December’s details for your memoir

Make your December stories come to life for your readers. Write so your experience happens all over again for them.

How do you do that?

Include sensory details: Let readers see, smell, hear, feel, and taste what you experienced.

“When you trigger a reader’s sense of sight, smell, sound, touch, or taste,” says Melissa Donovan,* “you [elicit] a physiological response to your writing, and the reader will connect with it on a deeper, sensory level.”

Wednesday we considered sights related to your Christmas or Hanukkah memories: A memoir writer watches, looks, and sees.

“This is the secret of good writing: We must look intently.… We must look at everything very hard. Is it the task at hand to describe a snowfall? Very well. We begin by observing that the snow is white. Is it as white as bond paper? White as whipped cream? Is the snow daisy white, or eggwhite white, or whitewash white? Let us look very hard. We will see that snow comes in different textures. The light snow that looks like powdered sugar is not the heavy snow that clings like wet cotton.…” (James J. Kilpatrick, The Writer’s Art)

Capture December smells for your readers, too. Describe the perfume of evergreen Christmas trees because—who knows?—maybe your readers will have known only artificial trees.

Describe favorite food aromas. If your story is set in India, food smells will be different from a story set in Mexico.

For some of you, the fragrance of oyster stew might come to mind (but I’d change “fragrance” to “stench”).

A memoir writer also hears. He not only listens for stories,* he listens for the sounds of the holidays.

What Christmas or Hanukkah sounds will you include in your memoir?

If you write a vignette set in France, it will sound different from a story set in Japan.

If your story is set in 1930, it will sound different from a story set in 2000.

Capture December sights, smells, and sounds for your readers.

Next time we’ll cover the sensory details of touch and taste for your December stories.

  

“Stories create an experience.

It’s a long trip from the head to the heart.…

What experience are you going to create?…

‘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.”

(Fred Craddock, “Preaching as Storytelling,”

The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching; emphasis mine)

*Resources and links:

Melissa Donovan at Writing Forward, http://www.writingforward.com/writing-prompts-3/creative-writing-prompts/15-yummy-creative-writing-prompts

Listen for stories, Do you hear them?

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/12/do-you-hear-them.html



Saturday Snippet: What sights will readers see in your memoir?

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You want people to read your memoir. After all the effort you put into writing it, you want them to read it all the way to the end.


Here’s one way to encourage that: Include details so readers experience the story with you.


Wednesday I suggested adding details to your rough drafts, concentrating on sights—describing your vignette’s setting, its surrounding, its scenery. Write so readers can see the place as if they’re standing beside you.

Recently I ran across a good example at Ann Kroeker’s blog, Ann Kroeker. Writer. She captured the following childhood memories of spending a week with her grandmother each summer: 


… I loved waking up in the front bedroom under fresh sheets spread neatly on the big double bed, a loosely woven purple cotton blanket folded back. In the narrow, horizontal window, she displayed a collection of colored glass bottles. Light streamed in through the colors, morning magic. I blinked myself awake, rested and safe.


In my memory I can still walk through every room, from the baker’s cabinet in the corner of the kitchen to the day bed along the dining room wall; from the collection of gardening books on shelves in the living room, to the glass jar of leftover yarn balls sitting next to a chair in Grandma’s bedroom. It’s all still here, inside me.


I can still wander out the screen door and hear the spring stretch the wooden frame shut with a solid “thunk.” Under the grape arbor, I pluck a Concord grape, manipulating the skin off with my teeth to suck the sweet, cool insides and chew the sour skins before spitting them out. In my mind, Baby’s Breath still blooms white behind the garage and orange day lilies line the side of the house. For a while, my grandma made rag rugs on a loom that she set up on a small porch. I can see its threads and recall how the shuttle slipped across to bind the strips of cloth.”

Used by permission from Ann Kroeker,

http://annkroeker.com/2011/06/01/curiosity-journal-june-1-2011/#more-12650

Lynn Hopper photo

Did you feel like you were there beside Ann, moseying through her grandmother’s home? I did!

Ann included other sensory details, too: sound, taste, and feel. Nice work, Ann! Thanks for showing us around your grandmother’s place.

This week, I encourage you to start at least one new vignette. Review each story and add sensory details. Invite readers to experience your story alongside you.