Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 3

Develop Your Website: It’s A Prime Interface with Your Audience.

Develop Your Website

Whether you have already written a book and are reaching for an audience or are still writing your first book, develop your website if you do not have a proprietary one.

Why develop your website?

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On the Third Thursday of every month (at 1 PM/ET, 12 CT, 11 MT, 10 PT), you can participate in a live memoir-writing workshop on ZOOM.

We meet on March 20, 2025: this next Thursday.

While this call is for my Substack paid members, you can easily join our ranks a...

There Can’t Be That Many Types of Memoir!

There used to be one and not several memoir types.

The one kind of memoir genre was that written by famous people about the important events in history that they had taken  part in. Mostly, these accounts were about how wonderful they were and how important their roles in history had been. Oftentimes, these memoirs were about excoriating their political or business rivals and actually provided little emotional or psychological insight into the protagonist other than s/he was a “good guy....

Your Memoir’s “BIG WHY”—A Foundational Concept

You start with a burst of writing motivation. You are super energized! You have the best motivation for writing—ever!

“By gosh, this memoir is going to get written and it’s going to be good!” you tell yourself. And the writing flows for the first while. Your energy remains high. You write regularly and you think about how to make your memoir better and better. At last, you feel like you are a “real writer!”

Then, you stall.

A day—or two or three—goes by without any writing. Then that ...

No stick characters allowed!

Don’t worry. Creating full, vivid characters does not call for skills beyond those you can develop.

The term “stick character” refers to a drawing of a person by someone with no talent who draws lines for body, arms and legs. Stick characters don’t pull your readers in much and they don’t do justice to the people—real in your memoir or fictionalized in your novel—you are writing about. Stick characters compromise your writing. They are often clichés.

An Example of Stick Characterization...

Write A First Memoir Draft Efficiently and Well! (Really, this is do-able!) 4 Pillars.

I’m about to tell you something contrary to so much advice you’ve received: don’t give yourself permission to write a first memoir draft that is of poor quality and less than what you want.

In this post, I will elaborate on four pillars that will enable you—eventually, of course—to write better than so many writing teachers have encouraged you to do. You will learn to produce at a higher level—that is, at a more polished level—so that 60% to 80% of your first draft will make its way into...

Monday Focus: Avoid this big mistake! Don’t slight the soul of your story.

Your theme is the soul of your story, the element that elevates it from a recitation of facts to a statement. Don’t take your theme lightly.

Understanding “theme” and its role in your memoir is a core task that will both simplify and clarify your message—i.e., your theme. It calls for your full attention. Your theme is perhaps what has motivated you to start your memoir project. There is likely something you want to say about life—your life.

Your theme is also called your message. The th...

Write Better Memoir Dialog: 7 Pillars (Proven and Easy to Do!)

In this post, I’m not only going to show you why memoir dialog is important—of course, you know that—but I’m also going to show you some best writing practices to generate memorable and meaningful dialog. You review—or perhaps that’s learn— great tips to write better memoir dialog well so keep reading until the end. I’ve got 7 proven pillars for you to add to your writing toolbox.

While dialog is an interesting and essential part of an effective memoir, do you really know how much to inc...

Monday Focus: Structure your memoir: because your memoir is not an amoeba, it needs a backbone.

How to structure your memoir is today’s Monday Focus topic. Read on to learn how.

Your story may begin as a formless collection of vignettes and stories. You may be writing as memories come to you. That is not a bad way to start to write. Spontaneity taps into the unconscious.

But, your stories must not remain without an organizing principle. When you structure your memoir, you give it the backbone your readers want and need! Your memoir calls for structure to make as forceful a sta...

Monday Focus: Don’t fib or stretch the truth.

Today is Monday, and it’s a great day to write a bit on your memoir!

This must-do memoir-writing task asks: how much do you really know and do you have to tell everything you know? That is the challenge of writing the truth.

Memory is often false, flattering, and failing. This makes telling the truth harder than it might have seemed firsthand.

~ You may never have known the truth. From the get-go, you may have been guessing. Guessing is sometimes necessary and has its rightful place in m...

Sit in on this Virtual Memoir Tour

Today, I am urging you to sit back and enjoy this virtual memoir tour in which I read an excerpt read from my memoir French Boy/A 1950s Franco-American Childhood.

Here’s some necessary background: I did not learn English until I went to grade school. My brother had preceded me in school where he had learned to speak English.

While this excerpt can be thought of as a cute story, I included it in my memoir because it supports the necessity of bilingual education. This sound pedagogy is too...