English A L&L · Lesson 6 of 9 · Non-literary texts

Personal and travel writing: blogs, diary entries, letters, memoirs and travelogues

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Personal and travel writing—blogs, diary entries, letters, memoirs and travelogues—appears frequently on Paper 1 because it tests whether you can see through an “honest” first-person voice to the deliberate choices building it. In the exam, you will analyse how a writer constructs a persona, balances private feelings with a public audience, and represents real people and places.

By the end you’ll be able to

Identify the conventions of blogs, diary entries, letters and open letters, memoirs and travelogues.
Analyse how a first-person voice, persona and sense of intimacy or authenticity are constructed.
Analyse how travel writing represents places and people, including exoticism and othering.
Analyse how personal writing addresses private and public audiences, and decide when such a text counts as literary rather than non-literary.

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Core ideas (continued)
Worked examples
Exam technique
Common mistakes
Quick recap
Check your understanding (3 questions)

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What the exam asks

On Paper 1, you may be given an unseen blog post, open letter, memoir extract, diary entry or travelogue, accompanied by a guiding question on a technical or formal aspect such as persona, tone, sensory imagery or perspective.

Criterion A (Understanding and interpretation): Identify the literal situation (where the writer is, what happened) and read between the lines to grasp the writer’s underlying attitudes, biases or self-awareness.
Criterion B (Analysis and evaluation): Explain how specific textual features (such as colloquial diction, direct address, layout or figurative language) construct a believable voice and evaluate how effectively they position the reader.

Core ideas

Conventions and the private–public spectrum

Personal texts sit on a spectrum from strictly private to highly public. Even when a text looks intimate, a published piece always has an eye on a wider readership.

Text type	Audience & purpose	Key conventions
Diary entry	Private (the self) or semi-private; to record, reflect and confess.	Date headers, chronological fragments, ellipsis, present-tense immediacy, unguarded tone.
Personal / Open letter	Specific recipient (personal) or both recipient and public (open); to connect, persuade or challenge.	Salutation and sign-off, direct second-person address (you), shared references (personal) or rhetorical appeals (open).
Blog post	Public niche audience; to share expertise, entertain and build community.	Catchy headline, subheadings, timestamps, hyperlinks, embedded images, conversational first-person voice, call to comment.
Memoir extract	Public readership; to reconstruct past experiences and find meaning in them.	Dual perspective (the experiencing “I” in the past vs the narrating “I” reflecting now), scene-by-scene storytelling, sensory detail.
Travelogue	Public readership (armchair travellers or tourists); to describe a journey and evaluate a place.	Movement through space and time, vivid sensory imagery, anecdotes with locals, cultural comparisons.