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Memoirs
A Crash Course

Why write a memoir?

A memoir makes your personal experiences significant to othersit helps the reader gain insight into and understanding of other times, places, people, and events.

By recreating experiences from the past and exploring their significance you can identify continuities or discontinuities in your life. Memoirs can be a means of selfdiscoveryyou can evaluate where you come from and what youve become. Memoirs establish a connection to the past, inform and entertain readers about the past, and bear witness to things that would otherwise be overlooked.

Why?
Nobody cared, then they did. Why? -Chuck Klosterman

What are the key features of a memoir?

Engaging title that hints at the meaning or theme

Personal tone/intimacy between the reader and writer

Introduction with a lead that captures the readers interest/sets a scene

A complication that must be resolvedoutward tension over values or beliefs, personal inner conflict, etc. A plot that draws the reader forward

Rich, vivid detail

A central theme/meaning/question usually only hinted at rather than obvious A new understanding or revelation that presents a moment of growth for you

Personal tonehow your writing should sound.

In your memoir, you will be both a participant (a character in the story) and an observer (someone commenting on and evaluating the story being told).

Focus on the details that are most significant to youthese will help convey your meaning to readers.

You should consider the way you felt at the time the events covered in your memoir took place and compare that to how you feel about those events now.

Danger
Speed/velocity

Twister the movie

Tornadoes

Bravery

Escape

adventure
Treeclimbing

Low-hanging branches

Fear

Playground/rece ss

Running

Tone: Content Mapping

A concept map is a good way to help you set the tone for your memoir. Choose the word(s) or phrase(s) that best describe the tone you are going for (what feeling do you most want your readers to feel?), and create a map of relevant terms around the original term(s). Take 10 minutes to start working on your own concept map.

Dialogue

Reasons you may want to use dialogue in your memoir:

Basically, your dialogue should have a point.

Develop characters
Develop character relationships Provide information Move the story forward Create tension

Dont write dialogue (especially in a 3 page memoir) that adds nothing to your story. You can summarize any commonplace exchanges.

Writing Dialogue

Make sure to write in the way your characters speak, but trim the unnecessary words. We tend to pad our real speech with words like these, that dont add to the actual story.

Along those lines, dialogue should move the story forward, not just provide filler. Make sure your reader can identify who is speaking. Create unique, true voices for your characters.

Dialogue Mechanics

Quotation marks go around the words actually spoken.

1. 2.

WRONG: Brick said, I love lamp. RIGHT: Brian Fantana said, Theyve done studies60 percent of the time it works every time.

PUNCTUATION: If the sentence ends with quoted material, place the punctuation inside the quotation marks. If it does not end with the quotation, place appropriate punctuation at the end of the sentence and place a comma at the end of the quoted material. Every time you introduce a new speaker or change speakers, you need to start a new paragraph.

Description

Writing descriptively will improve your memoir and make it more interesting for your reader. (Remember to consider your reader!) When writing description, you should always choose to be specific, and avoid the obvious. Remember to employ things like metaphors and similes to add interest to your descriptive writing.

Paragraphs
1.

When to start a new paragraph: When you have a new or slightly new idea To emphasize a point, or make a contrast between points In dialogue, when a different person speaks When your reader needs a pause When you are ending your intro or conclusion

2.

3.

4.

5.

Your paragraphs should aim to achieve the following: UNITY: each paragraph should have a focus, i.e. the sentences should be related to each other. COHERENCE: The relationship between sentences should be clear to the reader. DEVELOPMENT: Develop your paragraphs using examples, anecdotes, explaining things your reader may not know, etc.

SCENE: Takes place in real-time, like a movie, usually contains dialogue between characters, and should be used for important interactions and events. SUMMARY: Moves quickly, giving the reader important highlights or reminders, and is used for background information. Bits of summary often occur within scenes.

Scenes and Summaries

In terms of focus, you can emphasize the most important parts of your memoir by writing scenes and using summary for less vital parts.

Dialogue and Description

Dialogue and Description often work hand-in-hand in a narrative. (I.E. Im expecting you to use them to compliment each other in your memoir).

EXAMPLE: Its all over but the shoutin now, aint it boy, he said, and when he let the quilt slide from his shoulders I saw how he had wasted away, how the bones seemed to poke out of his clothes, and I could see how it killed his pride to look this way, unclean, and he looked away from me for a moment, ashamed. --From Rick Braggs All Over But the Shoutin

Contexthow can your audience relate?

Make sure to include enough information about people, places, dialogue, etc., that your reader can reconstruct the scene in their imagination. Memoirists can take a recognizable situation and give it new meaning. Put your memoir in a larger social/historical/cultural context. Consider the significance of the thing youre writing about in relation to the world at large. What did it mean then? Now?

THESISwhats your point?

(Remember, this is your argument.)

Your goal is to uncover some meaning in your past for both yourself and your reader.
However, dont spend too much time worrying about what your point isif youve chosen a worthy topic it will usually become clear to you as you write. BUT! You may need to go back and strengthen your point. Your thesis should be IMPLIED, rather than directly statedtry not to moralize. In a memoir, its okay not to present your thesis until the end. In fact its traditional for the full, true point of a memoir not to be revealed until the end.

Example conclusions
The books had been burnt, but the story went on.

Book War, Wang Ping

An excellent question. I honestly do not know. I have no idea. The slur just seems to have been out there, there and somehow not there, like the way a Wiffle Ball whips and dips, the way adults laugh at things kids dont understand, the way background noise from a baseball game leaks out of transistor radios, the way bits of gravel bounce out of pickup truck beds, the way factory fires flirt with the night sky, the way sonic booms burst the lie of silence.

I had forgotten all about that patent-leather look until one day in 1971, when I was sitting in an Arab restaurant on the island of Zanzibar surrounded by men in fezzes and white caftans, trying to learn how to eat curried goat and rice with the fingers of my right hand and feeling two million miles from home. All of a sudden, an old transistor radio sitting on top of a china cupboard stopped blaring out its Swahili music and started playing Fly Me to the Moon, by Nat King Cole. The restaurants din was not affected at all, but in my minds eye I saw it: the Kings magnificent sleek black tiara. I managed, barely, to blink back the tears.

In the Kitchen, Henry Louis Gates

Words of My Youth, Joe Mackall

This is the picture I see when I write. These are the secrets I was supposed to keep. These are the women who never let me forget why stories need to be told.

Lost Lives of Women, Amy Tan

Revision: things that can wait (for now)

A COOL TITLE! You should put thought into your title, but dont get hung up on it prematurely.

Streamlining: when youre first writing your drafts, more is more! When youre getting close to a final draft, you want to go back and clean up insignificant/extraneous details.

A sweet opening line/paragraph. This is something that you can go back to, if youre struggling. Once youve gotten some good material youll discover a great, attention getting place to start from.

In-Class Dialog Activity

Write a descriptive dialog for this scene. Who are these guys? What might they be saying to each other? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJdF8DJ70Dc

DESCRIPTION TABOO
2 minDescribe without using the words autumn or trees

Homework for next week

Conferences: Make sure to check your email for the conference schedule I send you and show up at the right time. You should come ready to tell me about the memoir idea(s) you have.
For class Tuesday: Read Michael Chabons To the Legoland Station, come to class ready to write

Six Word Memoirs

Now were going to try an exercise in conciseness by writing our own sixword memoirs. http://vimeo.com/8562043#at=0

Challenge: Write your life story in six words.

Pre-write: make a list of topics/memories/personality traits that could be used in your six word memoir.
Draft: Using your pre-writing, select one or two ideas to expand into six words. Consider the examples for inspiration. Revise: Make at least one change to improve your memoir (word choice, varying sentences, add/change punctuation) Peer-Edit: Share your memoir with the person next to you. As you review each others memoirs, consider if the memoir can stand on its ownif not, how can the meaning be made more clear?

Final Draft: Post your six-word memoir to Blackboard. Well share them in class on Thursday.