Back to Basics: Refuse to let cardboard characters lurk in your memoir!

 

“No one wants to be known for writing flat, boring, cardboard characters,” says Carly Sandifer.

 

“. . . Pick the particularly telling details that can make the difference between a cardboard character and a real, live person,” Judith Barrington says. It’s a matter “of selecting those few [details] that capture the essence of the person . . . .” (Writing the Memoir)

 

That’s your goal as a memoirist: “Capture the essence of the person.”

 

How, specifically, can you do that?

 

By employing the good old tried-and-true principle:

SHOW, DON’T TELL.

SHOW your main characters to your readers

rather than TELL readers about them.

 

“Why do we need to show?” asks author Cecil Murphey. “Telling is like overhearing someone talk about another person. Showing is like meeting the person.”

 

For example, instead of telling readers that a lady was “beautiful,”

show readers—describe her in such a way

that your reader will conclude for himself, “She was beautiful.”

 

Mark and Delia Owens could have told readers that Lionel was a problem drinker and a partier, but instead, they showed readers. They wrote:

 

“Lionel Palmer, deeply tanned, his dark hair brushed with grey, was dressed in baggy jeans, a cowboy shirt, and a bandana. He sauntered out to greet us, holding a glass of whisky in his hand. The oldest and most experienced professional hunter in the area, Lionel held considerable social position in Maun. He was famous for his parties, where bedroom furniture sometimes ended up on the roof, and once a Land Rover had been hung in a fig tree—and for his capacity for Scotch. Once, after several days of intoxication, he woke up with a stabbing earache. The doctor at the clinic removed a two-inch-long sausage fly—a reddish-brown tubelike, winged insect—which had taken up residence in Lionel’s numbed ear while he slept off his drunkenness in a flowerbed. For a week Lionel carried the fly’s carcass bedded down in a cotton-lined matchbox, proudly showing it to everyone he met, whether or not he knew them.” (Cry of the Kalahari)

 

Notice the way author Kristin Hanna showed Anouk to readers:

 

"Isabelle looked up, expecting to see German soldiers, but it was Anouk. She was dressed, as usual, more for her temperament than the season, in all black. A fitted V-neck black sweater and straight skirt with a black beret and gloves. A Gauloises cigarette hung from her bright red lips.

 

"She paused at the open doorway. . . . The Germans turned. Anouk let the door shut behind her. She casually lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply. . . .

 

"Anouk walked forward with a regal, disdainful air. . . . The Germans fell silent, watching her, moving sideways to let her pass. Isabelle heard one of them say ‘mannish’ and another ‘widow.’

 

"Anouk seemed not to notice them at all. At the counter she stopped and took a drag on her cigarette. The smoke blurred her face, and for a moment, only her cherry-red lips were noticeable. . . .

 

"Anouk turned and left the bookshop. It wasn’t until the bell tinkled that the spell broke and the [German] soldiers began speaking again.” (Nightingale)

 

Here’s another example, this one from Fred Craddock’s “Preaching as Storytelling”:

 

“‘There was this beggar sitting at the gate.’ Wait a minute. Give me a chance to experience the beggar at the gate. See the rags, smell the odor, hear the coins in the tin cup, see the hollow eyes.” (from The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching)

 

Think about your memoir’s main characters.

 

If one of them was smarmy, find words to craft a scene showing readers he was creepy.

 

If she was weird, create a scene to show she was strange. Bizarre. Eccentric.

 

If he was intellectual, use words to show he was cerebral. Scholarly.

 

Let readers in on a person’s idiosyncrasies and gestures. Did she live life at a half-run, or did she plod through life?

 

Did he make people uncomfortable by standing too close when he talked with them?

 

Did he make a funny little noise in his throat when he was nervous?

 

Instead of telling readers “He was angry,” show them his clenched jaw, flared nostrils, red face, or cold flashing eyes. Let readers hear the yelling and the slammed door.

 

Capture sweet moments, hilarious times, personality quirks, demonstrations of courage, integrity, tenacity in the face of obstacles, or high adventure—all make for great reading.

 

Consider the following when developing your main characters. Was he/she:

 

Generous or selfish

Dull or quick-witted

Charming or dreary

Stand-offish or welcoming

Gentle or gruff

Thoughtful or insensitive

Tall or short

Plump or skinny

Young or old

Agile or awkward

Generous or stingy

Composed or nervous

Gloomy or merry

Foolish or wise

Erratic or steady

Polished or frumpy

Uncouth or refined

Hilarious or humorless

 

“This is the recording of everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs, . . . clothing, decoration, styles of traveling, eating, keeping house, modes of behaving toward children, servants, superiors, inferiors, peers, plus the various looks, glances, poses, styles of walking and other symbolic details that might exist. . . .” (Roy Peter Clark quoting Tom Wolfe)

 

Your job is to develop multi-dimensional,

memorable, compelling, well-rounded personalities.

 

Capture unique details about your main characters—

physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual.

Reveal personality, beliefs, idiosyncrasies, and heart.

 

Develop characters your readers can experience

in the ways you experienced them.

 

 Take a minute to read Cecil Murphey’s post, “Show me! Show me!”

 

You’ll also enjoy Carly Sandifer’s post, “What I learned from Truman Capote about character description.” In it, Carly wrote, “Capote didn’t have to write about [tell readers about] his character, ‘She was a moral person,’ because he shows it.”

 

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.

 

Back to Basics: Who are the significant people in your life?

 

Think about an individual who made a significant impact on your life—someone who changed you, whose life still ripples through yours today even if you live far apart, or even if that person has died:

• A soldier
• Fireman
• Parent
• Grandparent
• Aunt or uncle or cousin
• Preacher
• Teacher
• Singer
• Supervisor
• Janitor
• Missionary
• Neighbor
• Doctor
• Store clerk
• Professor
• Farmer
• Policeman
• Classmate
• Teammate
• College roommate

 

What, specifically, did she do that impacted your life?

What words did he say that made all the difference?

What good example did she live which inspired you to live in the same way?

How did his choices give you the courage to shape yours?

How different could your life have turned out without that person’s involvement?

 

You’ll want to include some of these people in your memoir.

 

Memoirist Kathy Pooler (who recently passed away) reminded us: “Hindsight seems to bring about new clarity and wisdom,” so take time—make time—to seek clarity and wisdom to discern how God brought people into your life and made you who you are today.

 

You might not have recognized, back then, 

the significance of that person’s mark on your life, 

so dig deep into your memory.

 

Note the ways God used them to protect you, give you hope, maybe redirect you, and strengthen your faith.

 

Start writing even before you have remembered everything,

even before you know where your story is going,

or how it will end.

 

Why?

 

Because much more hides within your experience than you realize right now. Writing leads to discovery. Roger Housden says it this way:

 

“[A]s much as we think we know about our story, there is far more waiting to surprise us when our own words hit the page.”

 

So, write your stories!

 

Write them not as a hobby,

but as a ministry to your family and friends

—and even to strangers.

 

Your kids and grandkids and great-grands—and all your readers—need to know about the people who invested in you and guided you—and probably even kept you from doing something stupid.

 

Just think: Your stories could have a life-changing impact on your readers, passing the original blessings on to future generations.

 

“There are generations yet unborn

whose very lives will be shifted and shaped

by the moves you make and the actions you take today. . . .”

(Andy Andrews, The Butterfly Effect)

 

Come back next week: I’ll offer specifics to help you write about key people in your life.

 

Pin down inner qualities that define your memoir’s main characters

 

The people in your memoir, the ones who shaped your life, for better or for worse, are the people your readers want to know.

 

Last week looked at developing your main characters from a sensory perspective (sight, sound, smell, feel, taste), and this week we’ll dig even deeper and tackle what’s even more important—we’ll work on your main characters’ inner qualities. (If you missed last week’s post, click on Write life into your memoir’s main characters.)

 

Readers want to feel like they are alongside you, looking into the same faces you’re looking into. They want to experience what you experienced, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. They want to feel familiar with your main characters.

 

To achieve that, you need to go beyond a physical, sensory description: Develop a multi-dimensional person.

 

Which specific dimensions of your main characters significantly impacted you?

 

• What mattered most to her?
• What did he believe was his life’s purpose? What did he live for? What motivated him?
• What were his values?
• Her convictions?
• Was he selfless or selfish?
• Touchy or grace-giving?
• Faithful or fickle?
• Patient or impatient?
• Forgiving or bitter?
• Brave or cowardly?
• Nurturing or aloof?
• Confident or insecure?
• Gentle or abrasive?
• Generous or stingy?
• Was she domineering?
• Was he humble?
• Was he quick-tempered?
• Was she arrogant?
• Manipulative?
• A peacemaker?
• What was endearing about her?
• Annoying about him?
• Comical, scary, heroic?
• What did she obsess over? And was that a good or bad obsession?
• What did others say or think about that person?

 

For example, Frederick Buechner writes, “Like her father, my grandmother had little patience with weakness, softness, sickness. Even gentleness made her uncomfortable, I think—the tender-hearted people who from fear of giving pain, or just from fear of her, hung back from speaking their minds the way she spoke hers.” (The Sacred Journey)

 

A word of caution: Readers don’t need to know everything about your main characters.  As Roy Peter Clark says, “To bring a person to literary life requires not a complete inventory of characteristics, but selected details arranged to let us see flesh, blood, and spirit.” 

 

Know what information to include and what to exclude.

 

For example, if your memoir focuses on your grandmother’s commitment to nurture her kids and grandkids, develop her from that perspective. Readers probably don’t need to know that she struggled with insecurity or impatience or lack of courage.

 

Peel back layers. Readers want to know what was happening between the lines. What was happening beneath and beyond the sensory details? What was going on inside? What were that person’s thoughts?

 

You don’t need to flesh out every person in your memoir, but readers want to feel connected to your main characters. Your job is to create realistic characters—to accurately portray those most important people without overdoing it.

What was it about the person’s beliefs,

goals,

fears,

experiences,

successes,

failures,

quirks,

character

or values

that impacted your life?

 

Revise and polish your memoir in those places

where your main characters need to come to life.

 

Develop characters your readers can visualize,

but go beyond that:

Create living, breathing, vibrant,

memorable characters—

people who are believable, knowable, and well-rounded,

people readers can relate to.

 

Write life into your memoir’s main characters

 

Invite readers into your memoir by bringing life to key people in your stories.

 

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 for the reader.”

 

Write so the central characters become more than a shadow in the corner.

 

Develop your main characters so readers feel they’re in the scene, reliving your experiences and conversations alongside you.

 

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 for 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. . . .”

How do you make your main characters feel real and alive? By including specific details about them.

 

For starters, pay attention to sensory details. If your reader had stood with you in the presence of that person—a pastry chef, for example, or a dairy farmer—what would your reader have seen, smelled, felt, heard, and 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, writes of the smell in her great-grandmother’s room: “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.”

 

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

 

Let your readers in on a person’s idiosyncrasies and gestures. Did she live life at a half-run, or did she plod through life? Did he make people uncomfortable by standing too close when he talked to them? Did he make a funny little noise in his throat when he was nervous?

 

Incorporate a person’s facial expressions. 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 was her voice like? Did she yell, or did she give you the silent treatment? Did she pinch your ear? 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)

 

A mother is “the whisper of the leaves as you walk down the street”

Last week in the memoir class I lead, we discussed the importance of bringing a memoir’s main characters to life.

Readers need to feel they’re at least acquainted with (and maybe even attached to) key people. You don’t need to flesh out every person in your memoir, but readers want to connect with your main characters. When they do, they feel more immersed in your story and keep reading.

onewildword.com/2011/07/03

 Similarly, you don’t need to tell readers everything about a key character. Discern the most relevant attributes and leave out the rest. If your character was an avid fisherman and a Kansas City Chiefs fan but those details have no relevance to your story, you can probably leave out that information. (How about those Chiefs and their Super Bowl win?!)

In Writing the Memoir, Judith Barrington says, “Characters come alive when you pick the particularly telling details that can make the difference between a cardboard character and a real, live person.” She says we should select “those few [details] that capture the essence of that 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.”

Today let’s think about mothers—maybe your mother, a friend’s mother, a friend or relative who is a mother, or a mother-in-law. You want to create realistic characters, capturing their most significant features and actions and habits and mannerisms.

Mary Larmoyeux shows us a lovely poem, "Your Mother Is Always With You," by Deborah R. Culver:

Your mother is always with you.

She’s the whisper of the leaves

as you walk down the street.

She’s the smell of certain foods you remember,

flowers you pick, the fragrance of life itself.

She’s the cool hand on your brow

when you’re not feeling well.

She’s your breath in the air on a cold winter’s day.

She is the sound of the rain that lulls you to sleep,

the colors of a rainbow;

she is Christmas morning.

Your mother lives inside your laughter.

She’s the place you came from, your first home,

and she’s the map you follow with every step you take.

She’s your first love, your first friend,

even your first enemy,

but nothing on earth can separate you—

not time, not space, not even death.

(Deborah R. Culver, "Your Mother Is Always With You," 

used by permission)

Then Mary Larmoyeux paraphrased Deborah’s poem to describe her own mother. Here are excerpts from her "My Mother Is Always With Me":

My mother is . . . the reminder that things work out.

She’s the smell of sugar cookies . . .

and Sunday roast . . .

and the sight of kneading bread. 

She’s the hand that picked Magnolias,

the sound of prayers with Dad.

She’s the word of kindness needed,

the trust that God’s nearby. . . .

She’s the place that I came from, my first home—

one I’ll always know. . . .

(Mary Larmoyeux, “My Mother Is Always With Me.”)

Set aside a few minutes to do what Mary did:  Using Deborah R. Culver’s original quote for inspiration, capture the essence of the mother you’re writing about.

Was she refined and elegant—or salty like Tugboat Annie?

Was she boisterous—or mild-mannered?

Wild and scatterbrained—or methodical and orderly?

Courageous—or cowardly?

Haughty and self-important—or humble and modest?

Self-absorbed—or selfless?

Savvy, graceful, strong—or uninformed, clumsy, weak?  

Petite—or tall?

Slender—or obese?

Did she have a sense of humor—or was she clueless?

What were her rituals, her habits, her hobbies, her quirks?

Did she have a short fuse? A voice like an angel? A contagious laugh? A heart of gold?

What did she believe?

What did she live for?

Review the attributes Deborah R. Culver

and Mary Larmoyeux used.

Capture similar details about a mother in your story.

All of us have stories about a mother—your mother,

a friend’s mother, a friend who is a mother,

 or your mother-in-law.

Make her come alive for your readers.

Make time to write.

If you will, your readers and their families

will be all the richer for them.

Learn from a Holocaust survivor: Describe your memoir’s characters by going beyond physical details

Reading time: 2 minutes, 12 seconds

Last Thursday we looked at developing your memoir’s key characters by writing about their physical attributes. One way is to include sensory details: Describe what a character sounded like, smelled like, looked, felt, and maybe even tasted like. (If you missed last Thursday’s post, click on Are your memoir’s main characters real enough?)

But there’s more! You need to let readers know enough to get acquainted with a character, enough to grasp what’s most important about him or her, enough to know what’s inside.

So, today we’ll look at developing a multi-dimensional person by going beyond a physical, sensory description:

• What was endearing about her?
• What was annoying about him?
• What was comical, scary, heroic?
• What did she obsess over? And was that a good or bad obsession?
• What did other people say or think about that person?
• What moral character did he display?
• What courage, what integrity did she demonstrate?
• What passion, what commitment did he possess?

Peel back layers:

Readers need to know what was happening

beyond the sensory details.

What was happening

between the lines in your character’s life?

What was going on inside?

What were that person’s thoughts?

What do readers need to know about the character’s history,

beliefs, goals, faith, fears, experiences, successes,

quirks, failures, dreams, or values?

And don’t forget about heartaches.

Here’s an example—gripping, unforgettable—from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night. Note how he includes sensory details, but so much more:

Heavy snow continued to fall over the corpses. 

The door of the shed opened. An old man appeared. His moustache was covered with ice, his lips were blue. It was Rabbi Eliahu who had headed a small congregation in Poland. A very kind man, beloved by everyone in the camp, even by the Kapos and the Blockälteste. Despite the ordeals and deprivations, his face continued to radiate his innocence. He was the only rabbi whom nobody ever failed to address as “Rabbi” in Buna. He looked like one of those prophets of old, always in the midst of his people when they needed to be consoled. And, strangely, his words never provoked anyone. They did bring peace. 

As he entered the shed, his eyes, brighter than ever, seemed to be searching for someone.

“Perhaps someone here has seen my son?”

He had lost his son in the commotion. He had searched for him among the dying, to no avail. Then he had dug through the snow to find his body. In vain.

For three years, they had stayed close to one another. Side by side, they had endured the suffering, the blows; they had waited for their ration of bread and they had prayed. Three years, from camp to camp, from selection to selection. And now—when the end seemed near—fate had separated them.

When he came near me, Rabbi Eliahu whispered, “It happened on the road. We lost sight of one another during the journey. I fell behind a little at the rear of the column. I didn’t have the strength to run anymore. And my son didn’t notice. That’s all I know. Where has he disappeared? Where can I find him? Perhaps you’ve seen him somewhere?”

“No, Rabbi Eliahu, I haven’t seen him.” (from Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night) (Read our recent post about Elie Wiesel by clicking on There must never be a time when we fail to protest.)

I don’t know about you, but that description sent the Rabbi straight to my heart. I’ll never forget that passage.

Look over your manuscript and examine

the way you’ve developed your main characters.

What can you do to make them multi-dimensional?

Find words to make them into real beings.