Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 49

Tips For not Writing a Chronology.

Is writing a chronology of a life enough?

Dates and facts are necessary to life writing in the same way route numbers are necessary to maps. It’s not only that dates and facts provide interesting information but that they keep your readers on the right path as they make their way through your life story. So…

Writing a chronology is already a great contribution to your family story, but you can do so much more than just include the dates and facts.

1) You can try writing a chronology and cal...

Passive Vs Active Voice

The Passive Voice Has Less Impact than the Active Voice.

Generally speaking, the passive voice of the verb (the subject has the action done to it) is weaker than the active voice (the subject does the action) in involving the reader in your story. That is crucial because as a memoir writer you are not sharing ideas but recreating life experiences to share. In the passive vs active voice, favor the active.

“Mary baked a cake” is active. Mary, the subject of the verb baked, is doing the actio...

Redundant word usage

Redundant word usage is rampant!

As a writer, I am chagrined when words get misused and one particular miscreant is redundant word usage.

Here are examples:

1. “As I re-listened to these interviews for a second time…”

2. “That just my personal opinion!”

3. “Repeat again…”

4. “As a child I was raised by parents who…”

5. “a personal friend”

These are phrases and sentences that I read or heard today (in the space of one hour!) that lead me to want to send the writer/speaker a note to suggest...

Is Writing a Memoir Important?

Let’s start with a basic question: is writing a memoir important?

Okay, why do we tell so many stories? Stories fascinate us all our lives. As children, we loved to be told fairy tales and to hear, time after time, the tales our parents told us about what we did and said when we were babies, as well as the stories about their own childhoods. As soon as we were old enough, we told stories about ourselves for our parents and for our friends.

As adults, we speak in stories at work, at family g...

Do you need action in a memoir?

Action in a memoir is essential—even if internalized!

Action in a memoir usually happens in the usual place—outside the memoir narrator. That is easy to grasp: “The boy ran by.”

When you use flashback scenes in which you remember someone and what they did way back then—these are not interiorized actions, these are memories of actual actions.

What can be less easy to grasp is that action in a memoir can be internal to the character, happening in the character’s mind.

“Interiorized action” is...

Your Memoir: an Arrest of Disorder

Each poem clarifies something. But then you’ve got to do it again. You can’t get ‘clarified’ to stay so: let you not think that. In a way, it’s like nothing more than blowing smoke rings. Making little poems encourages a man to see that there is shapeliness in the world. A poem is an arrest of disorder.
—Robert Frost, poet

Generating the arrest of disorder of life

When I read the quote above, I did not have to make much of a leap to sense that the words “An arrest of disorder” apply to the t...

The Role of Passion in Your Memoir

Passion in your memoir

Understanding the role of passion in your memoir will help you to access the emotional side of your writing more easily and enable you to stay longer and more deeply in the memoir conversation. Understanding will add balance between your will to write and the passion that prompted you to write in the first place.

For a long time, passion—or or even mere feeling—was not thought to be necessary for good writing. As an extreme example, recall the works of John Dryden and...

Down to Basics: Vignettes, Scenes, and Dialogues

Basic units of memoir writing

Vignettes, scenes, and dialogues are at the core of any memoir. Here are some ideas for writing them more quickly and elegantly.

1. Don’t worry about order.

Don’t stop to figure out how these snippets—vignettes, scenes, and dialogues— may eventually fit together into a story.

These bits and pieces will accumulate as you recall more and more and continue to write them down. Giving yourself permission to write in small, separate segments (vignettes, scenes, and d...

What to Write About in a Memoir

“What to write about in a memoir?” is a basic question. The right answer will keep you writing and the wrong may lead you to believe that writing a memoir is too hard and not for you.

Write about something important to you

My answer to what to write about in a memoir is always to write about something important to you—not what you think is important to others.

Why are you writing? What is it that you hope to get from this effort of creating a memoir? You are about to devote a lot of time an...

Journal Writing for the Memoir Writer

Journal Writing for the Memoir Writer

Journal writing is an effective practice for the memoir writer. It is a spontaneous and generally free-flowing activity and so can be very helpful to you in loosening up both your thinking and your writing type (the two usually go together). Your journal is an opportunity to bypass the familiar rules that govern much of the other forms of writing—especially the essay form. In the journal, whatever you write and however you write is ok. You don’t have to...