Your second 800-1,000-word essay is an illustrative essay. This is sometimes called an exemplary essay. It is an essay that illustrates a point by example. For some reason, my students often have a hard time grasping this concept. So here’s the way we’ll do this one. I want you to write a parable. That’s a narrative, a story, that demonstrates a point, or a moral. For example, I might write a story about judging people from their appearance. My example, then, is about not judging a book by its cover, but notice that at the end of the thesis, where I state the “moral,” I’m more specific than that.Thesis: I used to think that an athlete had to be someone who was big and strong. Then I saw Kelly Slater surf. First, I saw him at Pipeline, in Hawaii. This guy had no problem putting his five-foot, nine-inch, 150-pound body up against bone-crushing waves three stories high. Then I saw him at Jeffrey’s Bay, in South Africa. Finally, I saw him in Tahiti. His relatively small size and light wei
