Do you need to work on your memoir’s outside settings?

Today we’ll continue with something very important for your memoir: how to create a strong sense of place for your readers. 

We’ve already worked on enhancing a sense of place—a setting—within a room or home or office in your memoir. (If you missed those posts, click on links below.)

Now let’s consider ways to describe outside settings—geographical/physical features, weather/climate, vegetation, and maybe even wildlife. 

Think about seasons—is it winter, spring, summer, or fall? Tell about the temperature, humidity, time of day. Do you want your readers to join you in a desert or rainforest? On a hilly place or a flat place? On an island, a river, or a mountain? 

Describe each place as if you were seeing it for the first time.

How can you find words for those places? By returning to those places. 

But what if you can’t go back? Look at photos of the place. Really look at those photos. What do you see?

Consider these pictures from my home territory. I no longer live there, but the photos transport me back. 

Those silvery vines are wild blackberries (one of several kinds in the Pacific Northwest). The photo reminds me of salal’s leaves and tiny blossoms, and of Scotch Broom. 

In this other picture, I see the familiar bark of an old Douglas fir tree and, in the foreground, baby Douglas firs with their tender, pale new growth. I see spent rhododendron blossoms hiding behind them. And, of course, those places have their own scents and odors—an evergreen smell, a loamy soil smell, a damp smell.

Below you’ll find examples of geographical/physical descriptions from my soon-to-be-published memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go!, set in a mission center called Lomalinda in South America:

From Chapter 14:

September turned to October. Back in Seattle, people would be inhaling familiar scents of gold-emblazoned maple leaves and smoke from fireplace fires, and they’d bundle up in sweaters and jackets to ward off autumn’s cool temperatures. But in Lomalinda, summer didn’t turn into fall into winter into spring. We had only two seasons: hot and humid, and hotter and arid. And so it was that in October, the annual five-month rainy season ended after dumping 150 inches. Temperatures rose and muddy roads dried. 

From Chapter 16:

October turned to November and back home, Seattle would be a place of swollen clouds and rain, and frost once in a while. People would be wearing rain boots and raincoats and stocking caps and gloves. Family and friends would have recently gathered for Thanksgiving, a squally season when tempests stirred up wild seas and sent ferry boats bobbing and careening, when wind storms downed trees throughout Puget Sound, caused widespread power outages, left half-baked turkeys and pumpkin pies in cold ovens, and drew people together around fireplaces in homes perfumed by wood smoke.

But Lomalinda was into the dry season with clean cerulean skies and hardly a wisp of a cloud. Daytime temperatures soared to over 100 degrees in the shade—cruel, withering. The green scent of rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. Immense stretches of emerald disappeared, leaving grasslands stiff and bleached and simmering under unrelenting equatorial sun. 

Muddy paths and single-lane tracks turned rock-hard and, with use, changed to dust. Yards and airstrips and open fields turned to dust, too. From sunrise to sundown, a strong wind blew across the llanos, a gift from God because it offered a little relief from the heat. On the other hand, we had to use rocks and paperweights and other heavy objects to keep papers from blowing away. Dust blew through jalousied windows and into homes and offices and settled on our counters and furniture and in cracks and crannies and on our necks and in our armpits and up our noses. 

From Chapter 19: 

Rainy season returned and heavy, humid, tropical heat crawled in. We welcomed it, for the most part. We’d grown tired of parched air and longed for the scent of wet leaves and grass.

The first heavy raindrops that fell after dry season sent mini-clouds of parched earth into the air and our mouths and nostrils so that we tasted dust and breathed in the odor of wet bricks and window screens. In a few days, we would smell new life—green pushing up through mud—and before long we’d inhale the perfume of rain-drenched hibiscus and mango and papaya and avocado and bamboo and lemon trees and grasses and palm trees and orchids.

Lomalinda’s rain didn’t fall gently like Seattle’s. Rainy season brought chubascos. We watched them approach across the llanos, from the east, from Venezuela or Brazil. The sky hung low, angry, draped in steely blue and gray. Soon wind whipped and lashed, and gusts forced trees to bow into each other. From our house, we listened to the torrent pummel homes on Lomalinda’s east side. We heard it marching toward us like an advancing army, louder and louder, the sky darker and darker. 

Those were signals for Matt, Karen, and their playmates to run to the east edge of our yard, daring the storm, waiting to defy it, getting their timing just right. When the downpour got to within a few feet of them, the kids sprinted from east to west through the yard, outrunning the deluge and flinging themselves through our back door before they got wet—just as, with a grand crescendo, the tempest hit our house, pelted the roof, and drowned our voices. 

Within seconds it blasted into homes to our west and continued pounding toward others on our center’s western edge. It hammered the ground and thrashed against the east side of homes and rattled windows and flattened grasses and turned dirt tracks into crooked streams of mud.

In some ways, rainy season was a gentler time, but it brought mixed blessings. Dry season’s hot, bold wind let up, no longer soaking up our perspiration. Instead, shirts clung to our sweat-drenched backs and chests and armpits. 


So, look over your manuscripts, asking yourself what readers need to see, touch, taste, smell, and hear in your memoir’s geographical places. 

Work hard on those descriptions 

so your readers will experience your story alongside you—

that’s what they want! 

And deserve.

And that’s how your memoir can enrich your readers

and bless them.

Related posts: 
Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place 
Make your memoir come alive through a sense of place
Creating a sense of place is essential for your memoir
Use setting to ground your memoir and keep readers reading

Tuesday Tidbit: Use setting to ground your memoir and keep readers reading

“If the reader cannot visualize where and when your story took place … your memoir will suffer,” writes Victoria Costello in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Memoir.

And I add to that: Your readers will suffer, too.

“A well-rendered setting,” Victoria says, “grounds your memoir in a specific reality that the reader can see in his mind’s eye.

“With vivid descriptions and sense imagery, a writer creates authenticity and immediacy, which make a story more compelling…. Even if it’s a familiar location, readers see it anew through your eyes, filtered by your experiences.”

Victoria continues, “… Your top priority is to put your personality into the perspective you take. Your experience of the place is inherently different from others’. Tell us why. Be original….”

“Don’t be vague in your rendering of place.

Concrete nouns and specific details convey a place

more vividly than abstract nouns.

Compare ‘honeybees hopping across a bed of violet petals’

to ‘a beautiful garden.’”

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Memoir

So then, strive for honeybees and violet petals!

In her book, Victoria offers more tips on settings. I highly recommend The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Memoir. Your local independent bookstore will be happy to order it for you.

And if you missed recent posts about creating a sense of place, click on these below:

Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place

Make your memoir come alive through a sense of place

Creating a sense of place is essential for your memoir

So, there you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

Be sure to come back Thursday 

when we'll look at a different kind of setting for your memoir.

Creating a sense of place is essential for your memoir

In your memoir, you’ll introduce readers to significant places. Since readers were not there, you’ll need to develop those places well.

That’s why we’ve been looking at how to create a sense of place in your memoir, how to create a setting readers can visualize.

Effectively doing so can be a fun exercise for you, the writer, but it’s more than that. Creating a sense of place is essential if you want readers to experience your story with you.

Last week we considered descriptions of entrances and rooms. (If you missed that post, click on Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place.) Have you enjoyed working on the settings in your memoir since then? I hope so.

While you continue working on your memoir’s places, include sensory details—what would your readers see, touch, taste, smell, and hear?

Think back: Was the room dusty or polished, cluttered or tidy, warm or cold, old or new, welcoming or unfriendly?

Did the place smell like a florist shop, or overripe cantaloupe, or something worse?—maybe stale cigarette smoke, trash, or chemicals?

What unique sounds resided in that place? Could you hear foghorns signaling to ferry boats and cruise ships and supertankers on foggy days? Did you hear construction noises, or students practicing the flute, or people in prayer? Could you hear wind in the trees? (If so, name those trees—Aspen? Palm? Cedar?)

Spend time recollecting the other sensory details of your place—sights, textures (or feels), and tastes.

For your inspiration, study how Marilynne Robinson created a sense of place in her book, Lila. It’s fiction, but the art of describing a place is the same, whether fiction or nonfiction (memoir is nonfiction—it’s always true). Note how she included dialogue to create that sense of place.

“When they were children they used to be glad when they stayed in a workers’ camp, shabby as they all were, little rows of cabins with battered tables and chairs and moldy cots inside, and maybe some dishes and spoons. They were dank and they smelled of mice…. Somebody sometime had nailed a horseshoe above the door of a cabin they had for a week and they felt this must be important….

“They were given crates of fruit that was too ripe or bruised, and the children ate it till they were … sick of the souring smell of it and the shiny little black bugs that began to cover it, and then they would start throwing it at each other and get themselves covered with rotten pear and apricot. Flies everywhere. They’d be in trouble for getting their clothes dirtier than they were before. Doane hated those camps. He’d say, ‘Folks sposed to live like that?’…”

Your task, then, is to recreate your memoir’s rooms, 

buildings, and entrances to them. 

And be sure to come back next time 

because we’ll continue with this important writing skill.

Happy writing!

Make our memoir come alive through a sense of place

Today we continue creating a sense of place within your memoir, a setting for key scenes. (If you missed Thursday’s post, click on Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place.)

Why is a sense of place important? Because it helps draw your readers in—it gives them a sense of being there with you.

C.S. Lakin explains it this way: “Without setting, how can you have a story? Some (many) scenes I’ve edited and critiqued appear to be floating in space or some nebulous location. The writer seems so intent on conveying dialogue or explaining about characters that he forgets (or thinks it is unimportant) to mention where his characters just happen to be.

“And then there are other manuscripts in which setting is occasionally mentioned in passing, but almost as an afterthought…. [H]e throws out a few token lines that objectively name the place or sketch a vague description and moves on.

“And that’s a shame, because a writer like that is missing out on a great opportunity to bring his [story] to life. The more real a place is to readers, the easier they can be transported there to experience the story.” 

Your goal: Make those settings tangible for your readers.

Look for spots in your manuscript that leave yourself, your memoir’s characters, or readers “floating in space.” Make revisions to anchor each key setting. 

And remember to use sensory details (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste).  

There you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

Come back Thursday for more on 

how to create top-notch settings for your memoir.

Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place

Have you ever read a book that left you on the outside, not welcomed in? Maybe the story felt a little cold. Unsatisfying. The problem might have been the story’s sense of place—or, rather, lack of it.

In writing your memoir, you need to establish a setting, a sense of place, because that helps draw your readers in—it gives them a sense of being there with you.

Think of all the settings within your story—

• a significant room or home or office,
• or a geographical location with its features and weather,
• or a culture with its unique smells and sounds and sights,
• or a group setting with various personalities and voices and appearances.

We’ll look at all of those in coming days, but today, let’s concentrate on creating a sense of place within a room or home or office.

Good writing is good writing, whether fiction or nonfiction (memoir is nonfiction), so let’s look at how New York Times bestselling author Rosamunde Pilcher created a sense of place in her novel, The Empty House.

Pilcher writes of Virginia approaching a solicitors’ office in England:

“Smart, Chirgwin and Williams … were the names on the brass plate by the door, a plate which had been polished so long and so hard that the letters had lost their sharpness and were quite difficult to read. There was a brass knocker on the door, too, and a brass door knob, as smooth and shining as the plate, and when Virginia … stepped into a narrow hall of polished brown linoleum and shining cream paint … it occurred to her that some hard-working woman was using up an awful lot of elbow grease.”

Pilcher has you standing beside Virginia, doesn’t she? And you conclude the brass plate, knocker, and doorknob were old, and the place’s owners had enough money to hire cleaning help, probably a woman, and that she took pride in her work.

What kind of people do you envision Virginia will encounter after she turns that brass doorknob, steps inside, and makes her way down the hall?

I expect that Smart, Chirgwin, and Williams wore black suits, starched white dress shirts, and gray-striped silk ties. And the men drank their morning tea in gold-rimmed china cups. And they spoke precise, proper English.

Contrast their setting with that of a tough ex-convict, Socrates Fortlow, in an abandoned building in Watts:

“He boiled potatoes and eggs in a saucepan on his single hotplate and then cut them together in the pot with two knives, adding mustard and sweet pickle relish. After the meal he had two shots of whiskey and one Camel cigarette.” (from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley).

You don’t see any of Joanna Gaines’ touches in Socrates’ smoky room. Do you picture him eating out of the pan? And wiping his sleeve across his mouth when he finished eating?

Let’s go back to Pilcher’s story with Virginia in a later scene in a different place:

“She went down the steps and along the dank pathway that led along the side of the house towards the front door. This had once been painted dark red and was scarred with splitting sun blisters. Virginia took out the key and … the door instantly, silently, swung inwards. She saw … a worn rug on bare boards. A fly droned, blundering against the window-pane.”

Stop and think. You’re walking beside Virginia, aren’t you? You’re seeing the splitting blisters on the red door, and a worn rug, and bare wooden floors. You’re hearing that irritating buzz of the fly tapping against the window glass.

There beside Virginia, you notice a stained kitchen sink and “the sitting-room cluttered with ill-matching chairs,” and “looming pieces of furniture.”

Pilcher has succeeded in creating a sense of place for you—you’re discovering this room alongside Virginia.

Here’s another example, this one from Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: 

“They were on the east side of Pittsburg, in an old factory building that had been converted into a progressive preschool. Light fell through the long windows and splashed in motes and patterns onto the plank floor; it caught the auburn highlights in Phoebe’s thin braids as she stood before a big wooden bin, scooping lentils, letting them cascade into jars.”

Edwards created a vivid picture: tall old factory-style windows (which I envision need a good cleaning), sunbeams shining on dust motes, the wooden floor, and auburn braids. And you probably heard those lentils spilling into glass jars, didn’t you?

What about the settings, the places in your memoir? 

Scrutinize your rough draft, asking yourself, “How can I enhance a sense of place—a setting within a room or home or office in my memoir?”

Ask yourself how the above examples generate ideas you might use in your memoir.

Look through good literature on your bookshelves or the library’s shelves and study how other writers create a sense of place for their stories.

All of these steps can make you a better storyteller. So, make revisions in your memoir using sensory details (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) to make your places tangible for your readers. Your goal is to help them experience what you experienced.

If readers enter the places in your memoir, they can:

• feel a connection with you and your experience,
• feel grounded in your story,
• discover the mood, atmosphere, and emotions of the event in that place,
• and, in the end, take away from your memoir important lessons and inspiration for their own lives.

Tuesday Tidbit: Do you want to become a better storyteller?

If you want to grow in storytelling skills, start with dear William Zinsser's advice: 

Come back Thursday when we'll take an in-depth look at a memoir's setting, its sense of place.

There you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

Tuesday Tidbit: Are the words in your memoir just ... b-o-r-i-n-g?

Priscilla Long, author of the delightful The Writer’s Portable Mentor, writes of those who approach “language passively … using only words that come to mind, or words he grew up with, or words she stumbles upon while reading The New York Times… He strives for expression with rather general, conventional diction [word choice] that has little to offer in the way of echo, color, or texture.”

On the other hand, “... writers of deep and beautiful works spend real time gathering words…. They savor not only the meanings, but also the musicality of words. They are hunting neither big words nor pompous words nor Latinate words but mainly words they like…. They are not trying to be fancy or decorative.”

At Gather “crackly” words for your memoir, you’ll discover tips on using words to delight your readers, words that keep them involved in your story, words that make your places, characters, and experiences come to life.

And you’ll have loads of fun gathering and using just the right words!

 There you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.