One woman writes about the traveling she did as a child in her autobiographical essay.
Autobiographical essays are essays that people write about their own lives. Many colleges and universities require applicants to submit an autobiographical essay as part of the application process. A topic sentence is a sentence within a paragraph that summarizes the paragraph's main point. If you are writing an autobiographical essay, choose something interesting about your life, and write about it. Use clear, interesting topic sentences to keep the reader's attention.
Instructions
1. Make an outline for the essay. Place the events surrounding the theme in a logical order using bullet points.
2. Begin writing paragraphs about each point listed in the outline. One important aspect of an autobiographical essay is that it should be descriptive. The reader should feel interested while reading it, and the words you choose should paint a clear, colorful picture of the events you are writing about. Write the topic sentence to catch the reader's interest.
3. Determine the main point of each paragraph, and write a topic sentence about it. For example, if your autobiographical essay is about how music played a huge role in your life, begin the first paragraph by starting with a brief history. A good topic sentence could be "Music was a daily part of my life from the time I was a child." Throughout that paragraph, continue by explaining how music was involved in your life. For example, you could say that your mom regularly had friends over for sing-a-longs and that your dad played a certain record every day when he got home from work.
4. Write topic sentences from the outline. Another way to write your topic sentences is to take the outline and before you write your paragraphs, write a topic sentence for each main point. Structure the paragraphs around the topic sentences. Continuing with the example from above, if the next main point is about the music lessons you received, a topic sentence could say, "I became directly involved with music at the age of six when I first started piano lessons." If this is your topic sentence, use the sentences that follow to explain who you took lessons from, what you learned and how you felt about it.
5. Reread your paper. Look at the topic sentences, and determine if the reader will understand them. Look also at the entire paragraph to determine if the paragraph completely explains and answers any questions relating to the claim made in the topic sentence. Make sure that the supporting sentences in each paragraph relate to the topic sentence and that each sentence adds a detail about the topic sentence.
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