From the age of eleven, when I started at secondary school, my classmates and I had to write essays. I don’t remember ever being told what an essay was, and I can’t imagine any eleven year old in our class putting her hand up to say “Please Mrs/Miss Whoever, what is an essay. How did we know that an essay was different from a story? I’m puzzled now, but it’s so long ago, it’s a puzzle I will never solve.
The reason I’m thinking about essays is something someone posted on Threads – “Threads is an online social media and social networking service operated by Meta Platforms. The app offers users the ability to post and share text, images, and videos, as well as interact with other users’ posts through replies, re-posts, and likes.” (Wikipedia) Someone mentioned that after years of writing mainly crime thrillers, they were embarking on literary fiction – ‘literary fiction may involve a concern with social commentary, political criticism, or reflection on the human condition. This contrasts with genre fiction where plot is the central concern. It may have a slower pace than popular fiction’ (Wiki again)
This comment started a “conversation” and someone remarked that they too were now writing essays. I chipped in and said “Interesting! I must explore the idea of essay writing – it is what we did at school, but now I write fiction… except I have a blog, and now I’m thinking about it, maybe some of what I write there could be deemed as essays (rough and ill-formed, perhaps). I’ll have a good think about this!”.
So is some of what |I write here, especially the thoughtful posts, actually written in essay form? I commented “I’ll have a good think about this“, and I will. Maybe having a look back at what I’ve written – mostly very spontaneously, off the cuff and at a gallop as thoughts fly, and perhaps I will choose a couple and polish them up so they could genuinely be counted as essays. Yes an interesting idea, an interesting challenge.
Here I am on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@loiselsden
Lois Elsden 
Dear Lois
for our feeling the difference between essay and story is that in an essay the topic is important whereas in a story the literary style. I know that’s not a selective distinction. Maybe an essay is more linear and logic whereas a story is more poetic and a essay is more factual and wants to inform, a story is more fictional and wants to entertain.
We never thought about it before.
Keep well
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Thank you so much, as ever, for your comments. It certainly is something to ponder on, isn’t it ! I think linear and logical/poetic and entertaining/factual and informative sums it up perfectly. I guess there can be overlap between them too 🙂
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If my memory doesn’t fail me (it was such a long time ago…), an essay is made of three parts: introduction, development, conclusion, and deals with a particular topic. What you write are sometimes essays and sometimes stories or anecdotes, all very enjoyable to read!
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Thank you so much! And thank you for explaining the structure of an essay – what a shame no-one told me when I was 11, I might have saved myself from writing a lot of wild and random things for my homework! I’m guessing that some of what I write contains stories, anecdotes and random thoughts bound into an essay… perhaps, maybe… x
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Thinking back to my schooling and essay-writing, I would propose that an essay develops an argument, theory or position on a topic, usually in answer to a question or prompt. “Discuss the ways in which Modernist writers subvert the societal norms of their predecessors” etc. Outside of the classroom, these prompts need not be stated but could just trigger the discussion, like with your blogs.
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