Struggling with your memoir?
|
|
Struggling with your memoir?
|
|
Why are so many memoirs terrible? Because the writers didn't take the time to learn about structure. In this video, Wendy explains exactly why structuring a memoir can be so difficult and offers a plan for remedying this.
0 Comments
So many of my students stick in every little fact that they can remember to recount a story. But your reader doesn't want tons of information. They want to live through a moment with you fully. So many memoir writers are good at writing about themselves, yet they struggle to write about the other people who appear in their book. So today, I want to help you out. Our topic: How to bring your characters to life on the page.
When you write about your characters, imagine the process being a bit like buying a house. If you were searching for your dream home, would you only want to know about the external characteristics — the color of the house, the pitch of the roof and if it had a deck? Chances are, if you’re making such a large investment, you’d want to know more. You’d probably want to be invited inside, shown around, and told a story or two about who used to live there. Has the house recently been remodeled? Is there a good school district nearby? Or did the previous owner move to Paris to be with her 90-year-old boyfriend? Describing your characters is a similar process. If you just describe the outer shell, it’s as though you’re asking your reader to wait outside. Here’s an example of a character description that is typically written by new writers: "She was wearing a purple sweatshirt as she leaned back in her chair. The sweatshirt was emblazoned with the word “Harvard” across the front." When it comes to describing your characters, the most important advice I can give you is to be subjective. By subjective, I mean that you need to interpret your characters for your reader and not just provide a physical description. A better description would be something like: “Her sweatshirt was emblazoned with the word “Harvard” across the front. I imagined her days were filled with dreams of attending that Ivy League college. Would she get in? Would she make her father proud? I had no idea what that was like, to have come from generations of overachievers." So what did I just do there? I took the very same objective facts that I used a little bit earlier. And I interpreted those facts for the reader. I added subjectivity to help the reader understand what this character is really like. In fact, you might notice that this description is as much about the narrator as it is about the character I’m describing. And that’s exactly what a good memoir description does — it lets us in to the mind of the narrator. Everything you describe in your memoir should be filtered from the narrator’s point of view. Being objective is boring. Believe it or not, your reader actually wants to be told what to think about the people you write about. Till next time! Happy writing. If you've felt like your idea well has run dry, you know what it's like to have writer's block. In this video, Random House author Wendy Dale talks about what causes this effect and how to prevent it. Nearly every writer questions themselves and their book. In this video, Wendy tries to help writers get past their meltdown by understanding what it is that truly keeps a reader engaged. Your book might not be fascinating and filled with plot twists and turns, but that's actually okay. A lot of writers who come to me have been at this for a long time. They know that one scene needs to flow logically into the next one, that the process of creating connections in their book is what creates a story.
Here is where the problem comes in: They connect the wrong thing. I see this time and time again: A writer will come to me confident that one idea seamlessly leads into the next one. And that very well might be the case. But this is not the way to create plot. Let me show you what I mean with an example. In the text below, one idea brings up the next one. But does this work to tell a story? There were so many things we had to do to get ready for Fernanda’s eighth birthday party. We needed to get two hundred balloons, all in pink. Pink was important for the party. It was Fernanda’s favorite color and it was the color of all her stuffed animals. She had a pink bear, a pink cat, a pink unicorn and a three-foot tall pink otter, which she loved. However, her favorite object was the photograph on her wall that her dad had taken when they’d visited the Grand Canyon. It had been a great trip even though Fernanda was afraid of heights. She was also afraid of spiders but she had managed to kill one on her own the other day by throwing a book at it. She hadn’t picked that book up since. Still, she loved reading. She also loved swimming and making cookies with her mom. But she was allergic to peanuts, so she needed to be careful when baking. Fortunately, she didn’t have any other allergies. Her best friend Sophia was allergic to wheat so we had to make sure not to serve pasta when she came over. Dinner at our house was usually a chaotic affair. It was also chaotic when it was time to clean out our garage. Did this feel like a story to you? I’m guessing that your answer is no. Why not? In this example, one idea picked up where the previous idea left off, but the result was ending up somewhere completely different from where we actually started. I began this text by talking about Fernanda’s eighth birthday party, but wound up talking about cleaning up the garage. What does this writer need to do instead? Connect all of their events in a chapter around a single idea. If the chapter is about Fernanda's birthday party, that's what the writer needs to talk about, not cleaning out the garage. (By the way, this is the outline of the chapter, not the written out version. I always have my writers figure out their structure at the outline level.) What I see far too often is writers who do understand the importance of making connections in their book, but they make the wrong connections. So the end result is much the same as if they had never even considered the concept of structure in the first place. I'll be giving tips for how to structure your book in my Memoir Engineering System class. This is also the gateway class for anyone who wants to work with me further. Enrollment opens on May 1 (May 2 for Kiwis and Aussies). Be sure to put the date on your calendar as the class always sells out in less than 24 hours. Official enrollment date: Wednesday, May 1 at 7 p.m. Eastern for North Americans Thursday, May 2 at 9 a.m. Sydney time for Aussies and Kiwis Here is the signup link: https://www.memoirwritingforgeniuses.com/may2024mastermind Wishing you happy writing! Till next week. How does plot in fiction vary from plot in memoirs? In theory, they follow exactly the same rules. However, finding your memoir's plot requires an entirely different approach than when writing novels. Flashbacks in memoir work differently than they do in movies. When writing a book, a flashback is not a memory. In this video Random House author Wendy Dale explains what a flashback really is, how to use them in your memoir and how to get out of a flashback and return to your main storyline. Today I want to start with a question. Do you know the difference between memories and a memoir? (Okay, if you speak French, they mean the same thing, but I’m talking about English here.) This question is a little bit like asking, “What is the difference between eggs, flour, sugar, and butter and a birthday cake?” Basically, in the first situation, you have all the necessary ingredients. You simply have yet to turn them into a finished dessert. The same is true with memoirs. So many writers think that their memories are all they need. Unfortunately, that is just the beginning of the process.
Let me give you an example of how a poorly written memoir is laid out. In fact, this is what almost all writers, even experienced ones, do when they first try their hand at memoir: When I was 20, I got married for the first time. He drank too much and was out late every night. Our marriage lasted two years. After our divorce, I decided I wanted to travel. So I went to Jamaica with my best friend Lola. It amazed me how the sun seemed to heal my pain, how piña coladas took away the sense of loneliness I felt as a divorced woman. A few years later, I decided to go to college. Michigan State was where I met Seymour. He was the tallest man I ever met. He was captain of the college swim team and always seemed to be in a good mood. I was a senior at Michigan State when my first child was born, a little girl named Lily. Being a mother was something I never counted on to change my life. However, when I stared at Lily for the first time, I knew that nothing would ever be the same. Two years later, we had our first son, a six-pound baby we decided to name Jacob. Jacob was so different from Lily. He never slept through the night and by the time he started walking, he got into everything. I was so worried he’d find some bottle of bleach I’d forgotten to store away or stick his little fingers into a light socket. So maybe this isn’t driving you crazy yet, but if the writer crafted a whole book this way, basically recounting the history of their life, you wouldn’t be able to stand it for more than five pages. Even if this writer expanded on each of these ideas with rich prose and let me live through all of these events, that still wouldn’t solve the structural problems that already exist here. Why? Because the writer is working with a bunch of memories instead of turning those memories into a story. A reader is not interested in the memories you have of your life. A reader will only pay money for your book if you give them a good story. Why do we watch movies and read novels? Because we want a good story. So your task as a memoir writer is to take these memories and turn them into plot. How do you create plot (or structure, as it’s usually called in memoir)? I'll give you an example in next week's email. Stay tuned. You might also be interested in my upcoming Memoir Engineering System class, where we will talk about the right way to turn your memories into memoir. Official enrollment date: Wednesday, May 1 at 7 p.m. Eastern for North Americans Thursday, May 2 at 9 a.m. Sydney time for Aussies and Kiwis Be sure to put the date on your calendar as the class always sells out in less than 24 hours. Here is the signup link: https://www.memoirwritingforgeniuses.com/may2024mastermind Wishing you happy writing! Till next week. "Show, Don't Tell" is probably the most misunderstood advice ever given to writers. And if you use it wrong, it will likely make your writing much worse. So what does it really mean? Random House author Wendy Dale answers this question, explaining that there are very specific cases when this advice should be followed. |
AuthorA Random House author offers tips on writing your own memoir. Archives
May 2024
Categories |
|
Memoir Writing for Geniuses.
All rights reserved. |