Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 52

Avoid Cliches and Stereotypes

You can avoid cliches and stereotypes.

If you do not avoid cliches and stereotypes, you will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in often erroneous and certainly indefensible categories. As short-hand ways of writing and speaking, they reflect ready-made thoughts and adversely affect the ways we relate to our families and friends as unique individuals and how we write about them.

“She was a mother-hen–you know how mothers are!”

“My fat...

Three Tips For Using Fiction Techniques in a Memoir

Why Insert Fiction Techniques in a Memoir?

We all love well-told stories. We love the entertainment, the sound effects, the punchy plot built around solid characterization. As we share stories in our everyday conversations, we inevitably use fiction techniques to keep our listeners’ attention and interest. When we say “And then she said…,” we are using dialogue – that’s using fiction techniques in a memoir.

In our memoir writing, we will often veer toward the same techniques fiction writers...

Not Being Preachy: Four Tips

The theme is the soul of the story. Every story needs a theme. The negative underside of theme, however, is being preachy. You are preaching when you insist that your reader endorse your theme, message or point of view.

1) Here’s a way to distinguish between being preachy and the right use of theme.

Read your text out loud to yourself. If you have been preachy, your grand, all-inclusive phrases will jump out at you. Sometimes people laugh aloud with awareness as they read aloud such phrases...

Writing a memoir: how to

Writing a memoir is not easy.

Writing a memoir requires a lot of time and energy—but you can do it. You can succeed in writing a memoir. Many people just like you have succeeded in doing so already.

I want to share a system with you for getting started on writing a memoir.

As with so many projects you might undertake, you can reinvent the wheel or you can plug into a system that has been shown to work. My Memoir Network has been helping people just like you to write personal and family stor...

My Son Denis is Born

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To celebrate my birthday today, I would like to reprint a post from 2013. It is a passage from my mother Lucille Verreault Ledoux’s memoir,  We Were not Spoiled/A Franco-American Memoir:

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My second pregnancy was also easy enough. This time, the war was over and Albert was not in the Army. He and I could live this time together. My mother had had most of her babies at home, but by the mid-1940s, women were being urged to have their babies in the hospital. (Dr. Desaulniers must have been urg...

Writing Interesting and Effective Dialog

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Dialog performs several functions in a story.

1. Dialog allows the reader to hear the voice of the character. It is an opportunity to use regionalisms and particularities of speech. Even to write in pauses if that was typical of the person.

“Ain’t much wrong with it,” my grandfather would say when he was pleased with something.

2. Dialog allows us to show and not tell. It permits the writer to put “tell” elements into the voice of the character rather than that of the author. It thus become...

6 Benefits of A Long Distance Writing Program

Looks like a long distance writing program—because it is one.

The Write Your First Memoir Draft program has been designed to bring you all the best of an academic external degree program. Many of us have looked into these programs or at least have seen them advertised in writers’ magazines like Poets & Writers and the Writer’s Digest and wished we could afford the time and/or the money to attend.

An external, long distance writing program provides a way for an aspiring writer who is not a y...

How to Organize Your Memoir: Four Ways

Do You Wonder How to Organize Your Memoir?

Eventually, after you have written awhile, you will likely have amassed a number of vignettes, story segments, and stories and wonder about how to best organize your memoir. You will want to organize your memoir to make a statement, a bigger picture. How will you do it? Below are four ideas to organize your memoir.

Remember: These suggestions do not refer to the sequence in which the stories are written but rather to how they can be ordered after...

Is It a Memoir or Autobiographical Fiction ?

What Makes It Memoir or Autobiographical Fiction?

I read a memoir that did well here in Maine (it’s by an excellent Maine writer)—I can’t vouch for its reach in the rest of the country. I’m left wondering if it is memoir or autobiographical fiction.

It’s an interesting book, very well-written in terms of style and organization, but my nagging doubt is that it is autobiographical fiction and not memoir. I will choose to leave the book nameless as my intent is not to be negative about it but...

3 Causes of “Writer’s Block”

Many writers suffer from writer’s block, yet few understand its possible causes. Memoir writing certainly has its difficulties which can create it, and not just writer’s block! There are a number of reasons that contribute to difficulty in writing.

1. In memoir writing, “writer’s block” can be the result of dealing with uncomfortable material.

Perhaps you haven’t admitted to yourself the importance of your topic or you are not yet telling the truth about it. What are you evading? What is th...