CHAPTER 1. THE OCCASION OF THE TELLING
Writing: Think about stories that have resonated throughout your life. First, choose an often-told family story: jot down a description of the central character and how you came to hear about the story. Why do you think this story was handed down in your family? What did it illustrate? Second, note a story you’ve read, whether fiction or memoir, young adult or fable. How does the story begin? What event or thought causes the hero to make a break with the past or embark on a new path?
This exercise illustrates how the classic structure resonates in the stories we’ve heard all our lives.
Writing: Using the notes you made in the spotlight exercise about family stories earlier in this chapter, take one story you remember and play with its organization in time. Try to come up with three versions of how it could be told. For example, if the story were told by an older sibling, how might it begin? How might the speaker go from now to then and back? Another example is noting how the story’s time sense would change if three or four members of the family chimed in to tell the story. Each might start events in a different place and give the listener a different context.
Reading: Compare the occasion of the telling in two of the memoirs from the works cited or from books of your choice. Are you committed to read further after reading the writer’s occasion? Why or why not?
Writing: List five events in your life that are significant. Maybe they involve specific people or a move from one place to another. Maybe they spotlight other transitions, or possibly they are key turning points that haunt you. Don’t think too much; just write them down.
Taking each of the five events from the previous paragraph, imagine a photograph that captures some essence of the event. Write down a detailed description of what is in that photograph. What is in the foreground? What is in the background? What (or who) is not in the photograph, even though you know that person or thing should be a part of it? Who might have taken the photograph, if it were real?
Now choose one of the images from the above paragraph and make it move. Begin to construct a scene around that moving photograph. What happens because of what event or person? Again, don’t think too much; just try to get down this key moment in as much detail as you can.
CHAPTER 2. THE TWO YOUS
Writing: “A memoirist gazes at a canvas that’s already swirling with color,” Sue William Silverman writes in Fearless Confessions. “Where a fiction writer crafts images onto that blank canvas, the memoirist decides what to remove from it” (31).
Consider the canvas of a scene from your past you’d like to re-create on paper as if it were a still life. Now take a further step back and consider yourself considering that scene. Observe the observer you. What does she see now that she didn’t see then? What does she think about what she’s observing? Without judging either of the two yous, make some notes about the remembering you studying the experiencing you.
Reading: Choose a passage from a memoir you admire (you may wish to choose one we’ve mentioned in this chapter) where you notice the narrator shifting between the two yous. What perspective(s) does this movement in time provide toward your understanding the protagonist more deeply? Are there gaps between the narrator’s assessment of the events in this passage and what you perceive as a reader? Often the reader makes connections that the writer may not consciously have intended. It’s through these connections that author and reader witness each other and that the reader gains new understanding.
Reading: During the Middle Ages, alchemists sought to turn lesser elements into gold. While their experiments couldn’t succeed, as a writer you possess the tools to, as we note above, “turn raw emotion into art.” The first of these tools, of course, is the memories themselves. But negotiating this territory requires a willingness to mine, and then refine, your work.
Find a passage in a memoir you’ve read where the author has clearly gone somewhere difficult. How does he use his two yous to negotiate this territory? What would be missing if the remembering narrator weren’t there? Employing a remembering narrator to witness his difficult return can be a key to negotiating it.
Writing: In conversation, we seldom pay attention to the way we use language. There may be moments when we choose our words more carefully—when we need to get a point across, or when we’re disagreeing with someone about whom we care deeply—but most of us use our own particular everyday diction to express what we wish to share with others verbally.
How we express ourselves in writing, however, involves a more elevated diction or, put another way, a selection and reordering of words and phrases to convey meaning on the page. When we add the two yous to this equation, it becomes all the more challenging a prospect.
For this exercise, select a moment from your past that you hope to include in your memoir. First, write the scene as you remember it, using words and the writing skill you possess now, as a remembering narrator.
When you’ve finished this scene, put it away. Now write the same scene as if you were once again that younger you. Nothing you’ve learned since that moment can enter into this writing—not words, not experience, not hindsight. Try to use active verbs that bring to life the emotions you were experiencing then, and don’t forget to include more than just visual senses—add sounds, scents, tastes, feelings.
After finishing the second scene, read the two versions. Chances are, there will be parts of each of them that will work very well for your memoir. If you want to take this exercise one step further, try moving back and forth between these two yous to interweave these two renditions into one scene containing both your voices.
Writing: Choosing a memory from an exercise in chapter 1 or another memory that occurs to you right now, write a few paragraphs establishing the you who is remembering now, looking back on yourself in the past. Move back and forth between what you recall and how you view the incident/experience/action now. The insights you are able to bring to bear on the past as you do this illustrate the power of the remembering self and your ability to frame your experience with a depth the experiencing self cannot access.
Reading: Now read what you have written and answer the following questions: What are several possibilities for where to stand in recounting this particular memory? Is there one place that feels compelling to you? Why?
CHAPTER 3. BUILDING A NARRATIVE
Writing: Let’s pause for a moment to consider how you might apply a catalyst to your own memoir. Take some time now to select one of the occasions of the telling you recorded at the end of chapter 1. Next, write down one or more catalysts that could trigger a specific first scene in your memoir. Don’t censor; write down whatever first comes to you. While these events may not begin your memoir, they may very well be clues to other chapters or significant scenes in the narrative.
Writing: Because we experience time sequentially, a chronological structure is a good one to try out first. Beginning with the catalyst that you noted earlier in this chapter, list in chronological order what will happen in your memoir.
Reading and writing: The best circularly structured memoirs work because they have a narrative anchor—a touchstone that the remembering narrator (and by association the reader) returns to throughout the story. For an anchor to work, it must be powerful enough to support a circular narrative, have larger metaphoric resonance, and have the associative strength to engage your reader. Consider the catalyst you noted at the beginning of this chapter. Is there a touchstone within in? It may not be obvious at first look. Touchstones can be anything from a spot on a wall to the sound of thunder. List some possible touchstones for your own memoir, and if one provides some immediate resonance for you, keep going and see where it takes you. See if you can successfully circle back to it and if it retains its sensuous aura when you do.
Writing: Associating memories with a place or a time period allows us to begin to develop a sense of interlocking events, in turn leading us to plot. Draw a time line on a piece of paper and begin to insert key places and occurrences. Do some notations connect to others or associate with other times in your life? Alternatively, if you’re a spatial person, set up physical markers in a room that represent key events. As you move from one marker to another, see if you can come up with a gesture that expresses it. Do you walk more quickly or slowly to certain events? That body response helps you create rhythm in your narrative and gives you clues about where you’d like to augment the details.
Writing: Imagine your story as a collection of objects. List the objects, then describe the textures and qualities of these objects in a notebook. Alternatively, think of a key event in your life and try to envision it as a series of photographs. What is the quality of the light in the images? What is the overall mood or tone of the pictures? The sensory details you’ll record in this exercise will help you to create strong physical/textural details in your story.
Reading and writing: Joan Weimer was already researching the life of Constance Fenimore Woolson when her back problems began, but using Woolson’s life as a vehicle for mirroring Weimer’s own difficulties occurred to her only over time. Nonetheless, we are drawn to certain historical characters because something about their lives resonates for us. The two of us, for example, return again and again to the life and work of Katherine Anne Porter, a writer born in challenging circumstances who transformed herself into a woman of letters, as we make sense of our own lives as writers.
Are there people from the past whose lives fascinate you? They don’t necessarily need to be public figures—our own ancestors can provide keys to current dilemmas in our own lives. Take a moment to make a list of historical people by whom you’re intrigued. If one seems to provide particular resonance, make a note of that, too, and, if you wish, write a few paragraphs to see where that person takes you.
Reading and writing: Often, when we say “place,” we think of larger places—houses, cities, office buildings, and the like. But “place” encompasses smaller places, too—your childhood room, for example, or the restaurant where you meet friends each week.
Do the places in your life organize themselves into some cohesive theme, like Mars’s places of worship or Gilbert’s three countries that begin with the letter I? Are there commonalities among the places you’ve lived, the rooms where you’ve spent a lot of time, or are there patterns to your movement to or away from them? Make a list of places, large or small, that have figured in your life. Then draw some lines between them, not limiting yourself to obvious, immediate connections like chronology but instead thinking associatively. Write the association that precipitated the connection on the line itself. (Use a different color, if you like.) Play with these places, trying to imagine a memoir that uses them as its structure.
Writing: A good place to begin your consideration of what structure might work for you is with an informal list of what you hope your audience will take away from your memoir. Mention ideas as well as feelings. For example, do you hope that a story about a dear friend’s illness will prompt the reader to discover the gifts as well as the tolls of the illness? This list will point you not only toward events you’ll want to include but also, more importantly, toward the aspects of the self you wish to reveal in this project.
Reading: Which of the structures presented in this chapter allow you, given your subject matter and/or the occasion of the telling, the most possibilities for discovery?
Writing: Choose one structure and sketch out what it might allow you to reveal. Are there disadvantages to this structure that you can see? Is it restrictive in any way? How?
Reading and writing: Write down the qualities you enjoy most in a narrative. Choose one of the memoirs discussed in this chapter that has some of those qualities. How does its structure contribute to your reading enjoyment?
CHAPTER 4. ARRANGING THE SCENES
Writing: Think for a moment of the spotlit moments you recorded in chapter 1. The fact that these memories remain with you suggests that they are catalysts, fragments from which individual scenes might unspool. Even if you can’t recall what happened after the key image, writing it down will often unstop the memories you think you’ve lost.
So, without thinking about it, pick one of those moments now. Consider what has brought you, its protagonist, to this moment. Is there someone else in the picture? Who wants what? Make some notes as answers come to you. By the end of this chapter you’ll have used this spotlit moment to create a complete scene. Working on one scene at a time can keep you from being overwhelmed by the idea of writing your whole story.
At the same time, be aware, as Patricia Hampl points out in I Could Tell You Stories, that your initial creation of this scene may contain some elements that don’t belong there. This isn’t a problem; always bear in mind that your first attempt at recording a spotlit moment is a draft—a starting point for digging deeper. As soon as we begin to write about the past our memories toss in all sorts of subliminal detritus. One of the great joys of writing memoir is that we’ll get to sort this detritus into a larger truth, discarding what isn’t essential and expanding upon what is. It’s important at this generative stage not to censor or edit but simply to let the story emerge.
Writing: Consider the spotlit moment you noted above. There you are at an earlier moment in your life, captured in a still photograph in your mind’s eye. Now, using what you wanted in that moment, put that photograph in motion. You want—. But—stands in your way.
Maybe you’re sitting on a swing and want to keep swinging higher and higher, but it’s getting dark, and you have to be home before dark. Conflict.
Maybe you’ve been forbidden to see the person who has just called you, but you want to see them. Conflict.
Maybe you’re scowling at someone outside the frame. Why? Conflict.
Maybe there’s a war on, and you must get out of the place you are in. Conflict.
Record any sensory images of that conflict: qualities of light, expression, gesture.
Reading: Consider the catalyst you recorded earlier in this chapter. What did the you in that moment want, and what stood in your way? What happens when you put that moment into motion? Does dialogue spring forth, an exchange where you express your desire and someone else says no? Or are you sitting in your childhood room, imagining what might happen if you attempt to fulfill your desire? Or does this scene occur after your desire was thwarted? In the latter two instances, your scene will immediately move into a moment outside the story’s chronological time frame to deepen the opposition—in the first case into an imagined future, in the latter into the past. We’ll consider the use of flashbacks, and “flashforwards,” in chapter 5.
Reading and writing: Not all scenes have reversals, but we’ve found that when writers employ them, readers are “hooked” all the more. In a sense, the workings of plot and scene weave the reader into the action. Consider the scene you’ve been working on through the exercises in this chapter. Does something unexpected happen that surprises either the experiencing you or the remembering you? Bear in mind, too, that seemingly unrelated external occurrences can affect a narrator: something as simple as a bluebird’s trill might cause someone to realize that life is worth living after all, or a neighbor’s dog’s incessant barking might drive her in the opposite direction.
The experiencing narrator can effect a reversal as well: the you in the past might be purposefully acting on his desire when he suddenly remembers (and remembering is an internal action) something that causes him to reassess his actions or the behavior of those around him.
Take a few moments here to record a few possible reversals for the scene you’re working on. Remember, this is only a draft, a time to explore possibilities. You’ll have as much time as you need to revisit it again and again.
Reading and writing: The scene you’ve been working on in this chapter has been moving toward its own turning point. The drama in a scene’s epiphany does not have to be concussive. In fact, the quietest shifts can have far more emotional impact than the loudest explosions. People lean in closer to hear whispers, and readers who must imagine themselves into a scene are more intimately connected to it than those who have been forced in.
This is not to say that your scene won’t have a literal explosion at its climax. But as the one who first experienced it and who now is reenvisioning it, you are the one who knows—and records—when the desire and opposition set in motion by your catalyst crescendo to their breaking point.
One of the beauties of the two yous is that there is more than one possible epiphany to your scene. You might apply knowledge you’ve gained only years after the fact (a letter you don’t know about until someone else’s death, for example). Even if an external event sends the scene in its moment in a new direction (that trilling bluebird, say), that event might send the experiencing you back to the first time you experienced it and how it made you feel. Recall the young Annie Dillard we referenced in chapter 3, recording her child-self acknowledged by the passing woman who notes Annie’s exuberance.
Rather than demand only one climax for your scene during this first draft, we suggest that you instead list as many possibilities as you can, considering how the scene’s present, past, and future might affect it. Don’t worry about structure, spelling, or grammar—don’t even try for complete sentences at this point unless they come naturally. Just note as many possible climaxes as you can.
Writing: Your own scene’s denouement will arise out of the architecture you’ve built of rising, falling, and climactic action. Take a moment now to record the moment after each of the epiphanies you imagined for your scene in the previous section. The experiencing you might move forward—or step back. The remembering you might comment, imagine, or conjecture. The important thing is to provide the reader with some sense that the narrator acknowledges what has happened in the scene while at the same time his or her larger narrative arc continues to move forward.
Writing: Go back now to your scene’s catalyst—the shimmering image with which you began. What did you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel when you first reimagined that moment? Take time to list words and sensory details that you can later use to re-create that image for readers. It’s unlikely you’ll use them all, so don’t worry about that at this point. Even if you don’t use them, the excavation you do will reveal itself in a more layered narrative, as we mentioned in the discussion of scaffolding in chapter 3. Simply list things like “blue sky,” “smell of coffee,” “the feel of the old wood banister” that you can later flesh out, as Dillard has.
Writing: Even if the scene you’ve been working with in this chapter is not external, it nonetheless occurs in some physical space that requires external delineation, and even if it’s a quiet space, it nonetheless can be described by active verbs. Your childhood bedroom, for example, might “calm” or “frighten.” A coffee shop might “clatter” or “chatter.” Make a list of strong verbs that show the external action of your scene. As always, you’ll return to this later, so don’t worry about getting things perfect this first time out.
Writing: The examples we’ve provided of emblematic moments are complex ones, but such moments can be deceptively simple as well. We’ve noticed that what we call “first-date” stories—the details about ourselves we choose to share when we first meet someone—often contain such moments.
What are your first-date stories? Perhaps you always tell about the time you ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, or, conversely, how you were the one who figured out how to get a stalled elevator full of people in motion again. Each of these stories reveals something you believe to be emblematic about you—whether or not they truly are. So begin this exercise by writing down your go-to first-date story. Try to write it as you tell it, keeping its dramatic structure to the form you’ve mastered over the years.
In The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick notes that memoir requires that the narrator have a stance that sustains his or her story. Once you’ve recorded your first-date story, put it away for a day or two. Then reread it with an eye toward the stance that you, its narrator, have taken regarding the you in the story. Do you use this story to illustrate what a contrary person you once were? Or to show that you’ve always been a take-charge sort?
Emblematic moments are keys into the two yous. Pay attention to them, and they’ll help you map potential paths for your story.
Reading: Pick a scene from a memoir and explore why it does or doesn’t work as a scene. Observe the balance of internal and external action. How does the scene engage the reader?
Writing: Create a dynamic scene in your memoir from anywhere in the story. By dynamic we mean a scene that has a dramatic arc, uses sensory details and a specific moment in time/space to reveal character or further the action, or creates a parallel image/event to reinforce a main theme or throughline. Be as specific as you can to show the action.
CHAPTER 5. PAINTING THE PICTURE
Reading: Choose a scene from a memoir and identify the kind and quality of metaphoric language used as the protagonist remembers the past or paints a picture for the reader of a specific time or place. What are some specific ways the writer involves you in the sensory images of the scene by using metaphor or symbol? Note any techniques of using figurative language you find compelling that you might use in your story.
Writing: Take one of the scenes you were working on in the exercises in chapter 4, or one of your possible entry points for the occasion of the telling in chapter 1, and experiment with creating metaphors for the action or characters. Use the list below to help you create comparisons that enhance the experiential qualities of your writing. In each case, use figurative writing to connote a sensuous comparison for a feeling, movement, or description.
Animal characteristics: We often compare the qualities or movements of animals to human behavior. Foxes, for example, are thought of as clever, magpies as thieves. Play with the animal characteristics your narrator and characters already possess and see what comes of it.
Color: Many people experience emotional states as colors, and even for those who don’t, color imparts mood and tone. What does blue mean to you? Red? Yellow? Are your associations visual? Emotional? Physical? Do you hear certain things when you see certain colors? Try assigning each character in your memoir a color. What color are you?
Texture: Not only have sewing and weaving metaphors come to signify layers and levels of storytelling, but how something feels or looks in three dimensions grabs our attention. How does that blanket, that beach, that cold doorknob feel? Show it on the page.
Sound: Auditory cues are a powerful sense for most people, and the earliest stories were spoken aloud rather than written. Use sound to evoke metaphoric feeling—the longing of a train whistle, for example, or the harsh clanging of a locomotive. If you re-create sound effectively on the page, there’s no need to name the emotion you’re trying to convey, because the auditory cue will serve as metaphor or, perhaps, actually sound like the feeling you’re trying to convey (onomatopoeia).
Smell and taste: The most primitive or limbic of our senses, odors and tastes, can resurrect the past. Are there foods that take you back to the first time you tasted them, smells that place you in a moment from your past? Pick one and write about it.
Objects: As Alfred Hitchcock showed us in movies like Suspicion (where the glowing glass of possibly poisoned milk in Cary Grant’s hand signifies murderous intentions), an object strategically placed can stand in for events or emotional changes and transport us to another moment. Try thinking of an object as fodder for a cinematic quick cut in your memoir and see where it takes you. Even something as simple as a screen door can open (pun intended) into possibility.
Reading: Choose a memoir and record your impressions of how details of place affect the action and mood in one or more chapters. How do details of landscape highlight certain experiences in the memoir? Are there images that recur and acquire symbolic power? How is that achieved? List aspects of social and cultural environment that are also revealed.
Writing: Create a visual representation for a sequence in your story: on a large piece of paper, map where the key events in your story occur. Insert images or metaphors that bring the place to life. Feel free to draw pictures and circle words. You may want to visually trace the connections between your various characters or graph the arc of the plot as well. In this way, you may discover a key setting where your story comes together or pulls apart. In any case, you’ll discover new correspondences by activating your visual sense with the physicality of drawing and writing.
Reading: From the memoir you chose in the last spotlight exercise on setting, isolate passages that show action in ways that highlight psychological action as opposed to physical action. For example, look at how the narrator’s reflections move the story along in a particular scene. How does word choice play a part in addition to rhythm and mood?
Writing: Construct a scene using only dialogue between two characters. How can you show each character listening as well as talking? How can the dialogue show relationship? Conflict?
Reading and writing: Explore a moment of silence in a memoir of your choosing. How does the author use words, the lack of words, rhythm, or repetition to convey silence or cessation of time? Now imagine a silent moment in your story and construct three versions, one using gesture only, one using description, and the last using rhythm and/or repetition. Which example most fully telegraphs your intention?
CHAPTER 6. YOUR STORY, YOUR VOICE
Writing: If you’ve written at all, you already know your writing voice sounds different from your speaking voice. For this exercise, you’ll need a recording device (your computer or phone may well have one). Pick a story from your past you know well, perhaps one that you’ve told many times but have never written down. Without any preparation (no time for worry—just do it!), record the story, with the understanding that no one but you will ever listen to this recording. You’re recording it only for the purpose of this exercise.
Don’t play back the recording immediately after you’ve made it. Instead, move on to the next step in this exercise and write down the story. You may find yourself crossing things out (or, if you’re typing, deleting them) as well as moving words or even sentences around. That’s fine—this is the written version, and that’s precisely what writers do. Take your time, perhaps even going back to polish your draft the next day.
When you’ve finished this written draft, print out a hard copy. Now comes the point of all this. Have one or more colored pens or pencils ready, then play back the recording. Using different colors for different nuances (red for word choice, for example, or blue for elision or expansion), note where what’s on the page differs from what you say in the recording.
Next, consider the differences between these two versions. Are there different word choices—”lovely” instead of “awesome,” for example? Did you phrase your sentences more formally or reorder the telling to enhance its effect? Did you, like Williams, shift into another person to make a point? Maybe in the written version you chose to give more detail about a particular moment or realized that another moment didn’t need to be there at all. Each of these differences between your spoken voice and your written one is a hallmark of your writing voice. Practicing the hallmarks you discover in this exercise can help you make your writer’s voice still stronger and more distinct.
Reading: Analyze a section from one of the books mentioned in this chapter and reflect on how the use of first, second, or third person affects your involvement as a reader.
Writing: One of the advantages of writing about your experiencing self in the third person is that it can help you approach material you’ve found difficult to write about until now. For this exercise, select an embarrassing moment from your past—preferably something you’ve never shared with anyone. Next, give the experiencing you a name—make her a character, in other words. Finally, create a scene for that character, using the embarrassing moment as its basis. Allow what really happened and your emotions about the scene—both then and now—free rein on the page. After all, you’re not writing about you anymore but about your character.
When you’ve finished, put the scene away until the next day. When you do read the piece, see if you’ve gotten closer to the character-you (and his emotions) by using the third person. We’ll bet you have. Writing in the third person allows us to approach problematic moments that are even now difficult to acknowledge.
If this is a scene that your memoir needs, you can now rewrite it using the first person. Or you may choose to keep it in third person or even experiment with second. The important thing is to get every scene that’s intrinsic to your story on the page. Changing person can help you do so.
Writing: Seeing visceral details through a camera’s eye can help you convey their emotional weight. To try this yourself, pick a scene from your childhood where you are observing adults. Make notes to answer the following: Where are you? Where are they? What is going on? How do you feel about the physical presence of the adults in your view? Give a visceral detail for each that conveys your emotional response as well. To extend the exercise, write the scene in first person and then in third person. Compare the effect of each.
CHAPTER 7. HONORING THE MEMOIR PROCESS
Writing: Who are the voices in your head? Are they encouraging you? If so, what are they saying? Write down their words of encouragement. Or, conversely, are they trying to stop you from telling your story? If that’s the case, write down who these voices are and the roadblocks they’re putting in your way. By identifying how others feel about your story, you honor their place in your story. Either way, whether the voices in your head are cheering you on or creating self-doubt, you must assert your right to speak and claim your story.