Write life into your memoir’s main characters

 

Invite readers into your memoir by bringing life to key people in your stories.

 

Roy Peter Clark, one of my favorite writing mentors, says:

 

“In the best of cases—when craft rises to art—the author conjures a character that seems fully present to the reader, a man standing against that very light post waving you over for a conversation.” (“Keeping it real: how round characters grow from the seeds of detail”)

 

I like that: characters that seem “fully present for the reader.”

 

Write so the central characters become more than a shadow in the corner.

 

Develop your main characters so readers feel they’re in the scene, reliving your experiences and conversations alongside you.

 

That’s often easier said than done.

In his webinar entitled “They Walk! They Talk! Secrets to Writing Engaging Characters and Vivid Dialogue,” Dinty Moore said:

“Characterization in memoir is always a challenge:

how can we make the people we know

feel as real and alive for readers as they do for us?

As writers, we must remember that our readers

have never met the people in our memoir;

they know only what we tell them.

And sometimes, we know our characters—

family, friends, enemies—

so well that we forget we need to introduce them

in all their complexity. . . .”

How do you make your main characters feel real and alive? By including specific details about them.

 

For starters, pay attention to sensory details. If your reader had stood with you in the presence of that person—a pastry chef, for example, or a dairy farmer—what would your reader have seen, smelled, felt, heard, and tasted?

 

Think about sitting on your dad’s lap when you were a little kid. Did you smell his aftershave? Or the beer on his breath?

 

Kathleen Pooler, in her vignette Seeds of Faith, writes of the smell in her great-grandmother’s room: “I sat on the edge of the bed and she pulled me close. . . . ‘God bless, God bless,’ she whispered. The musty scent of age lingered as she gently rubbed my back.”

 

Kathleen also writes, “Her tiny hands felt smooth, like a soft leather glove.”

 

Let your readers in on a person’s idiosyncrasies and gestures. Did she live life at a half-run, or did she plod through life? Did he make people uncomfortable by standing too close when he talked to them? Did he make a funny little noise in his throat when he was nervous?

 

Incorporate a person’s facial expressions. What did your boss’s eyes look like when he was mad at you?

 

When you hid in the woods and smoked cigarettes after school, how could you tell, when you got home, that your mother had already found out? What did her face look like—her eyes, her mouth? Did her nostrils flare? What was her voice like? Did she yell, or did she give you the silent treatment? Did she pinch your ear? Did she cry? Or laugh?

 

Look over your rough drafts and 

breathe life into your memoir’s main characters.

 

“Pull your readers closer . . . into a sensory world

that you and your readers can inhabit together.”

(Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir)