Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 21

November 11: How to Write About a Conflict in Your Memoir

Write about a conflict in your memoir to engage your reader. There needs to be action in your story. There needs to be something happening. One way to explore plot is to explore action.

When you use action in writing your story, it is called plot. Something must happen in your story to retain the interest of your reader.

Write about a conflict—start in the middle of things

Listen to how a child tells a story. It is all action. Nuances of character and setting are immaterial to the child. I...

November 10: Writing Plot Into a Memoir

Writing plot into a memoir is something people are surprised to learn a memoir needs. For some writers, this technique of writing plot into a memoir screams of twisting the memoir into a fiction piece. But, all of us need to be kept reading by some mechanism. This mechanism is often called plot. A plot is an action. Plot is the something that happens in a memoir. Today, we explore how to create a plot that is true to the memoir, faithful to the facts.

What is plot?

Structure your stories a...

November 9: How to Combine Journals—Real or Imagined—and Memoir Writing

When you learn to refer to your journals as you are memoir writing, you will produce more accurate and detailed stories. Your journal is a kind of writing laboratory, where you can experiment with techniques to record your feelings and perceptions. It’s also a great tool to get around writer’s block! So…journals and memoir writing go well together!

If you are fortunate enough to have recorded your life in a journal, you can use your entries to refresh your memory and get access to salient ...

November 8: The Backstory of Your Memoir

A backstory is the story behind the story, the antecedent. What is the backstory of your memoir? Have you told too much of it, way beyond what the story needs? How much backstory should be included in your memoir?

Each of our memoirs is likely to have stories full of details. We spend much time elaborating the story as we remember it—and this is usually good, but we often slip into telling too much backstory.

Getting to the necessary backstory of your memoir

When I work with coaching clien...

November 7: Speed Up Your Writing—Today!

People often complain that they do not have the time to write. Often this is justly so as writing does take up a good amount of time. No way around it! If you could speed up your writing, what a boon that would be to your productivity.

Today you will explore a method of writing faster—better will come later. In this post, learn to speed up writing your first draft using new, improved technology.

Speed up your writing by speaking your story

One way to speed up your writing at the first dra...

November 6 Activity: Organize a Story Collecting Party

You don’t have to remember your lifestory alone. You can organize a story collecting party to gather information for writing your memoir. A gathering of family members to share stories about family events can help you double-check the information you already have and seek new material to flesh out your stories.

Reunions, weddings, funerals, birthday and holiday celebrations rate well on both of these tasks: scattered relatives, each of whom has a piece of the family history to share, are i...

November 5: Writing for an Audience

Writing for an audience may be more important than you think. Sometimes the audience is of specific people but many other writers, while they do have a specific audience in mind, are really writing to a group according to their interest.

“I want to write for my kids and grandchildren. I want them to know who I was,” one sort of memoirist will realize. While another will think, “I want my children and grandchildren to know me, too, and I want to place my life in a greater context. I’m hopin...

November 4: Don’t Trust Your Memory

Don’t trust your memory when it comes to recording facts, events, and dates as you are writing your stories for your memoir.

There’s no way around it: your memory—and mine—is fallible, unfortunately sometimes false, and too often flattering as it “remembers” events.

We may not want to admit it, but our memories are not reliable.

Don’t Trust Your Memory: Go to the sources

To counter this, in today’s Action Step for November is Memoir Writing Month, I will ask you to gather materials that wi...

November 3: Let Go of Thinking You Have to Write Deathless Prose on Your First draft

In this post, you’ll learn how to let go believing you have to write deathless prose in your first draft.  November is Memoir-Writing Month is a good time to abjure the perfectionism that keeps you from writing.

Getting into the flow of writing

What you are accomplishing during November is Memoir Writing Month is getting the flow of your story down in a first draft.

The rewriting that will inevitably come after the first draft will have to take place later in your second write through. Thi...

November 3: Let Go of Thinking You Having to Write Deathless Prose on Your First draft

In this post, you’ll learn how to let go believing you have to write deathless prose in your first draft.  November is Memoir-Writing Month is a good time to abjure the perfectionism that keeps you from writing.

Getting into the flow of writing

What you are accomplishing during November is Memoir Writing Month is getting the flow of your story down in a first draft.

The rewriting that will inevitably come after the first draft will have to take place later in your second write through. Thi...