Make ‘em cry along with you as you cry

 

For the past few weeks, we’ve considered Wilkie Collins’s advice to writers: “Make ‘em cry, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em wait.” (If you missed earlier posts about “make ‘em laugh,” see list and links below.)

 

If you can make ‘em cry, you’ll pull readers into your story.

 

And you do want them to read your story, all the way to the end.

 

Why?

 

Because whether readers realize it or not, they’re looking to you for answers and direction. They want to know how you coped with life—sorrows and joys, victories and defeats, despair and hope.

 

They’re looking for a takeaway—that part of your story they will always hold close because it changed their lives.

 

Be sure your memoir has takeaways: your insights that they can apply to their own lives, lessons you learned that will guide them in the future, a resource for living life well, a reason to hope, a reason to trust God, a better understanding of themselves.

 

So let’s get back to making ‘em cry. That’s one way to leave readers with the blessings of your takeaways but, to receive them all, readers have to keep reading, and you can keep them reading if you make ‘em cry along with you as you cry.

 

Oh, but it’s hard to write about our life’s most painful parts!

 

The ache. Heartbreak. Grief. Anguish.

 

So many of us avoid writing the painful stuff.

 

Am I describing you? Have you been unable to write about the stuff that opens up old wounds?

 

How many of your stories remain untold?

 

Mick Silva says writers must be willing to take a chance—to risk examining our hard bits and pieces—and then to risk writing about them.

 

“That necessity to risk is why writing takes courage above all else,” he says.

 

“Risking pain to seek the deeper truths about yourself and life, risking sharing what you know.

 

“Risking paying close attention when you experience pain or fear, knowing it means you’ve been chosen to understand, express and explain this particular view of it best. . . .” (Mick Silva)

 

Writing about our sorrows can bring us healing (more on that in coming weeks), but there’s more—there’s another layer to your storytelling: God can use our stories.

 

God even planned for us to share our stories:

 

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 tells us that the God of all comfort reaches out to comfort us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the comfort we have received from Him.

 

That means writing about how God helped you through painful experiences is a sacred calling, a ministry.

 

Take, for example, Dana Goodman’s experience:

 

“During my intense grieving moments, other people’s stories gave me words to describe the ache that was indescribable. They gave me hope that a new day would dawn, and I would not be stuck in the black forever.” (Dana Goodman, author, In the Cleft: Joy Comes in the Mourning)

 

And so, we write.

 

“In a world that groans of brokenness

and screams of injustice,

it matters that we hold our creative candles

right up next to the pain.”

Settle Monroe

 

A word of caution:

 

Writing about heartaches and wounds can be excruciating—because to write them requires us to relive them. If we haven’t healed enough to write those stories, we must wait until we can relive them and write them.

 

Next week we’ll look at one technique to help us write—but only when we are ready.

 

In the meantime, pray and ask God to help you write the painful stuff. Doing so can help your healing and can help readers, too—maybe in ways you could never have imagined.

 

Related posts:

Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em wait

Humor in your memoir: “like a sneak attack”

Using humor the right way in memoir

Make ‘em laugh: an instant connection

 

 

Your memoir’s value to readers: Recognizing their story in yours

Our “stories all overlap and mingle like searchlights in the dark. . . .” writes Frederick Buechner. “My story and your story are all part of each other. . . . All our stories are in the end one story, one vast story about being human, being together, being here.”

And he asks what every memoirist must ask: “Does [my] story point beyond itself? Does it mean something?” (The Clown in the Belfry)

The memoirist must be able to answer “Yes.”

You see, it’s tempting to think a memoir is all about you but, at some point in your writing, take a high, wide look from above. For your readers’sake, identify your story’s universal principles, truths, struggles, quests, and values.

Why? Because when your experience exemplifies universals, readers recognize their story in yours. 

A good memoir “always connects the reader's heart with a deeper truth,” writes Jeff Goins. “Memoir is about something that is bigger than you. It's about a part of life we can all connect to.”

Human lives overlap. We all hover within universal human emotions, conditions, and happenings. We all experience joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures, courage and cowardice. We all have chosen wisely as well as foolishly. We are proud of certain moments and ashamed of others. 

Readers, like all of us, feel alone in their wobbly efforts, false starts, dead ends, and meandering lives. One reader might think she's the only one longing to find love or acceptance or success. For another reader, personal transformation hurts and it’s easy for a man to assume he's along in worrying through times of change. Another reader might be struggling to overcome fear.

When readers pick up your memoir, whether they realize it or not they want to see where their lives intersect with yours. They want to relate to you. Within your story, readers can discover they aren't alone: They’ll recognize themselves in your story when you write about issues that concern them, when your story is about more than you. They want to learn from you and apply what you learned to their own lives. Your job, then, is to look for ways your story resonates with all of us.

This is an example of what I mean: “During my intense grieving moments, other people’s stories gave me words to describe the ache that was indescribable. They gave me hope that a new day would dawn, and I would not be stuck in the black forever.” (Dana Goodman, author, In the Cleft: Joy Comes in the Mourning)

In that way, memoirists have the privilege of being what Anaïs Nin calls “the guides and mapmakers.”

Within your story, look for universal principles and truths about honor, tenacity, valor, generosity, kindness, commitment, self-discipline, sympathy, integrity—the list could go on and on.

Stories need takeaways, gifts you offer readers, those “A-ha” moments when the lights come on, when they identify and apply your life’s lessons to their own lives.

Your memoir’s universal appeal and takeaways

can spark defining moments in your readers—

inspiring them to take action, opening for them new opportunities—

and leaving them changed for the better.

As a memoirist, you have the privilege of lighting their way.

Your memoir can have an outcome beyond your expectations

The Bible’s characters “may not have realized the privilege and certainly didn’t know the eternal impact they would make,” writes Priscilla Shirer in her Bible study, Jonah.

“How could they have known that their names would go down in God’s Word to encourage us millennia later?”

Realize the truth of what Priscilla says next:

“Like those holy heroes, you’ve got an outcome you can’t make out. . . .”

“In future generations, your story will be the one that encourages someone else to follow hard after God.”

Read that again and believe it:

“In future generations,

your story will be the one

that encourages someone else

to follow hard after God.”

Priscilla’s insights suggest ideas for your memoir: 

• Which Bible characters have impacted your life? Abraham? Moses? Ruth? Joseph? David? Esther? Peter?
• What did they say or do that helped define your life’s choices?
• What did they do that changed your life’s direction?

Include vignettes in your memoir illustrating why and how those characters have inspired you, influenced you, and shaped you into the person you are today.

Then do an about-face. God has used other people’s stories to encourage you, teach you, admonish, and inspire, so now it’s your turn to pass on the blessings. Turn from the past and look toward the future.

Stories are important. Your stories are important. You might never be able to guess how God will use them. For example:

“During my intense grieving moments, other people’s stories gave me words to describe the ache that was indescribable,” writes Dana Goodman. “They gave me hope that a new day would dawn, and I would not be stuck in the black forever.” (Dana Goodman, In the Cleft: Joy Comes in the Mourning)

“I’ve seen it happen. . . .

A lost human being feels like they’re the only one

who has ever felt this much pain.

They don’t know how to reach out for help

but then, inside of a story . . .

they see every emotion or secret

or hope-for happy ending

that they’ve ever kept bottled up inside . . .

and they start to believe—maybe there’s more. . . .”

(Martha Carr, “Just Keep Writing”)

Let me ask: Do you see your writing as a privilege? As a ministry?

Do you realize the impact your memoir can make?

“Have you ever considered,” Priscilla asks, “that just as the previous stories encourage us along the way, yours will encourage someone else?”

God can use your words

to help readers experience God’s grace,

cling to hope, remain strong in their faith,

and delight in His love.

Write your stories!