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.