In 2009, when I started F1GMAT, there weren’t many writers creating content like we do. I was scared to start and so began writing in a tone like what a few established writers in the admissions space wrote. It felt like the voice of someone I knew but not mine.
Then, after procrastinating for a couple of days, I began to write like how I talked.
When you write with a voice that is closest to how you sound, you are at an advantage on five essay evaluation criteria:
1) Faster Drafts
Immediately, I was writing 500 to 1500 words in 1-2 hours instead of the torture that an MBA applicant goes through - writing, rewriting, and sharing 1 paragraph – going through the same torture all to fit into the template of a Winning MBA Essay.
Writing like how you talk will not be the final version of the essay. You will reach that version eventually by the 10th or 15th iteration. But the best way to write faster drafts is to write like how you talk.
Writing MBA application essays is a volume’s game.
The more you write, the better you get.
2) Avoid Repetition
I have an acquaintance who, after a couple of liquid courage, would go into three to four stories, mostly blue, with innuendos that put the audience to cringe.
By the third round, the acquaintance was delivering the old dirty jokes ad nauseam. My friend would elbow me at each punch line, and I would laugh, not to be rude. The acquaintance would look around to see if the jokes worked with the eye of a young kid waiting for roll call. I was the only one laughing out loud. Everyone else in the crowd looked a little annoyed.
The best way to avoid writing the same event from different angles is to say it aloud and write it down. This practice will make sure that your narratives move forward and not be stuck in the ‘big event.’
3) Balanced Tone
We don’t want to shame or write in a mean tone about the antagonist in our story.
The person might be your biggest supporter (parents), but they also have colors of villainy that put you under duress.
Capturing the nuance of the relationship is the biggest struggle in MBA essays that requires reflecting on your childhood. But when you write like how you talk about the person, you will see a tone that is critical but balanced.
In writing – with a detached observer tone, such balance is impossible. There is no ‘feeling’.
Without the ‘feeling,’ there is no unique voice.
For an applicant, narrating about the strict father, who put him in an hour-long running routine each time he missed homework, felt cruel.
A line switching from the disciplinarian to an old man whose eyes welled up when the applicant was honorably discharged from the military could never have happened had the client worked on the draft for days.
The first draft was raw – like how the applicant talked to me on the phone, but I found two lines that made it to the final version of the essay. That is the magic of writing, like how you talk.
4) Less Distracting Scenery
I might be the only person who read the Great Gatsby – the novel after watching the trailer of the movie.
I was excited to read what happened.
By the end of the novel, I was relieved to finish it without losing my senses and felt underwhelmed. I might get flak for calling the novel an overhyped literary work, but it was for me.
One big reason was the obsession of Fitzgerald to capture the scenery. Even for a novel, the details were excessive.
When you write like how you talk, you will avoid the trap of creating excessive scenery instead of the protagonist’s motivations and actions.
In MBA Essays, it is all about your journey and less about the scenery.
Offer Just the right context.
5) Sincerity in Tone
When I show what I have written to my wife, she says I write for an older audience.
When I ask, “How do you know”. She shows her writing.
The writing is clear, with no popular culture reference, shorter sentences, and a simplicity that I can’t bring even if I try.
That is a difference I see in essays ‘guided’ by an experienced consultant and essays iterated by an experienced consultant.
The magic is in iteratively improving the client’s essays with comments.
I use color-coded comments at pivotal lines to force the client to rewrite instead of the neatly side-tracked comments in word processors that many ignore.
It is through iterative writing you will find a voice that is sincere and not a version that a learned author wrote.
So keep the atypical phrases, transitions, and word usage that you use when you talk. It gives a certain character and sincerity to your essay.
