Back to Basics: How to create “a sensory world that you and your readers can inhabit together”

 

I can’t remember the book’s title or author but, some fifteen years later, I still recall the main character—but not in a positive way. I knew almost nothing of her physical appearance or inner qualities.

 

The author had created a stick figure. I had little interest in the longings of the character’s heart or the setbacks she faced. I wasn’t cheering for her.

 

When you write your memoir, avoid making the same mistake. Make key people come alive! Help readers to sense they’re with you in your experience, seeing what you’re seeing, smelling what you’re smelling, hearing conversations alongside you.

 

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 to the reader.”

 

Write so your memoir’s central characters become more than a shadow in the corner.

 

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 to 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. . . .”

(Dinty Moore)

 

How do you do that?

 

For starters, this week we’re paying attention to sensory details: sight, smell, feel, sound, and taste.

Judith Barrington explained, “This is not a matter of throwing an abundance of details—say, of a person's visual appearance—at the reader, but of selecting those few that capture the essence of the person . . . a quirk of speech, a mannerism, the way his hair falls across his face, an item of clothing, the smell of her, or how she walks.” (Writing the Memoir) 

 

Study William Kent Krueger's uses of sight (what a reader would see—would envision) in this example about a man named Wally Schanno in Iron Lake:

“In his mid-fifties, he was tall and lean, had hollow cheeks, thick pale lips, and a nose like a big ragged chunk of granite shoved in his face. . . . His enormous feet required shoes factory-ordered straight from Red Wing, Minnesota. . . . He had a penchant for suspenders—nothing wild, just plain red, or black, or gray—and he almost never sported a tie.”

Let me share a personal story. We were attending a gathering in Seattle, Washington, when my daughter Karen overheard someone—someone she didn't know—refer to her three sons as “surfer boys.” Now, Karen and her husband live in Malibu, California, and indeed their boys are surfers. But she was surprised a stranger could look at her boys and recognize they were surfers.

It shook her up. “Mom,” she whispered, “how could they know my boys are surfers?” Karen was so immersed in the surfer culture that her boys looked normal to her, no different from other people. She needed to step back and pin down her surfer-sons' prominent attributes.

Take a fresh look at key persons in your memoir. 

What unique features would others like or need to know?

For example, what makes surfers look different from most other Americans? Their hair often gives them away. Surfer guys' hair is longer than most guys' hair, unruly—tousled and tangled—sun-bleached, and often stiff from saltwater. Surfers usually have deep tans on their muscular bodies. They often have salt caked on their eyelashes. They walk around with sand sticking to their feet and legs, which they bring with them into their trucks and homes. You'll often see a black wetsuit drying on the porch railing.

What does a surfer sound like? Pin down his vocabulary. If something is  “gnarly,” it is awesome. If he describes a fellow surfer as being “goofy-footed,” he's talking about someone who places his right foot (instead of his left foot) at the front of the surfboard.

What distinctive features can you include in describing your key people? Maybe a woman in your story spoke with a Canadian accent and pronounced “out” and “about” in that distinctive Canadian way. (I can poke fun at Canadians because I'm related to a number of them. In fact, I'm told I have a Canadian accent.) If a character was a ballerina, did she walk tall and straight and gracefully? Use sensory details to describe them.

For example, if a reader had stood with you in the presence of a pastry chef or a dairy farmer, what would your reader have seen, smelled, felt, heard, or 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,” wrote of what she smelled, heard, and felt when visiting her great-grandmother:

 

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

 

Incorporate a person’s facial expression. 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 did her voice sound like? Did she yell, or did she give you the silent treatment? 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)

 

Come back next week: I’ll share more secrets

on how to develop your memoir’s main characters.