If your memoir includes adventure, we want to hear from you

Thanks to all who shared their memoirs’ opening sentences with us on April 12’s blog post, Share your memoir’s first seven sentences with us:

Linda Hoye

Wendy L. Macdonald

Kathy Pooler

Catherine Lanser

Diana Schramer

Linda Moore Kurth

Caren Colson Dillingham

Each crafted a compelling opening, one that pulls us in and makes us want to keep reading. Thanks, ladies, for mentoring the rest of us. (Click on their names to learn more about them.)

Today I’ll share another opening with you, this one from my adventuresome friend Jon Arensen’s memoir, Drinking the Wind: Memoirs of an African Odyssey.

But first, some background. When my husband and I first moved to Kenya, Jon served on the staff of the three-month orientation course that all newcomers took—in the bush. With a Ph.D. in Anthropology, Jon had lots to teach us, and that’s when we learned what a great storyteller he is.

Jon grew up in Africa and spent most of his adult life there, too—and has lived countless high adventures. As a linguist based in Sudan, he also spent considerable time in Kenya as an anthropology coordinator. In today’s story, Jon was vacationing in Tanzania, two countries south of Sudan. It shows how well-known he was throughout East Africa, and it also shows that sometimes Jon took risks most of us would pass on!

So, take a couple of minutes to read this excerpt from his memoir’s prologue. You’ll enjoy it, I promise. But there’s one thing you need to know: Elephants kill hundreds of people every year.

The herd of elephants walked out of the acacia forest like gray ghosts. In spite of their great size they made no noise. The old matriarch of the herd led the way, closely followed by her babies. She stopped at the top of the riverbank and lifted her trunk to smell the wind. Sensing no danger, she cautiously slid down the steep bank and approached the small stream flowing through the golden sand. 

Her grown daughters and their babies followed in her footsteps and soon the entire matriarchal herd stood in a line with their trunks sucking up the cool clear water. They raised the tips of their water-filled trunks to their mouths and lifted their entire trunks, letting the water run into their throats. 

Our camp stood on a bank of the Mwagusi sand river opposite the drinking elephants. I had come to the Ruaha National Park in southern Tanzania with my sons Jeff and Mike. We explored and took photographs in this largely unvisited wilderness—a location teeming with wildlife amidst a unique backdrop of granite boulders, palm trees, sand rivers and gigantic baobab trees. 

After the elephants slaked their thirst, the adult females sucked up water in their trunks and blew the water on their backs and sides. The baby elephants lay down in the shallow water and rolled. Then they played king of the hill, climbing on top of each other under the watchful eyes of their mothers. 

I had a sudden inspiration. Jeff was a senior at Rift Valley Academy in Kenya and he needed a photograph of himself for the annual yearbook. I suggested he walk out on the sand river and pose in front of the elephants. Jeff didn’t like the idea. I assured him elephants had bad eyesight and we were downwind from the elephants, so they were not aware of our presence. I convinced Jeff to stoop over and walk like a baboon, so the elephants would not notice him. 

Jeff finally agreed and hunched himself down and walked out on the open sand, carefully watching the elephants. The elephants paid no attention. When Jeff got within forty yards of the elephant herd, he slowly straightened up and faced the camera with a forced smile. I quickly took several photographs of him with the elephants in the background before Jeff dashed back to camp. He now had a great photograph for the yearbook.

Well, Jeff took a big risk, and it didn’t go badly—but that wasn’t the end of Jon’s story. He lost that roll of film.

Months later two photographers visited that same national park, Ruaha, and, driving down a track, they watched as a lioness killed a hyena. A couple days later, they drove down the same track and spotted the hyena’s rotting carcass—and in its stomach, something bright yellow—a dented roll of Kodak film.

The photographers gave the film to Geoff Fox, owner of one of the park’s lodges, who took it to Dar es Salaam and got it developed. Looking at the photos of a blond boy standing in front of elephants, Geoff also noted a Toyota and its license plate.

Returning to Ruaha, he looked through the logbook at the entry gate, matched the license number to Jon’s name, and gave the photos to his son Chris, who just happened to be a friend of Jon’s!

Jon has told countless such stories over the years, earning him a reputation as a legendary storyteller. Besides Drinking the Wind: Memoirs of an African Odyssey, he also authored several other books including another memoir, Where Antelope Roam and Other Stories Out of Africa. Check out his Jon Arensen, Author, Page on Facebook.

Now it’s your turn.

If your memoir includes adventure, we want to hear from you.

Don't be shy!

Post a few key paragraphs below in the comments,

or as a comment on SM 101’s Facebook Page,

or in a private message.

Be sure to give us a link to your website or Facebook Page.

We look forward to reading about your adventures!

Leads, Part Two

An excellent lead is a must for your memoir’s vignettes (chapters). The lead is the first thing your reader reads—your opening sentences.

A well-crafted lead stirs curiosity in your reader, hooks her, and draws her in.


A lead can make or break a story: It can entice a person to read it—or to close the book, slide out of her chair, and walk away.


Lead-writing can be hard work, even for pros. Like Bill Roorbach said, “…Most first lines weren’t first till after much revision.…” (Writing Life Stories)


In Leads, Part One,* we considered two types of leads, the quote lead and the scene-setting lead.


Today we’ll look at three more types:


Action (or narrative) lead: “The dusty earth vibrated and bushes crashed, snapping the silence of the tawny African plain. . . . We caught a blurred glimpse of some creature approaching us, carving a path through the dense thorn scrub brush. Two tick-eating birds flapped frantically off a massive iron-grey back as their resting place lunged out from under them. Now we saw clearly what was heading our way. It was a rhinoceros, one of Africa’s most unpredictable animals.” (Dr. Jon Arensen, Rhino! ) (Jon and I worked together in Africa; besides being a storyteller, he’s an anthropologist, linguist, and Bible translator. Be sure to check out Jon’s new memoir, Drinking the Wind: Memoirs of an African Odyssey. It covers his childhood in Africa and his many years working among a people group in Sudan. Buy Drinking the Wind from Amazon at this link: http://www.amazon.com/Drinking-Wind-Jon-Arensen/dp/9966720448)


Anecdote: Use a short story to illustrate or personalize your story’s broader topic or main point. For example, this anecdote lead kicks off a story about a broad topic, the surge in violence across America: “Even before the fireworks launched from the French Quarter’s Jackson Square, 2006 went out with a bang in New Orleans – a handful of them, actually. At 7 p.m. on December 31, several of those bangs felled a 42-year-old man, who was found inside his FEMA trailer with multiple gunshot wounds to the back of his head. At 8:45 p.m., another man was shot several times and left dead on the sidewalk. At 10:12 p.m., a third was killed inside his home.” (The New Math on Crime, by Will Sullivan, U.S. News and World Report, January 15, 2007)


Statistics, if brief, can effectively create curiosity and entice readers to keep reading. For example: “More than one billion people won’t get enough to eat today. In the next seven seconds, another hungry child will die.”
(World Vision, http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/learn/hunger?open&lpos=top_drp_OurWork_Hunger)


Many writers craft their leads last. After you write the body of your piece, set it aside. A day or more later, re-read it, capture the essence of your vignette, and determine what type of lead will work best. So far we’ve looked at five types: quote, scene-setting, action, anecdote, and statistics.


Next time we’ll cover these leads: startling assertion, question, a “you” message, and the news article lead.


Between now and then, analyze leads in good newspapers, magazines, blog posts, novels, memoirs, devotionals, and newsletters.


Wednesday, my friend Carol, a real pro and a former coworker, left his comment:

"A fun exercise to get your head around this is to look carefully at the opening words of famous or favorite writings. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times' ... 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' ... 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again' ... 'There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.' Read more: http://www.pantagraph.com/news/article_a125216a-649f-5414-88b5-76a688ea3b6a.html#ixzz1SlIEFJaN "

Ask yourself: Why do some leads succeed and others don’t?

*Related post: Leads, Part One

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/07/leads-part-one-please-dont-get-mad-ive_20.html