Intro to Memoir, Spring 2016
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This document provides guidance on writing creative nonfiction and memoir. It discusses key elements of the genre including: - Using sensory details and scenes to immerse the reader in real events from the writer's life. - Reflecting on personal experiences and stories to find deeper meaning and themes. Effective memoirs require careful construction. - Conducting research to provide context and verify details, even when writing about one's own life. - Showing actions and dialogue through well-crafted scenes rather than just telling stories or recounting events. - Developing characters through direct and indirect characterization techniques. - Crafting an intentional narrative structure and frame for telling one's story. -
Intro to Memoir, Spring 2016
- 1. As a form of Creative Nonfiction “Good memoirs are a careful act of construction.” —William Zinsser • Frey • * Joyce Maynard
- 2. “…your story is your story to tell…” —page 21, Tell It Slant Based on our reading in Chapter 2, “Writing the Family” (Tell It Slant), what are some of the challenges you think you might face in working on your memoir piece?
- 3. Real Life Reflection Research Reading “Riting” Adapted from Lee Gutkind, editor of Creative Non-Fiction magazine
- 4. Sensory detail: the body, smell, sight, sounds, taste, touch Immersion into and with actual events, locations, people Scenes (showing) versus telling stories from real life that draw in the reader Description from real life of people and places
- 5. What is the meaning behind the real experience or story the writer is telling? Differentiates a story from an anecdote Reflection means asking yourself questions about your story, whether it’s a personal experience or a story outside yourself. Why did it stay with me? What did I learn from this? Why does it matter?
- 6. The mission of nonfiction, in part, is to inform and educate. Even a personal story requires research in order to provide significant details. The research connects the personal story to a larger intellectual context.
- 7. Even people writing about their own lives often extend outside themselves To verify To add context For example…
- 8. Expanding your knowledge and ideas by DEVOURING the works of other writers. Not just other creative nonfiction writers, but other artists and fiction writers and scientists and musicians and on and on. The more you know, the more context you have for your own discovery
- 9. The rough-draft writing of inspiration and exercises The revision writing of addressing the elements of creative nonfiction: sensory detail, scenes, structure, characterization, language, voice, theme Editing: cleaning up grammar, sentence structure, word choice and, sometimes, the complete structural redrafting of pieces.
- 10. Strong writing contains specificity; weak writing is vague, reliant on clichéd imagery and abstraction Consider the use of sensory detail as described in chapter one in Tell It Slant. Create for the reader the experience through the use of details
- 11. You’ve heard this before: Show, don’t tell In this case, we are talking about showing action rather than recounting it Scene happens in real time: action + dialogue Exposition is summarized This has a special challenge in non-fiction and memoir in particular. What’s that special challenge?
- 12. Scenes happen in real time, through action and dialogue Exposition summarizes action and dialogue Scenes slow the writing down Exposition—summary—condenses and speeds it up So you want to choose wisely and make sure the impactful elements are conveyed through scene, and not summarized
- 13. Character in writing is created through a combination of direct and indirect characterization. Description of appearance and dialogue are two of the main forms of characterization, and you want to aim to use both in these.
- 14. Narrative means, in the simplest terms, how we tell the story, or how we “frame” the story. Is it chronological? Ordered by the importance of the events? Circular, coming back to the beginning of the piece? Are there sections that each begin with a uniform element? Narrative construction in writing is how we make transform memories/ ideas into...art
- 15. In Night of the Gun, David Carr writes: “Memoir is a very personal form of creation myth.” In Tell It Slant, the authors write: “Memory itself could be called its own bit of creative nonfiction.” How do you interpret these statements?
- 16. “A metaphor is a way of getting at a truth that exists beyond the literal.” Metaphor is a common device or “technique” in poetry. Metaphors create direct comparisons, and create a new way of seeing or thinking about the original idea/object/person.
- 17. “Repeat after Me” by David Sedaris “The Love of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed Voice Description Scene Theme What other writing elements do you note in these excerpts that correspond to the sensory chapters in Tell It Slant that we read: smell, taste, hearing, touch, sight
- 18. What are some words you would use to describe the voice of this piece? Examples of voice
- 19. Group 1: characterization: find examples of direct characterization for the characters in this story. Group 2: scene versus exposition. Find examples of scene versus summary and discuss why the methods are used as they are Group 3: discuss the narrative frame and structure of the piece Group 4: theme and metaphor: what’s the larger meaning of this story, what is the meaning behind the meaning of the title.
- 20. “The Love of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed Voice: how would you describe it? Group 1: Scene versus Exposition Group 2: sensory details Group 3: theme and metaphor Group 4: structure
- 21. Pick an event from your life that was meaningfully and that raised questions for you—that has potential for a short memoir. Use the prompt on p. 12: “I remember”… First, let’s read, p. 57, “First Actors,” (Tell It Slant) Write a scene that either is the event or related to the event, make it as detailed as you can— not a summary, but a scene. Just plunge in: 20 minutes
- 22. Revise or continue working on today’s free- writing exercise for a 2-4 page first draft, due next week Or: Use one of the exercises from Tell It Slant, pages 12-16 and write something new for a 2-4 page first draft Or...write something different based on an idea/ inspiration for a 3-4 page first memoir draft due next week.
Editor's Notes
- #2: We could listen to an interview with William Zinsser, well known writing writer, which delves into contemporary memoir. This is a few years old, but it still gives a good history. Listen to Frey stuff, joyce maynard and JD Salinger. Memoir one of the most dominant forms of creative nonfiction
- #4: In the introduction, the authors of Tell It Slant refer to Lee Gutkind, the editor of the magazine Creative Nonfiction, who devised the five Rs of creative nonfiction
- #5: What’s a scene: happens in real time: action + dialogue. Exposition or summary summarizes the action and dialogue
- #8: David Carr is the media reporter for The New York Times and he wrote a memoir several years ago about his time as a drug addict, but because he was a drug addict then he wanted to actually go back and report on his own life, not just use his own memories.
- #11: Seeing, tasting, touching, hearing, smelling
- #12: How does time work in scene versus exposition? When would you want to use scene versus exposition? Can anyone tell me why?
- #13: This is a surprising challenge because we often actually want to summarize the hardest parts of the writing or the hardest parts of an experience, rush through it.
- #14: Again: what is direct characterization
- #15: Uniform element could mean starting each section with a scene or a quote or an idea. Some of you who have already studied fiction are familiar with the Aristotelian notion of the narrative arc. Freytag triangle. The idea is that every story has a beginning, middle and end, and that we naturally create that structure, that sense of plot, when we consider our own lives.
- #18: How would you characterize the voice/ tone of this first piece
- #19: Best selling humor writer and essayist. He writes for the new yorker regularly, has numerous anthologies of essays, next one is due out in 2017. me talk pretty one day is the most famous. Dress your family in curorodroy and denim.
- #21: Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir WILD, the New York Times bestsellers TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS and BRAVE ENOUGH, and the novel TORCH. Strayed's essays have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, The Sun, Tin House, and elsewhere. Strayed is the co-host, along with Steve Almond, of the WBUR podcast Dear Sugar Radio, which originated with her popular Dear Sugar advice column on The Rumpus.
- #22: Who can tell me the difference between a scene and a summary;not just a first memory, but an important event to write about.