Back to Basics: How’s your progress in describing your memoir’s key places?

 

Are you making progress in describing the key places—the key settings—in your memoir? I hope our recent blog posts have inspired you. (Click on Details, a must for your memoir;  It’s super fun to gather “crackly” words. . . . ; and The importance of “place”. . . . )

Today I offer you more inspiration:

Write your memoir so that 

your “reader gets zipped into your skin,” 

in the words of memoir guru Mary Karr. 

When you include sensory details 

(smell, taste, sight, sound, and touch), 

readers will feel drawn into your story with you—

and when they’re “zipped into your skin,” 

your message will make its way into their hearts and minds.

Think back: Think of a book that made you feel you were in the story, smelling scents she smelled, tasting flavors he tasted, seeing sights he saw, hearing sounds she heard, feeling textures he felt. 

Often the best way to learn how to describe a place 

is to study how others have done that.

With that in mind, notice sensory details of sight and sound that Naomi Benaron used in her novel set in Rwanda, Running the Rift:

 

“He stood until the truck became a speck in the red swirl of dust. When even the speck had disappeared, he broke into a run down the road, where life paraded on as if nothing had changed. He strained up the hill, sacks of sorghum and potatoes draped over bicycle handlebars or stacked in rickety wooden carts. Children herded goats fastened with bits of string, lugged jerricans filled with water, trotted with rafts of freshly gathered firewood on their heads. Women chatted on the way to and from the market, basins filled with fruits and vegetables balanced like fancy hats.”  

 

Because I lived in East Africa for several years, Benaron’s details transported me back. For those not acquainted with that culture, her details offer an authentic view of life there. Her words make the reader feel he’s in the scene.

 

Notice details of sight, sound, and smell in another excerpt from Running the Rift:

 

“Market goers created a congestion through which the truck barely moved. In the dying afternoon, hawkers called out bargains, packed up unsold tools and clothing, used appliances held together with hope and string. Flies swarmed around carcasses of meat. The aromas of over-ripe fruit and gamy animal flesh made Jean Patrick queasy. A bicycle taxi swerved into their path. . . . The woman on the back loosed a stream of insults in their direction. The radio droned; the truck engine whined and coughed. Their bodies jostled together from the potholed road. . . .”

 

Butch Ward offers advice inspired by Jacqui Banaszynski: 

“Write cinematically. 

Movies pull us through stories with strong themes, 

compelling characters and revelatory details. 

Written stories can do the same thing. . . . 

Zoom in tight on details or images 

that have the most meaning; 

be descriptive and specific.”

 

Caution: Avoid subjecting readers to irrelevant details—details that don’t enhance your main settings, details that don’t pertain to the point of your story/vignette.  Extraneous details slow down your story.

 

Revisit key places and scenes in your rough draft and ask yourself, “What did the place smell like?” Were you in a stable, or at the perfume counter in Macy’s?

 

Ask yourself “What noises were in the background?” The rumble of trains? The hush of snowfall?

 

What did you see in the distance? Mountains? Unending desert? Jungle? What did you see within your immediate surroundings?

 

If you were with a group of individuals eating tadpoles in okra sauce, how did that feel on your tongue? What was the texture? Find words to describe the taste and smell.

 

Include details that invite readers 

to encounter the same experiences you did. 

“Zip them into your skin.”