Search Results (newest first): "from memories to memoirs"


From Memories to Memoirs, Part 10 — Structuring Your Memoir 13

Memoir isn’t the summary of a life; it’s a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It’s not; it’s a deliberate construction. ~ William Zinsser, On Writing Well (30th Anniversary Edition) I am often […]


From Memories to Memoirs, Part 9: Dialogue in Memoir 6

Dialogue does the heavy-lifting work – carrying details, setting the scene and moving the plot forward.  ~ J.H. Mae Perhaps more than any other writing device, dialogue brings your readers into the immediacy of scene. It provides a method for showing, not just telling about, a person’s character and personality, as […]


From Memories to Memoirs, Part 7: Creating Fresh Metaphor 6

In Memories to Memoirs, Part 6, I wrote about the importance and impact of fresh metaphor to the life of our stories. Not only does metaphor engage the imagination of our readers, it is key to our own writing voice. Because metaphor is the frame through which we understand concepts, it reveals […]


From Memories to Memoirs Part 6: Writing in Metaphor

In the previous installment of this series, we examined the strong verb and its importance to our story’s tone and pace. In this post, we’ll look at figurative language — metaphor. What exactly is metaphor? Metaphor compares abstract concepts to familiar objects and is the mechanism by which we understand those […]


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From Memories to Memoirs Part 5 — Strong Verbs 6

You have been working on ways to remember and write your life story vividly, with concrete and sensory details that draw your reader into the world of your story. Now, consider how the verbs you choose effect tone and pace. In the midst of a story, when you describe a static object, you are in […]


From Memories to Memoirs, Part 3 — Remembering Vividly 6

This is the third in a series on moving from memories to memoirs. Click here to read Memories to Memoirs, Part 1 and Memories to Memoirs, Part 2. In part two, we used map drawing to trigger memories about place and time in our lives. In this article I present another technique to release sensory […]


From Memories to Memoirs, Part 1 — What is Memoir? 8

Our greatest desire, greater even than the desire for happiness, Is that our lives mean something. This desire for meaning is the originating impulse of story.   ~Daniel Taylor I believe that everyone’s lives, however “ordinary,” are filled with experiences that speak to universal human experience and are therefore interesting to […]