“Ah, but I have gone up alone to the old men there.”  Her voice softens.  “They will talk to me because I am my father’s daughter.  My Indian name means ‘One-who-does-things-well.’  So if I go to them they tell me their heart longings, what they ask for the Cherokee.

    “And I shall put the message, if I can, before our President’s wife. 
    Perhaps she will help.”

THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE ARTICLE.  A writer’s own experiences, given under his name, under a pseudonym, or in anonymous form, can easily be made interesting to others.  Told in the first person, such stories are realistic and convincing.  The pronoun “I” liberally sprinkled through the story, as it must be, gives to it a personal, intimate character that most readers like.  Conversation and description of persons, places, and objects may be included to advantage in these personal narratives.

The possibilities of the personal experience story are as great as are those of the interview.  Besides serving as a vehicle for the writer’s own experiences, it may be employed to give experiences of others.  If, for example, a person interviewed objects to having his name used, it is possible to present the material obtained by the interview in the form of a personal experience story.  In that case the article would have to be published without the writer’s name, since the personal experiences that it records are not his own.  Permission to present material in a personal experience story should always be obtained from the individual whose experiences the writer intends to use.

Articles designed to give practical guidance, to show readers how to do something, are particularly effective when written in the first person.  If these “how-to-do-something” articles are to be most useful to readers, the conditions under which the personal experience was obtained must be fairly typical.  Personal experience articles of this type are very popular in women’s magazines, agricultural journals, and publications that appeal to business men.

EXAMPLES OF THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORY.  The opportunities for service offered to women by small daily newspapers are set forth in the story below, by means of the personal experiences of one woman.  The article was published in the Woman’s Home Companion, and was illustrated by a half-tone reproduction of a wash drawing of a young woman seated at her desk in a newspaper office.

    “THEY CALL ME THE ‘HEN EDITOR’”

    THE STORY OF A SMALL-TOWN NEWSPAPER WOMAN

    By SADIE L. MOSSLER

“What do you stay buried in this burg for?  Why, look how you drudge! and what do you get out of it?  New York or some other big city is the place for you.  There’s where you can become famous instead of being a newspaper woman in a one-horse town.”

    A big city newspaper man was talking.  He was in our town on an
    assignment, and he was idling away spare time in our office.  Before
    I could answer, the door opened and a small girl came to my desk.