular room or hideaway, your home, or a relative’s home.
• Also, you can talk about life-altering events such as a date, new experience, something new, failure, or success in something.
• Similarly, you can focus on recurring or essential thoughts. Indeed this can be dreams, a talk you wish to have, or you had with someone or strong emotion. You can also reflect on an embarrassing moment, a person you would like to be, or a story about yourself.
• An impactful experience like a movie, book, song, play, T.V, social media posts, article or magazine, vacation, or a concert
• You can also focus on essential people like family members, your best friends, someone who upset you, a life coach, or a teacher.
• Consider public speaking. People are either bad or good at public speaking. So, talk about how you felt to address a group of people.
• You can also talk about moving away or into a college. Talk about what you learned in the college and has it helped you become the person you are.
• Likewise, you can discuss your first year in college. Sure, this is a significant event full of self-reflection.

Other Tips to Consider In Creative Writing Reflective Essay Examples

• Do not be too personal. Although a creative writing reflective essay focuses more on your own experiences, always remember that you are writing an academic paper and not a memo to a comrade. In other words, do not write an autobiography.
• Do not talk about all your life experiences in only one essay. Instead, pick the most crucial or touching moments.
• Similarly, do not try to write all of your ideas in one paragraph. Compose your mind and come up with an outline or a road map that gives a clear direction and continuous flow of thoughts.
• In any case, don’t make your piece a free-flowing analysis. You don’t have to include all your unstructured insights and ideas. Instead, sort out your thoughts in sequential order.
• Above all, make sure you follow the outlined structure as it results in an organized and coherent essay. Remember that the main objective is to capture the reader’s interests.
• Do not be too informal. Creative writing reflective essay examples keep a formal tone. Sure, you should use the first-person narrative. To get a feel for tone and format, read widely on other self-reflection articles. It can be from a magazine or a newspaper.
• Ensure you support every point you write about a specific event or experience. For instance, you can describe how the events impacted your life. In other words, use specifics rather than vague terms to convey your story.
• Besides, consider starting your essay with an anecdote, other techniques like flashbacks, or a special quote to capture the reader’s attention.

Useful Tips for an Excellent Reflection Essay

• Make sure you use your vocabulary carefully to express your emotions and feelings clearly. Remember, creative writing reflective examples have a descriptive component with a wide range of adjectives to reflect.
• Avoid words such as ‘okay’ and ‘nice’ because they don’t offer a reliable insight on your personality and feelings. For that reason, try as much as possible to be specific to make your essay more engaging. Also, do not use abbreviations.
• Besides, be honest with your opinions and feelings. Keep in mind that this is a reflective essay, and it is the place to admit your thoughts without any consequence. As you craft your article, remember that your instructor expects a deep reflection, not a simple review. To show a sincere expression, go beyond the descriptive part. Likewise, ensure your piece is critical about experience as well as response. In your analysis, make righteous judgments.
• Ask yourself questions reflecting on your experience. What exactly did you learn from your incident? How successful are you after the event? Think about how past experiences differ from current. You ought to show the difference between the two situations. Remember, the main aim is to produce an effective and efficient reflective essay.
• Furthermore, do fail to use a variety of punctuation as they keep your piece dynamic.
• Since you need to awaken the reader’s attention, use imagery style to create a vivid picture of your event.
• Remember to keep recap of the lessons you learned from that specific event.
• A typical reflection essay can be about 300 to 700 words. However, make sure you confirm with your instructor about the word count.

The Purpose of Creative Writing Reflective Essay Examples  

Generally, teachers and tutors assign this type of essay to make scholars think about what they learned class and to boost their writing experience. Most of the internship students must write a reflective piece for acceptance. Apart from school tasks, self-reflection essays are also used in the expert sphere. Here is how students and experts use this type of article.

Medical Students

As medical students, you will have to write about all the patients you see. The reflective essay is the key as it describes the patient and thoughts while determining the correct treatment. Students often reflect on how they interacted with patients, concluding what helped or what failed. Sure, this builds a better communication scheme with the sick.

Doctors

Similarly, doctors use a reflective essay to boost their ability to offer effective healthcare. As a result, patients develop the sense to believe and follow the doctor’s advice. Self-reflection article reveals how well their body language is, words, and the tone which turned a particular patient to make healthy lifestyle changes. Still, it shows how a doctor helped a patient deal with a specific sickness.

Nurses

Medical assistants, such as nurses, write about their patients. By considering different cases and responses to the patient’s wishes, nurses can know how to help with illness, pain, or stress. Besides, this type of essay helps the nurses conquer fear as they handle both doctor’s and patient’s requests.

Teachers

The reflective essay helps teachers do a case study for each learner and teach experiences to their students. They can also review their emotions about teaching. Similarly, they can examine patterns of what worked or didn’t. Teachers can also plan their lessons and take care of problems with students.

Social Workers

Likewise, social workers can use this sort of essay to analyze the environment and problems associated with clients. They can also motivate their clients to note their skills. Sure, this helps them see the effects and causes of a particular situation or behavior and see how to change.

Business People

Investors use this sort of essay to examine and analyze their interactions all through a business setting. In this way, it helps them come up with a plan to better their goods and services.

Learning

Sometimes, instructors will ask you to respond to a particular lecture or another institution assignment to show what you understand. Writing about what you study creates a sense of sharing and interacting with other students or instructors.

Personal Benefit

Sure, this is the sort of essay to help you learn how to analyze and understand your life experiences. It also boosts emotional feelings as you get to understand yourself better.

Conclusion

At this point, you have a clear picture of how to craft creative writing reflective essay examples. Hopefully, you can tackle any self-reflection topic. Sure, this is the chance to reveal your personal experience. So follow the outlined tips to create a top-notch essay.

Even with this guide, a reflective essay can be a bit challenging for some. If this is the case, you can reach out to My Homework Writers – the best online essay help service. We’ll provide you with a model essay for you to study and prepare before tackling your piece.