Tell Your Story

To make their essays more interesting, and to help the audience relate to their ideas, writers often include a short personal story, or anecdote, about the topic. Since Karla's family keeps chickens in their backyard, she might want to start her essay with a story about what it's like to have chickens around.

Anecdotes usually do make a report more interesting to read, but they do not provide enough support, by themselves, for an essay's main idea or claim. The purpose of an anecdote is to help readers imagine a situation related to a topic. A single anecdote is not usually considered proof in the way that researched facts are.