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
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
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
What’s a scene: happens in real time: action + dialogue. Exposition or summary summarizes the action and dialogue
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.
Seeing, tasting, touching, hearing, smelling
How does time work in scene versus exposition? When would you want to use scene versus exposition? Can anyone tell me why?
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.
Again: what is direct characterization
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.
How would you characterize the voice/ tone of this first piece
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.
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.
Who can tell me the difference between a scene and a summary;not just a first memory, but an important event to write about.