More tips on using dialogue in your memoir

Today we’ll look at more tips for using dialogue in your memoir—because crafting it correctly is so important. (If you missed Thursday’s post, click on Are you using dialogue the right way in your memoir?) 

Place quotation marks around the words people speak. (Put your silent thoughts—inner dialogue—in italics, not quotation marks.)

Use simple dialogue tags (he said, she asked) rather than bigger words like he bellowed or she whined or he scolded or she demanded. Using fancy tags instead of simple ones will distract readers—they’ll draw attention to the tags rather than the spoken words. Keep the focus on dialogue rather than tags. (For more on this topic, including examples, read this fun post, A Critical DON’T for Writing Dialogue, by Joe Bunting.) 

Delete adverbs and adjectives with your dialogue tags, such as he said arrogantly or she said bitterly.

In general, if the dialogue is only one sentence long, place the tag at the end of it.

Victoria Costello offers this advice: “If you insert a tag between two or more sentences, the tag always goes after the first sentence” (The Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Memoir). For example, compare these two:

“There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love,” said Pearl S. Buck, “but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream—whatever that dream might be.”

This is the better way: “There are many ways of breaking a heart,” said Pearl S. Buck. “Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream—whatever that dream might be.”

Each time a different person speaks, start a new paragraph.

If two people are in a long conversation, not every line of dialogue needs a tag—as long as readers know which character is speaking. To help readers keep track, occasionally include the speaker’s action. For example, the following has no tag but the reader knows who spoke:

“I must go.” Anne stood, threw her scarf around her neck, and turned toward the door.

Here’s another look at crafting dialogue without a tag, based on an example from Joe Bunting’s post. He encourages writers to: “…show…emotion with an action. Like this: ‘I hate you,’ she exclaimed she said, hurling her French book at him. The corner struck him just under his eye. A bright red mark began to rise on his skin.”

Notice two things: (a) Joe changed “she exclaimed” to “she said,” which is good, but (b) Joe could have deleted “she said” altogether. Then the dialogue would look like this:

“‘I hate you.’ She hurled her French book at him….”

I like that better. Do you?

Look over your manuscripts, 

study the way you’ve crafted dialogue, 

and make revisions. 

Your readers will thank you.

An easy way to add richness to your memoir's stories

Consider placing epigrams at the beginning of your memoir’s chapters or vignettes. (Usually an epigram is centered under the chapter title or number.)

An epigram is a concise saying that:

shines light on,

or summarizes,

clarifies,

focuses,

adds pizzazz or sparkle,

or enriches the important story that follows it.

An epigram can be a short poem, song lyrics, a proverb, adage, or something witty.

It can be a quotation, a Bible verse, a maxim, a pithy statement, or a prayer.

If you’re like me, you’ve saved poems and quotations—in journals, in filing cabinets, in computer documents. If you’re like me, you’ve underlined book passages, highlighted Bible verses, and memorized song lyrics.

They caught your attention for some reason. They have special meaning for you. Why?

Take time to think: What happened in your past that makes that passage poignant?  What experience—what wisdom, what life-shaping event, what joy, healing, hope, what delight—does each saying point to?

If a brief quotation has a special meaning to you, you could—and probably should—write a story about it.

What about those other quotations that resonate with you? Consider writing some or all of the stories those sayings bring to mind, and place the epigram at the beginning of the story.

I gave you a long list of quotes last summer, and today I’m giving you more which might work as epigrams for your vignettes. I hope they will get your mind to humming on new story ideas:

“God gave us memories so we could have roses in winter and mothers forever.” J. M. Barrie

“In the life of a God-centered person, sorrow and joy can exist together. That isn't easy to understand, but when we think about some of our deepest life experiences . . . great sorrow and great joy are often seen to be parts of the same experience. ” Henri Nouwen

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” Dr. Seuss

“Don’t go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We are not what we do. We are not what we have. We are not what others think of us.… I am the beloved child of a loving Creator. ” Henri Nouwen

“To be loved but not known is superficial. To be known and not loved is our great fear—but to be known and loved, that transforms you.” Tim Keller 

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” Harper Lee’s character Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; … who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” Theodore Roosevelt

 “Sometimes God allows something in your life that only He can fix so that you will get to see Him fix it.” Tony Evans

“Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’ ‘That’s the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.” George R. R. Martin

“Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”  M. Scott Peck

“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.” Mother Teresa

“The greatest contribution to the kingdom of God may not be something you do but someone you raise.” Adam Stanley

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.” Pearl S. Buck

“I’ve learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages.” Charles Spurgeon

“A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear.” Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.” Mitch Albom

“When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. ” Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing the monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” C.S. Lewis

“ … At moments of even the most humdrum of our days, God speaks.… He speaks not just through the sounds we hear, of course, but through events in all their complexity and variety, through the harmonies and disharmonies and counterpoint of all that happens.” Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey

“Sometimes life takes us places we never expected to go.  And in those places God writes a story we never thought would be ours.” Renee Swope

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.” Dante

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.” Proverbs 31:8

Related post: Add richness to your memoir’s chapters

The power of your place

“To understand my family,” writes Sarah White, “you just have to understand Winona Lake.…”*

Sarah’s referring to the power of place.

The places of our lives mysteriously shaped us and now define us and still anchor us and live in us. The places of our lives nurtured our souls and spirits.

Because of that, place plays an important role in memoirs.

In an interview over at Tales from The Reading Room,* Dinah Roe, London-based author of Rosettis in Wonderland, said,

“Good biographies are as much about time and place as they are about individuals. I love biographies which evoke a sense of place.… Hilary Spurling’s Burying the Bones: Pearl S. Buck in China does this brilliantly. She really makes the case for how important China was to Buck’s writing and to her identity. I had thought of Buck simply as an American writer until I read this book, and then suddenly I realized how wrong-headed this had been. Spurling evoked the place so beautifully that I felt I was right there with the missionary community in China.” (emphasis mine)

I still remember the sense of place David Guterson created in Snow Falling on Cedars—even though I read it over 13 years ago—because of his mastery of writing place into his novel. (Here at SM 101 we’re not writing novels, but, whether fiction or nonfiction, compelling writing is compelling writing.)

Part of his success came because, behind the scenes, all unseen to the rest of us, Guterson practiced what Priscilla Long* recommends: he gathered words.

He collected words about places that, coincidentally, mysteriously shaped me and now define me and still anchor me and live in me, places that nurtured my soul and spirit.

Guterson collected words that describe his place and my place, words like: 

creosoted pilings

ferry terminal

sea cucumbers

anemones

tube worms

alder sticks

geoducks

bonfires

steamer clams

mussels
the odor of salmon bones

oysters

kelp

purse seiners

one-man gill-netting boats

Guterson writes, “They had passed autumn afternoons when they were nine years old in the hollowed-out base of a cedar tree, where they sprawled on the ground looking out at the rain as it pummeled the sword ferns and ivy.… They already had a history together that included this beach, these waters, the very stones, and the forest at their backs, too. It was all theirs and always would be.… She knew where to find matsutake mushrooms, elderberries, and fern tendrils.”

He also writes: “The path looped around the head of the bay, then down into a swale … ground fog shrouded its thimbleberry and devil’s club, such was the clammy, low wetness of the place—then climbed among cedars and the shadows of spruces before descending….” and “… there was a wall of honeysuckle just past blossom, salmonberries hanging in among it and a few last wild roses blooming—Hatsue cut into the cedar woods.… through a dell of ferns where white morning glory blossoms dotted the forest floor. A fallen cedar log hung with ivy.…” and “green-tinted light entered from the cedar forest. The rain echoed in the canopy of leaves above and beat against the sword ferns, which twitched under each drop.”

I encourage you to invest a little time in what Priscilla Long calls The Lexicon Practice—a “deliberate, ongoing gathering of words and phrases.”* (from The Writer's Portable Mentor)

Last Saturday we discussed collecting words that describe a particular era in your memoir’s stories. Today, begin a lexicon (word book) with words that describe important places in your memoir—places that mysteriously shaped you and now define you and still anchor you and live in you.

Remember, you’re looking for “neither big words nor pompous words nor Latinate words,” says Priscilla, “but mainly words [you] like.” Words that don’t require a dictionary. Words that will help your readers smell, feel, hear, see, and even taste your places, those important places that nurtured your soul and spirit.

P.S. Hop on over to Rhonda’s blog post, Giving thanks for heritage, roots centered on the prairie,* to see how she crafted a sense of place. 


Note, too, that Rhonda created not only a physical, geographical place, but also an emotional place in her Aunt Esther's home.


Get out your WIPs (works in progress) and add words and phrases that will enhance your stories' sense of place.

*Links and references:

Sarah White,

http://truestorieswelltold.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/the-power-of-place-in-your-memoir

Dinah Roe’s interview at Tales from the Reading Room,  

http://litlove.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/the-art-of-writing-biography

Priscilla Long, and my blog post, Gather “crackly” words for your memoir,

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2012/01/gather-crackly-words-for-your-memoir.html

Priscilla Long, and my blog post, How long will your memoir’s readers stay engaged, charmed, and beguiled? 

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-long-will-your-memoirs-readers-stay.html

Priscilla Long’s book, The Writer’s Portable Mentor,

http://www.amazon.com/Writers-Portable-Mentor-Guide-Writing/dp/0984242104/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326830003&sr=8-1

Rhonda’s Giving thanks for heritage, roots centered on the prairie, http://momof4braves.blogspot.com/2012/01/giving-thanks-for-heritage-roots.html