Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 41

November 24 Activity: How To Find Stories Missing in Your Memoir

Are there stories missing in your memoir? In some way, writing a memoir is like organizing an anthology of stories. In the method that I teach in my workshops, tele-classes, and coaching, writers write stories as stories come to them.

Start with the story you want to write

I am not a great one for starting to write from the beginning and writing to the end. Instead, I encourage writers to write the stories they most feel impelled to write. The initial result is an often-chaotic collection...

November 23 Activity: Listening to Your Memoir Yields Dividends

Listening to your memoir yields dividends. As writers, we have often experienced of writing what we feel has to be deathless prose. Later, perhaps a week or a month later, when we pick up our own manuscript again, we realize that our deathless prose is perhaps closer to deadly prose.

Hearing your memoir read aloud makes your writing better

Having your story read out loud is a revealing experience. Whether it is someone else who is reading or you yourself, it seems that you become a much mor...

November 22 Activity: The Power of Using Specific Words in A Memoir

Using specific words in a memoir enables you to write a story with details that establish character and setting. Concentrate on nouns and verbs and discard any adjectives or adverbs that aren’t specific to the description, and your memoir will pull your reader in.

Use specific words to improve your writing

For some reason, many writers feel that adjectives give details to their story.  They think of them as specific words. This may be true of some adjectives such as American or red. The sam...

November 21 Activity: Learn to Use Visualization In Your Memoir

You can use visualization in your memoir recall to write your memories in more detail.  There are powerful tools you can use to assist when you are visualizing.  When you learn to use visualization in addition to these tools, it can help you come up with more details for your memoir writing.

Visualization helps you remember details

The memory list remains a powerful tool for memoir writing. Given the time to compile an extensive memory list, many of us can come up with many of the details o...

November 20 Activity: Practicing to Write In Quantity

When you write in quantity for your memoir, you will amass an amazing amount of stories, vignettes, scenes, dialogues, and short descriptions. All of these can be written anywhere and quickly on paper, on the computer and even the backs of napkins and scraps of paper.  In this activity, you’ll start writing short pieces to weave together later for your story.

Practice builds a habit

The goal of today’s activity is to practice the habit of writing easily and in flow. A first step a memoir wr...

November 19 Activity: Memoir Writers Need to be Memoir Readers

To write better, memoir writers need to be memoir readers.  Do you read other memoirs? Do you think it helps to study how they wrote their memoir in order for you to improve your own writing? To be a better writer, you must immerse yourself in the memoir genre, particularly in the area you are writing.

Read memoirs as part of your writing

As you read, practice reading as a writer. How does the author lead into the story? How is the character developed? Is the pacing appropriate? Has the plo...

November 18 Activity: Time to Include Feelings in Your Memoir

When you include feelings in your memoir, your reader’s interest is heightened and they are drawn into the story.  It is helpful to make a list of different words to describe the feelings that you will use in your memoir.  Put these words in your memory list to draw from as you write.

Express feelings using the senses

In the last exercises, I have asked you to explore the sense details of your life. This is not to slight feelings that have characterized various periods of your life. My own...

November 17 Activity: Gather Details For a Memoir

It’s important to gather details for a memoir and use them effectively to draw your readers in. The use of vivid sensory details helps your reader not only “see” but engage all of their senses to be fully immersed in the story.

Gather details for a memoir and use them effectively

While most of us have many vivid memories of other times in our lives, it remains true that we have forgotten many sense details of our experience. These sense details are often elements that will draw the reader i...

November 16 Activity: The Bigger Picture in A Memoir

The bigger picture in a memoir is essential for your reader (and you!) to better understand the period of your life you are writing about. A memoir that is set in the historical context of your time, even with just a few references to events, broadens your personal story into a larger story for your readers.

Writing in the bigger picture in a memoir

Many writers write their memoirs as if all there is in life is their own experience and perhaps the experience of immediate family. But, every...

November 15 Activity: Setting as A Character in Your Memoir

Writing the setting as a character of your memoir will tell us a lot about you and the people who were in your life. Many fiction writers give setting the prime role of character in their novels. As a memoir writer, you can also think of setting as a character in your memoir.

Setting is a character

Today you will work at creating feeling in your description of your setting.  I mean for you to use details that conjure feelings for the reader. Use details in the setting that will make readers...