How To Write a Memoir

Writing a memoir takes a lot more effort than just recording the events of your life as you recall them happening. Here are just a few tips to get you started.

1. Pick a theme
The difference between an autobiography and a memoir is the focus of the narrative. An autobiography is the telling of someone’s life. A memoir focuses on the theme (or themes) of that life (or episode in the life). Think of what you are writing about. What is your message? What is going on? What is the moral to your tale? Are you writing about your life as a cautionary tale? Was your life changed by one spectacular event? What events in your life led up to that?

Picking a theme helps narrow your focus so that you don’t get distracted with stories that have nothing to do with that theme. For instance, if I was focusing my memoir on how I am the unluckiest person in the world who ended up winning the lottery, I’d choose to share events in my life that illustrate that. Share unlucky episodes, anecdotes, and events that led to me winning the lotto. I would steer away from writing about my first puppy or my first car or my high school graduation…unless those events helped to support the theme I want to get across.

You want to tell the story of your life…but a lot of stuff happens to us in the course of a lifetime…you need to find a way to narrow that down and trim a bit of the excess.

2. Make it conversational
You gotta make it interesting. Don’t drone on and on about your less than stellar childhood – make the reader feel like you are speaking directly to them. Pull them into your narrative, make them feel what you were feeling, experience what you experienced. Put them in the story.

3. Use your senses
This is a good way to draw your readers in. When you write a scene, think about your five senses. If you are describing a trip to the beach, what did you smell? What color was the ocean? What sounds did you hear? Could you taste the salt on your lips? Did the hot sand burn your toes, or did it feel cool and silky?

4. Ground your story in the real world
This seems like a given, but when you are writing about personal experiences, you are (naturally) focused inward. Add details to your narrative that help place what is happening to you in the real world. Things like cultural references (what movies were playing, what songs were popular, etc), modes of transportation (were wood paneled station wagons littering the roads, or was everyone driving a hybrid?), popular clothes fashions (shoulder pads and teased hair or bell bottom jeans and long, shaggy hair?)….these types of details can be woven into your memoir to help set the setting.

5. Be ethical when writing about living people!
This one can be tough, and it is completely up to you if you will use real names or not. But consider how your story may affect those you include. Telling the world that your sister had an affair might be great for your story, but how will it affect your sister? In my opinion, changing the names of the major players in your narrative don’t adversely affect your memoir in the slightest – and using the real identity of someone who would prefer to remain anonymous could hurt you (and them) much more than it could help your book.

Again, this is only my opinion, and this is a subject that can get really touchy, but if your sister’s affair is something you need to include in your book (maybe it is what broke up your own marriage, etc), I don’t consider it dishonest if you change your sister Patty to your cousin Susan – the event is the same, the results are the same, the STORY is the same. Changing a few details to protect someone who has no choice over your freedom of speech is not, in my opinion, dishonest.

Now, saying you were a drug dealer that lived on the streets when in fact you were raised in a million dollar mansion in Beverley Hills is another thing entirely. Changing the facts and events of your life is dishonest…that isn’t a memoir, that is a fiction novel. But changing a name or two…making a sister a cousin…you aren’t changing anything that affects the outcome of your story. Just think long and hard before you include someone that might not want to be included. You have the right to tell your story, but they have the right to keep their lives private if they wish.

6. Above all…KEEP IT HONEST!
As we just discussed, fabricating the facts of your life doesn’t do anyone any good (as some writers have discovered). When you label something a memoir, you are making a sort of promise to your readers that what you are telling them is the truth, that the events that you are sharing really happened. If the events of your life aren’t enough on their own and you need to fabricate experiences to complete the story…then do what you wish, but don’t call it a memoir – call it fiction, because that is what it is.

Will you get hauled into court and called a fraud if you couldn’t remember that it was raining the night you fell overboard into the sea so you said it was a clear night? Probably not. It’s a small, insignificant detail that doesn’t affect the outcome of the experience. Are you being dishonest if you say you fell overboard when you’ve never set foot on a boat in your life? Yeah. You are. Don’t do that. :)

Now, these few tips are just the bare basics of memoir writing. For more detail and specific How To tips, you might want to find a book or two on memoir writing. I recommend Judith Barrington’s Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, to start you out.

Come back next Tuesday for tips on how to find an agent for the masterpiece you are writing :)

How To Write a Sonnet

Ah, is there anything more romantic than a sonnet? (awww, *swoon*). Be still my heart :D

Okay, sonnets are fairly easy, structure-wise that is. Don’t worry; we’ll keep it simple. Trying to convey the emotion and message that you want to get across is a lot harder than it looks when you have to stick to a structured set of rules. But it is such a joy when you finally get it right!

First of all, there are two types of sonnets; Petrarchan (or Italian) and Shakespearean (or English). So, how are they different?

Petrarchan:

Elements:

1. Fourteen lines – usually iambic pentameter (meaning the 10 syllables that follow an unstressed/stressed pattern – see last week’s post for more detailed info).

2. This type of sonnet has an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines).

3. The rhyme scheme of the octave is abbaabba. The sestet has several variations, including: cddcdd or cdecde or cdcdcd or cdcdee or cdccdc.

4. The content of the octave is usually a kind of set-up, the opening statement or argument, the part that presents the problem, the desire, the question, the conflict, the reflection, etc. Typically, the first four lines (or quatrain) present the theme, and the second quatrain further develops this.

5. The sestet is the wrap-up, the resolution, the solution, the comment about what was said in the octave. This is heralded by the volta (the turn, change in tone, imagery or theme), usually occurring at the ninth line of the sonnet.

Example:

From the Dark Tower (To Charles S. Johnson)
by: Countee Cullen

We shall not always plant while others reap (a)
The golden increment of bursting fruit, (b)
Not always countenance, abject and mute, (b)
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap; (a) (the “problem”)
Not everlastingly while others sleep (a)
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute, (b)
Not always bend to some more subtle brute; (b)
We were not made to eternally weep. (a) (further development)
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark, (c) (the volta)
White stars is no less lovely being dark, (c)
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all (d)
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall; (d)
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, (e)
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds. (e) (resolution)

If you know a little about Countee Cullen, specifically that he was a black man that lived from 1903-1946, the meaning of the poem is easy to determine. The octave (the first eight lines) show the problem, the opening statement. The sestet (the last six lines) show the resolution, the solution to the emotional statements of the first half of the poem.


Shakespearean

Elements:

1. The form is fourteen lines, usually iambic pentameter.

2. There is no octave/sestet structure, but is structured as three quatrains and one couplet.

3. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg.

4. The volta usually occurs at the third quatrain.

5. The final couplet (the gg) is the resolution.

Example:

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (a)
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (b)
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (a)
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: (b)
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (c)
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; (d)
And every fair from fair sometime declines, (c)
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; (d)
But thy eternal summer shall not fade (e) -----Volta
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; (f)
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, (e)
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: (f)
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, (g)
So long lives this and this gives life to thee. (g) ---- resolution

Now, as with most things in life, nothing is set in stone. There are variations on variations, modern tweaks and twiddles…but for the most part, if you follow the elements above, you should be able to write a sonnet of your own.

My own attempt, a sonnet I wrote for a poetry class in my grad school days, about my preemie daughter….

For my Daughter

My gentle fingers on soft tendrils lie.
I feel at fault, though no one is to blame.
I could not keep you safe and so you came.
I live for just a flutter of your eye.
I rock you, baby, watch the hour speed by,
I whisper softly in your ear your name.
Ordeals and pain your spirit cannot tame.
But when it’s time to go I softly cry.

Two months have passed and now you’re safe at home.
My tiny angel cradled to my breast.
All guilt has flown, no time on sorrow spend,
For joy we feel, our hearts on wings do roam.
Your newborn eyes gaze into mine – we’re blest.
My precious girl, my heart you swiftly mend.


Come back next week to learn how to write haiku.

For step-by-step instructions on how to write sonnets and several other forms of poetry, check out my book So You Have to Write a Poem: A Guide for the Non-Poetic!

How To Write Heroic Couplets

It’s February, Valentine’s, the month of luuuuuv….so let’s talk a little poetry, shall we? This week we will discuss one of my favorite forms of poetry, the heroic couplet. Heroic couplets were once the epitome of poetry. If you had to read Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales….you’ve read heroic couplets. Poets used this form not just for “regular” poetry, but for social commentaries, arguments, political dissertations…anything and everything you could think of was put into heroic couplet form. It’s name was even derived from the distinguished and lofty subject matter often contained in it’s verses. This form of poetry was immensely popular until around the late 19th century. Nowadays, it is very rarely seen, which is, in my humble opinion, a crying shame. So, what are heroic couplets? And how on earth would you go about writing one?

What are they?

Simply put, a heroic couplet is a pair of rhyming lines, usually written in iambic pentameter.

Elements:

1. Must have pairs of rhyming lines.
This is fairly straight forward. The rhyme scheme would be aabbccddee…In other words, your first and second lines will rhyme, the third and fourth lines will rhyme, the fifth and sixth, and so forth.

Heroic couplets have been historically used for epic poetry. They tend to be very long. But they don’t have to be. A poem can be any length.

2. The meter is usually iambic pentameter.
Iambic pentameter is a pattern of 5 unstressed/stressed syllable pairs.

For example, let’s look at a line from, The Author to Her Book. I will italicize the stressed syllables…

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain

As you can see, there are five stressed syllables, each followed by an unstressed syllables.

Heroic couplets are usually written in iambic pentameter, but can sometimes be written in tetrameter. Tetra = four….so this would mean that instead of each line having five stressed syllables, they would have four.

For other types of meters and an overview on how to find a poem's meter, check out my book So You Have to Write a Poem (info below).

3.Heroic couplets also allow for a caesura
A caesura is a strong pause that breaks up a line of verse in the middle of the line.

For example, another line from the same poem by Anne Bradstreet…

I washed thy face, but more defects I saw

The comma denotes where the caesura occurs.


There are other exceptions and occasional rules, as well as additions to these simple rules that modern heroic couplets have adapted, but the easiest way to spot (or write) a poem in the heroic couplet form is to have pairs of rhyming lines, written in iambic pentameter.

Heroic couplets are wonderful, beautiful, and memorable….the rhyming couplets and the rhythm of the lines are made to be remembered. Try writing your special someone a heroic couplet poem for Valentine’s Day – or try one just for fun and leave it in the comments section. I’d love to see your masterpieces!!

For more detailed examples and step-by-step instructions on how to write heroic couplets and several other forms of poetry, check out my book So You Have to Write a Poem: A Guide for the Non-Poetic!

How To Write A Hook Line Or Logline

This week, we are going to discuss how to create a hook line for a novel. It is important to remember that every story is different. Some will need a little more information, and others can get the point across in three words or less. Well…maybe a few more than three words, but you get my drift.

First of all, what is a hook line?

A hook line is exactly what it sounds like – a line that will hook someone into wanting to read your book. It is basically the same thing as a logline, which is a one line summary of a screenplay or script. Since we are creating these for a novel instead of a script, we’ll call them hook lines. They can run two or three lines, but no more than that.

Why do you need one?

Your hook line, like a logline, takes a story full of complex plotlines and high-concept ideas and breaks it down into a simple sentence that can be quickly and easily conveyed to a wide range of people. Your hook line is your first pitch in getting someone interested in your book. It can be used as the first line in your query letter, to help hook the agent into reading the rest of the letter and requesting information. And it is especially useful for those pitch sessions at conferences or lunches. When a prospective agent or editor asks you what your book is about, your hook line is your answer. Because it is a simple line or two, it is also handy for those family dinner parties when Grandma asks what your book is about.

How do you create a hook line?

This is actually easier than it sounds. You do not need to condense your entire book into one sentence. But you do need to give enough information that the agent/editor/curious acquaintance you are addressing gets the gist of your book and is interested enough to want more.

Elements of a Hook Line

• Characters – Who is the main character? What does that main character want? What is his/her main goal?

• Conflict – Who is the villain of the story? Or what is the main obstacle to the main character obtaining their goal?

• Distinction – What makes your book different then all the rest? What is the unique element of your story that makes it stand out? Is your book a romance between a young man and woman? What makes them different?

• Setting – for a novel, adding a little about the setting, time period, and possibly genre (if it’s not obvious) is a good idea. For example, the hook line for my book, which is an historical romantic suspense, could begin “A young woman in Victorian England…”.

• Action – Your hook line needs to have action, excitement. For example, which hook line catches your interest more?

1. A woman has an affair and runs off with her new beau.
2. A neglected wife and mother has a torrid affair with an ex-con and kidnaps her children as she flees across the country with her lover.

The difference is the inclusion in the second example of action and description words. The woman becomes a “neglected wife and mother.” She has a “torrid” affair. The beau is an “ex-con,” implying a world of danger and crime. She doesn’t just run off, she “flees,” kidnapping her children in the process.

Examples:

Here are a few examples of loglines from well known movies. (Yes, I know we are creating hook lines for a book, but the concept is the same, and examples of loglines are easier to find). :D

• When a Roman general is betrayed and his family murdered by an insane and corrupt prince, he comes to Rome as a gladiator to seek revenge. (Gladiator)

• In a future where criminals are arrested before the crime occurs, a cop struggles on the lam to prove his innocence for a murder he has not yet committed. (Minority Report)

• A 17th Century tale of adventure on the Caribbean Sea where the roguish yet charming Captain Jack Sparrow joins forces with a young blacksmith in a gallant attempt to rescue the Governor of England's daughter and reclaim his ship. (Pirates of the Caribbean)

• A young man and woman from different social classes fall in love, must outwit her abusive fiancé, and find a way to survive aboard an ill-fated voyage at sea. (Titanic)

• A comedic portrayal of a young and broke Shakespeare who falls in love with a woman, inspiring him to write "Romeo and Juliet. (Shakespeare in Love)

• An archeologist is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis. (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

For your own hook line, you need to decide which elements best convey what your story is about. It is interesting to see how adding different elements affects a hook line. For example, take a look at these two movie loglines.

1. After a twister transports a lonely Kansas farm girl to a magical land, she sets out on a dangerous journey to find a wizard with the power to send her home. (logline by Brian A. Klems, found at http://blog.writersdigest.com/qq/What+Is+A+Logline.aspx)
2. Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again. (Log Line attributed to Richard Polito of the Marin Independent Journal, who writes humorously sarcastic briefs for the paper's daily TV listings)

Both of these loglines are for the film Wizard of Oz, but they each give the film a distinctly different tone. Personally I like the second one best :D but the first probably gives a better idea of what the film is about.

It might take a little while to get your hook line perfected, but if you stick to the main elements of your story (the main character, the villain or conflict, what is unique about your story, and spice it up with a little action), your hook line should almost write itself. Just to show you that ANYONE can do this, (because if I can do it, anyone can), the hook line for my book is below.

A young woman in Victorian England is swept into an illicit affair with a reformed thief and must find a legendary necklace to ransom her life and the lives of those she loves from a corrupt lord.

Can you spot the elements?

• Characters – a young woman and her love interest who is a reformed thief.

• Conflict – a corrupt lord (the villain) is threatening her life and the lives of those she loves unless she can find a legendary necklace.

• Distinction – my story is not just a romance, but has a big dose of suspense and mystery thrown in. The love interest is not a typical man but an ex-thief, and while the romance comes in with the affair, it is an “illicit” affair (implying something out of the ordinary, something forbidden).

• Setting – Victorian England. And the description of the story gives obvious clues to the genre – Victorian England = historical; illicit affair = romance; a treasure hunt/mystery and lives threatened = suspense….Genre = historical romantic suspense.

• Action – instead of saying my story is about a girl and guy who fall in love and search for a necklace, I describe the love story as an “illicit affair;” the necklace is “legendary,” the lord is “corrupt,” the love interest is “a reformed thief.” All these little elements help make the hook line more exciting, more interesting. And that is what will help hook the interest of potential agents, publishers, and readers.

Now you try :D And be sure to come back next Tuesday when we will discuss How To Find The Time To Write.