Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 42

November 14 Activity: Travel to the Setting of Your Memoir

What you will do today is travel to the place that figures in your story. This is the setting of your memoir. If you can do so physically, that is great.

If however, you need to travel to the setting of your memoir in your mind – because it is too far away or because somehow it no longer exists, you can always get there in your imagination.

Go where the action was

What you will do today is travel to the place that figures in your story. This is the setting of your memoir. If you can do so p...

November 13 Activity: Writing A Memoir Is Like Making A Movie

Writing a memoir is like making a movie, and in many ways, a good memoir writer treats the story the way a filmmaker treats a movie. Too often, as we write memoir, we tell the reader what is happening in the story rather than show it. Fortunately, a  filmmaker does not have this luxury—or is it curse?—of telling. The only way the filmmaker can let us know what is happening is to show something on the screen—whether that is a setting, an action or a feature of characterization such as a frow...

November 12 Activity: Use Sense Details in Your Memoir

Use sense details in your stories to engage and hook your readers.  A successful memoir needs sensory details to bring your story to life and make the reader feel as if it is unfolding in front of him.

November 12 Activity: Use Sense Details—They Bring Us Into the Story

The difference between a memoir and a personal essay has largely to do with how each affects us differently. A memoir is one heart speaking to another while a personal essay is one mind speaking to another.

A memoir engages...

November 11 Activity: 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 that 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.

November 11 Activity: How to write about a conflict in your life; it belongs in your memoir.

Listen to how a child tells a story. It is all action. Nuances of characte...

November 10 Activity: Writing Plot Into a Memoir

Writing plot into a memoir is something people are sometimes surprised to learn that 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.

November 10 Activity: Writing Plot into a Memoi...

November 9 Activity: How to Use Journals—Real or Imagined—in Memoir Writing

When you learn to use journals in 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!

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 facts or verify what you remember.

November 9 Activity: Use Journals...

November 8 Activity: The Backstory of Your Memoir

What is the backstory of your memoir? Have you told too much? How much backstory should be included in your memoir? 

November 8: What is the Backstory of 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.

When I work with coaching clients, I might ask them to tell the story of their relationship breakup, for instance, without going...

November 7 Activity: Speed Up Your Writing

One way to speed up your writing is to record your vignettes, scenes and other snippets of your memoir and then replaying them to hear how you tell the story.

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! Today you will explore a way of writing faster—better will come later. In this post, learn to speed up your writing.

November 7 Activity: Speed Up Your Writing

Today’s exercise to spee...

November 6 Activity: Organize a Lifestory Party

You can organize a lifestory party to gather information for writing your memoir. You don’t have to remember your lifestory alone. 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 in one p...

November 5 Activity: 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 to my children and grandchildren to know me, too, and I want to place my life in a greater context. I’m hop...