Write a story of the best, strangest, or worst thing that happened to you

Write a story of the best, strangest, or worst thing that happened to you on a vacation or trip to another place. Your trip to another place can even be the first time you went to Sea World, or even your first time on a college campus. It doesn’t have to be about a scuba diving trip to Cozumel where you had to buddy breathe 30 meters below the surface, but it can if you want it to be. Focus on one event or experience. One mistake writers make with this essay idea is they describe an entire travel experience, and that isn’t interesting to your readers. Some ideas for this writing prompt are getting lost in a city, being pick-pocketed on a trip, or visiting a historical site.

Things to think about:

I am asking that you not only narrate, or tell the story, I am also asking that you describe the experience so that your readers see, hear, and feel what happened–the road snaked to a dead end, or the crowd closed in around me as I cried for my mom. Please recognize that an experience and an essay about that experience are not the same thing. When you have any experience, no matter how long it lasts, your memory of that experience is going to be disorganized and poorly defined, but the essay you write about that experience must have a purpose and be sharply focused. What do you want your audience to know? Use the story elements to help you tell the story. Use the techniques of description to show and not tell.