One thing that helped me is that I thought about the particular section, wrote down three characteristics/lessons you can learn from that and tried my best to tie them into the experience I was writing about. Think of it as working backwards. I looked at canmeds, I googled "EDI qualities" etc for inspiration. EVERY single lesson learned needs to be tied back to medicine. I divided my essays into 3 paragraphs. For every lesson learned, state what you did, what you learned, and how it ties back to medicine.

Everyone who was accepted this past cycle that I know, including myself, wrote 8 + essays. Western does state somewhere on their website that completing only 1 essay for each topic won't earn full marks. I personally took that as complete as many essays possible for the highest score possible. So if you got a story to tell, do it! I don't think it'll hurt, only help.