Does your opening make your memoir a must-read?

 

In writing your memoir, you must craft every aspect well, but your beginning could make or break your entire book.

 

Because of that, you’ll need to create curiosity, draw readers in, and keep them reading.

 

An opening is probably the hardest for all of us to create, whether we’re composing a book, vignette, newspaper or magazine article, blog post, inspirational talk, or sermon.

 

Brian Clark drives home that point:

 

“Master copywriter Gene Schwartz

often spent an entire week on the first 50 words. . . .

Those 50 words are the most important part

of any persuasive writing,

and writing them takes time.

Even for the masters.”

 

Read that again: “ . . . writing them takes time. Even for the masters.”

 

How are you doing on crafting your memoir’s beginning?

 

Here are a few tips:

 

Remove your scaffolding. (Don’t miss that link!) Your first few paragraphs must be the correct ones.

 

Be sure your beginning doesn’t give away the ending. This might seem like a no-brainer, but too many people goof on that.

 

Prolific author and New York Times bestselling author Cecil Murphey says, “I once read more than one hundred of the entries for Christmas Miracles, a compilation book. The major flaw in at least a third of them was that they told us the ending before they told us the story.” Cecil gave this example: “The worst Christmas of my life became the best Christmas ever.”

 

Instead of giving away the ending, intrigue your readers: Entice them to keep reading so they’ll discover how your memoir ends.

 

When I teach memoir classes, I encourage people to do what I did when I was a journalism student (and still do today): Study openings written by pros.

 

Be an eager student: Go to the library, or browse around a book store, or look through your own stack of books, or look inside memoirs on Amazon—but only those written by pros. Study how they do it.

 

Scrutinize the start of everything you come across—newspaper articles, magazine articles, literary journals, fiction—anything written by pros, and study how they do it.

 

Once you’ve acquainted yourself with professionally composed openings, look at how non-pros write them. 

 

By studying beginnings penned by 

both pros and beginners, 

you’ll recognize what works 

and what doesn’t. 

And you’ll become more skilled 

at creating your own memoir’s opening.

 

Remember: Plan to take plenty of time to create just the right beginning.

 

The first part of your memoir can make or break the whole book.

 

An effective start can motivate a person 

to keep reading,

but a weak one could persuade him 

to close your memoir and walk away.

 

Put in the hard work needed to make your opening zing.

 

Before people buy your memoir, they’ll check out its opening

Reading time: 2 minutes, 10 seconds

Anne R. Allen points out that when potential buyers check into a book, “. . . All readers want to see that a book looks professional and polished.

“They don’t want to invest time in a book—even if it’s free—unless they feel they’re in competent hands.”

And your competence, or lack of it, will be apparent from the first paragraph and first page so you need to work hard to make them shine.

Craft an opening that catches potential readers’ attention, stirs their emotions, and makes them curious to know more—in other words, an opening that inspires them to plunk down money for your memoir and read it.  

Keep this in mind: You’re not on your own in fashioning your memoir’s opening:   

• You can get outstanding help from a quality critique group, either in person or online. Such groups are invaluable! Let your critique partners experiment with you on crafting a powerful lead (opening, beginning).
• We here at SM 101 are also here to help.

We’ve already covered the following types of leads—The Quote Lead and

The Scene-setting Lead. (If you missed recent blog posts, click on links below.)

So today let’s continue with more options for creating a powerful start to your memoir:

The 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 great storyteller and author, Jon is an anthropologist, linguist, Bible translator, and university professor. Look into Jon’s other books on Amazon.)

The Anecdote Lead: Use a short story to illustrate or personalize your story’s broader topic or main point.

For example, this anecdote kicks off a story about a broad topic, the proliferation of gun 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).

A Statistics Lead, if brief, can effectively catch readers’ attention and persuade them to keep reading.

For example, “Around the world, 925 million people—more than the populations of North America and South America combined—go hungry on a daily basis,” and Guatemala “has the highest percentage of chronically malnourished children in Latin America (the fourth highest in the world). In some areas, chronic malnutrition causes 90 percent of children to suffer.” (World Vision)

Lead-writing can be hard work, even for pros. Like Bill Roorbach said,

“ . . . Most first lines weren’t first till after much revision. . . .”

That means: Give yourself permission to take weeks, or months, or even years to settle on your memoir’s opening. 

An effective beginning can motivate a person to buy your book,

but a weak one could persuade him to close your memoir 

and walk away.

Next week: More ways to begin your memoir!

Related posts:

The Quote Lead

The Scene-setting Lead

Does your memoir’s beginning pass the test?

Does your opening make your memoir a must-read?

If you don’t get this right, you’ll lose readers. 

Why should you wait to write your memoir’s opening?

Tuesday Tidbit: Why should you wait to write your memoir’s opening?

Reading time: 50 seconds

Consider waiting to write your memoir’s opening until after you’ve completed your rough draft. Most people do.

Why?

Because crafting the lead (the hook, the opening, the beginning) can be challenging—or even exasperating—so, many writers pin it down after they’ve composed most of their piece.

Two reasons to wait:

First: Sometimes within the writing of a story, it evolves into a different story. You didn’t set out to tell that story, but it’s good, it’s important, it’s a keeper.

In that case, if you had created an opening at the outset, you’d have wasted your time. That’s because a different story needs a different hook.

Second: Often an idea for the lead comes from within already-written paragraphs and chapters. Be alert—watch for it! When you find it, go to work crafting your beginning.

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve covered two types of leads:

The Quote Lead, and

The Scene-setting Lead

(Click on those links if you missed those posts.)

But there are more!

Be sure to come back Thursday and I’ll tell you about additional types of leads—

• The Action Lead,
• The Anecdote Lead,
• and The Statistics Lead.

There you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

Related posts:

Does your memoir’s beginning pass the test?

Does your opening make your memoir a must-read?

If you don’t get this right, you’ll lose readers.  

If you don’t get this right, you’ll lose readers.

Reading time: 2 minutes, 32 seconds

After dismantling your scaffolding, it’s time to design a catchy opening for your memoir.

(You did remove your scaffolding, didn’t you? If not, you should! “Don’t think the reader will be patient with you until you can get around to the actual story,” writes Matilda Butler. If you need to brush up on what scaffolding is, click on Whether you’re building a castle or a memoir, the scaffolding must come down.)

Today we’re talking about leads, a term I use because of my journalism background. Sometimes the lead is called a narrative hook, or simply a hook.

The lead is the first thing people read. It catches their attention. You hook readers by making them curious and drawing them in. A well-crafted beginning motivates people to (1) buy your book and (2) read it all the way to the end.

A captivating lead is a crucial component in newspaper and magazine articles.

It is a must for blog posts, sermons, talks, and devotionals.

A top-notch lead is vital for a memoir (and for each chapter as well).

Think for a minute about your memoir. When people consider buying it, they’ll check out your opening.

Does that make you a little nervous?

If so, get used to it: Readers will compare your beginning to those of other writers.

After all, when you browse the shelves looking for a good book, before you purchase it, you open it and read the beginning, right?

Before you order a book from Amazon, you click on the “Look Inside” feature to see how it begins, right?

And if the opening doesn’t grab you, you don’t buy it, right?

It makes sense, then, that when people consider spending money on your memoir, they’ll check out how it starts. That’s why you need to craft a humdinger of a beginning.

So, let’s look at openings. But first, a word of clarification: Writing a memoir is not the same as writing a paper in Composition 101 in college.

Do you remember Comp 101?

If not, here’s a reminder of what your professor drilled into you:

Paragraph One is your introduction—a few sentences familiarizing readers with your topic. Here’s an example of a topic: How you decided to work as a nanny in Scotland.

In English Comp format, you follow the intro with the main body: Paragraphs Two, Three, and Four, each explaining one step in your decision-making process.

Then in Paragraph Five, you write your ending, your conclusion—you more or less rephrase your introduction.

But in writing your memoir, do away with the English Comp 101 format. Instead, begin by intriguing readers with your lead, your hook.

Today we’ll look at two types of leads—and in coming days we’ll study even more kinds—so be sure to come back!

The Quote Lead: Use a quote, poem, or proverb to make people curious about your story.

For example, you might use this Martin Luther King, Jr., quote: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

Here’s another example of a quote lead, this one by Elisabeth Elliot: “When you’re in a dark place, you sometimes tend to think you’ve been buried. Perhaps you’ve been planted. Bloom.”

The Scene-setting Lead: Describe your story’s setting so your reader feels she’s standing beside you, hearing, seeing, tasting, feeling, and/or smelling the place or event.

For example: “Suited up in a knee-length tuxedo jacket, 15-year-old Nathan Heintz bowed slightly to the seated girl, held out a corsage and asked, ‘May I have the next dance?’ With a fur stole flung across her shoulders and legs daintily crossed at the ankles, Lindsey Ingalls, 16, smiled and nodded her acceptance. It was enough to make Miss Manners blush with pride.

“With a rustle of gowns, tugging of gloves and twitters of laughter, dozens of teens and pre-teens gathered Thursday night for a winter ball. . . .” (by Hope Brumbach in The Spokesman-Review, January 13, 2007)

Your job is to

write a strong first sentence.

And powerful first paragraphs.

And a brawny first chapter.

Otherwise, you’ll lose readers.

Come back Thursday!

I’ll share with you more types of leads

to use in your memoir!

Tuesday Tidbit: Your memoir’s opening—like a Baked Alaska?

Reading time: 16 seconds

Has it ever occurred to you that your memoir’s opening could resemble a Baked Alaska?

Come back Thursday for specific tips

on writing an attention-grabbing opening.

If you missed the last two blog posts, click on links below:

Does your memoir's beginning pass the test?

Does your opening make your memoir a must-read?

There you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

See you Thursday!

Does your opening make your memoir a must-read?

Reading time: 1 minute, 43 seconds

Your memoir’s opening is the most important part to write well.

You must craft every aspect well, but your beginning could make or break your entire book—so create curiosity, draw readers in, and keep them reading.

A written piece’s opening will probably be the hardest to create, whether you’re composing a book, vignette, newspaper or magazine article, blog post, inspirational talk, or sermon.

Brian Clark drives home that point:

“Master copywriter Gene Schwartz often spent an entire week on the first 50 words. . . . Those 50 words are the most important part of any persuasive writing, and writing them takes time. Even for the masters.”

Read that again: “ . . . writing them takes time. Even for the masters.”

How are you doing on crafting your memoir’s beginning?

Here are a few tips:

Remove your scaffolding. (Don’t miss that link!) Your first few paragraphs must be the correct ones.

Be sure your beginning doesn’t give away the ending. This might seem like a no-brainer, but too many people goof on that.

Prolific author and New York Times bestselling author Cecil Murphey says, “I once read more than one hundred of the entries for Christmas Miracles, a compilation book. The major flaw in at least a third of them was that they told us the ending before they told us the story.” Cecil gave this example: “The worst Christmas of my life became the best Christmas ever.”

Instead of giving away the ending, intrigue your readers. Entice them to keep reading so they’ll discover how your memoir ends.

When I teach memoir classes, I encourage people to do what I did when I was a journalism student (and still do today): Study openings written by pros.

Be an eager student: Go to the library, browse around a book store, look through your own stack of books, and look inside memoirs on Amazon—but only those written by pros. Study how they do it.

Scrutinize the start of everything you come across—newspaper articles, magazine articles, literary journals, fiction—anything written by pros, and study how they do it.

Once you’ve acquainted yourself with professionally composed openings, look at how non-pros write them, whether memoirs, fiction, articles, or blog posts. (Most blogs I follow have weak beginnings, sad to say.)

By studying beginnings penned by both pros and beginners, you’ll recognize what works and what doesn’t. And you’ll become more skilled at creating your own memoir’s opening.

Remember: Plan to take plenty of time 

to create just the right beginning.

The first part of your memoir can make or break the whole book.

An effective start can motivate a person to keep reading,

but a weak one could persuade him to close your memoir and walk away.

Put in the hard work needed to make your opening zing.

Send us your stories about mothers and motherhood

Have you written stories about your mother in your memoir? If she died young, did another woman step in to mother you—perhaps an older sister, aunt, stepmother, or grandparent? Do you have a special relationship with your mother-in-law?

Maybe your entire memoir is about that significant mother-figure, or possibly you include short vignettes about her here and there.

Or maybe you’ve written about your life as a new mother, empty-nest mother, stepmother, grandmother, or great-grandmother.

Sweet moments, 

     hilarious events, 

          personality quirks, 

               tragic loss, 

                    courageous decisions, 

                         integrity, 

                              tenacity, 

                                   or high adventure

                                        —all make for great reading.

Here’s an opportunity for you:

Send us one of your vignettes! I’ll share one or more here on SM 101.

For now, spiff up your rough draft. Strive for clarity, fix typos, and make your sentences sing.

Go deep. Go beyond mere memories. Reflect: Look under the surface. Search for overlooked significance. What was God doing at the time? Mine those gems!

“ … The author must impost a coherence

on events he chooses to include

that may not have been present as he lived them….

It’s that selectivity that transforms a memoir

from a report to a reflection

which gives meaning to the events

which might not have been evident to the author

as she lived them.”

(The Author’s Dual Role in Memoir, Biff Barnes)

Write about your delights as well as your doubts. Ask questions even if you have no answers. Include your thoughts—even your struggles—concerning your mother, yourself, and what was happening.

Explore. Untangle. What did you learn about yourself? About mothers? Motherhood? God?

“As memoir writers,” Dr. Linda Joy Myers writes, “we are trying to find a perspective, even forgiveness and compassion, for ourselves and others as we write our stories.”

Helpful Tips:

Click here to review the definition of memoir.

Character development

Each person is complex. Develop your character’s shortcomings, redeeming qualities, beliefs, prejudices, body language, tone of voice, attitudes, and quirks.

Was she sentimental or no-nonsense? Hilarious or dour? Consistent or inconsistent? Gentle or gruff? Did she stand tall or did she slouch? Was she optimistic or pessimistic? Did she stress the importance of table manners? What else was important to her?

Emotions

Incorporate emotions—about both happy, joyful events as well as scary things and grief—not all stories have happy endings.

Bring in adventure and humor where you can. Click on How to Add Humor to a Sad Memoir, Lisa Romeo’s post about how, why, and where to include humor in a sad memoir.

Our earlier post, Method Writing, is a must-read for writing about emotions.

Sensory details

If you want readers to enjoy your stories, you must include sensory details. Invite them to see, hear, feel, taste, and smell what you experienced so they can enter your experience with you.

Don’t miss our earlier post, Details: A must for your memoir. It’s packed with resources for you.

Your opening

A story’s beginning can make it or break it. It can invite readers in—or send them away. Most writers experiment with many openings before they get just the right one. Some don’t even try to write it until they’ve finished the main body of the story.

Helpful links:

Leads, Part 1

Leads, Part 2

Leads, Part 3

Leads, Part 4

Your ending

Pay attention to your story's or your vignette’s conclusion. A weak ending can make a story fall short of its potential impact, but a strong one makes a memoir shine.

Helpful links:

The beauty of memoir: Your vignettes’ strong endings

Maximize the power of your vignettes’ endings

Ready, set, go!

Polish one of your vignettes (let’s say up to 1000 words in length) and send it to us. We’ll publish one or more soon. We’ll give you our email address if you leave a comment below, or on SM 101’s Facebook Page, or send a private message.

Happy writing!

Share your memoir’s first seven sentences with us

Memoirist Kathy Pooler tagged me and several others on Facebook recently, inviting us to share the first seven sentences of our WIP (work in progress). That was fun!

Today we invite you to share your openings, as well.

But first, for inspiration, read four brief sample openings, below:  

Here’s an excerpt from the Prologue of Kathleen Pooler’s second memoir, Daring to Hope: A Mother’s Story of Healing from Cancer and Her Son’s Alcohol Addiction:

For as long as I can remember, it has always been my role to mother my children whether that meant jumping in to fix every little mishap or showing love for their hurts and boo-boos. Eventually as they grew up, I would need to learn to let go and let my children navigate their lives on their own.  

This has been by far, the hardest lesson for me as a parent to learn. As a mother of an addicted son, my understanding of mothering was fearfully tested. 

I always loved my son but hated what he was doing to himself with his drinking which time after time left him foundering and me wringing my hands in angst in an endless series of self-defeating activities.
          
When he was a toddler, I could just pick him up and remove him from a dangerous situation. I could protect him. But as he grew, he tested my limits. I could not have known that the seven-year-old who screamed, “Look Ma, no hands” at the top of the pine tree would one day as a young adult find himself stranded, homeless, jobless and utterly alone.

Below are the first few sentences of my soon-to-be-published memoir, working title Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go!

I sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Roland, a seasoned bush aviator, as he piloted the custom twin-engine toward a Colombian airfield. I’d flown in our planes several times, but this was a first—watching the landing from the copilot’s seat. 

Dipping low, three or four seconds from touchdown, the wing on my side catapulted into the air and the plane veered to the left, lopsided and convulsing. Red lights flashed in the cockpit. A buzzer blared. Roland jerked levers and slapped switches and punched buttons.  

Please, God! I prayed, but I couldn’t say more—I couldn’t breathe. Of all the potential dangers I’d worried about for that trip—kidnapping, murder, and guerrilla activity aimed toward U.S. citizens—I’d never imagined a plane crash.

The next excerpt is from the beginning of Abigail Thomas’s A Three Dog Life: A Memoir:

This is the one thing that stays the same: my husband got hurt. Everything else changes. A grandson needs me and then he doesn’t. My children are close then one drifts away. I smoke and don’t smoke; I knit ponchos, then hats, shawls, hats again, stop knitting, start up again. The clock ticks, the seasons shift, the night sky rearranges itself, but my husband remains constant, his injuries are permanent. He grounds me. Rich is where I shine. I can count on myself with him.

And his is from the Prologue of Richard Gilbert’s Shepherd: A Memoir:

Childhood dreams cast long shadows into a life. As if the strong feelings they stir prove their validity, dreams propel the dreamer through an indifferent world. Which explains how I, a guy who grew up in a Florida beach town, find myself crouched beside a suffering sheep in an Appalachian pasture. 

“Richard, I think you should call the vent,” says my wife. Kathy and I flank the ewe’s prostrate body. 

Our third lambing has just begun this spring of 2001, and Red is in trouble. I’d found the little ewe in distress and had urged her up and nudged her inside an old shed, where she’d collapsed and resumed straining, panting as if in labor. But nothing happens; no lambs, hour after hour.

Okay, now it’s your turn! Post your first few sentences (up to ten sentences) below in the comments, or as a comment on SM 101’s Facebook Page, or in a private message.

The following posts will help you craft your memoir’s opening:

First lines    

Readers don’t want us to dilly dally around   

Openings: the hardest part

Readers don’t want us to dillydally around

We mustn't waste our readers' time. We need to grab their attention from the outset, from the first sentence and the first paragraphs of our memoirs.

How do we do that? By deliberately crafting an opening to draw them in.

We need to make our readers curious. To hook them. To keep them reading.

But most writers don't know how to craft an effective opening. In fact, many of us don't even know what, specifically, we want to communicate.

So we scatter a few words and sentences across our computer screen and then we add or delete or move a few words—until we realize we're just flailing around. And we thank God nobody is reading over our shoulder because first attempts can be really embarrassing.

But don't worry. Believe it or not, we are making progress. We are experimenting and, in the process, we're constructing scaffolding which will help us build a sturdy opening. Really.

Our scaffolding gets us going, provides momentum, and helps us zero in on the story we want to write.

"As the tennis player rallies before the game begins,

so must the writer.

And as the tennis player

is not concerned with where those first balls are going,

neither must the writer be concerned

with the first paragraph or two.

All you're doing is warming up."

Leonard S. Bernstein

Decades ago, I learned about scaffolding from Donald Murray, and later from Roy Peter Clark and Don Fry, authors of Coaching Writers: Editors and Writers Working Together. They say, 

". . . Sometimes the writer must write her way into the story, creating sentences that can't appear in the final version but do get the writer to where she wants to go. So the writer erects a scaffold to build the story, but dismantles it to let the story show through."

So then, scaffolding is temporary, a structure that supports the construction of what will eventually stand alone.

Bill Roorbach describes scaffolding this way:

"Good stories . . . leap right to their subjects, perhaps not in draft one, or draft six, but at some point, the introductory apparatus is cut, seen for what it is: scaffolding. You put up the elaborate and complicated and even beautiful scaffolding and build the cathedral. When the cathedral is complete, well, you take the scaffolding down." (Writing Life Stories)

So begin writing, knowing that later you might delete some or all of those initial attempts. (And nowadays, deleting and rearranging and rewriting are so much easier than they used to be—back when we used typewriters, sometimes manual typewriters, and later electric. If you've never typed compositions or articles or books on a typewriter, you have no idea how computers have revolutionized writers' lives!)

Readers will like us and our memoirs better 

if we remove the scaffolding.

Why?

Because they don't want us to dillydally around. They want us to get right to the point.

When we do, our stories have punch, focus, and power.

Look over your memoir's opening. Read it aloud.

And answer these questions:

What is my memoir's main point—the story's purpose? Its signficance?

Do my first few paragraphs focus on or aim toward that main point?

Do my readers need to know this information? Or is it scaffolding—did I write it only to find my way into my story?

Dismantle your scaffolding. Let your story stand strong.

Tuesday Tidbit: Does your memoir’s opening grab readers?

You want readers to keep reading, to keep turning the pages of your memoir, right?

That means you need to rewrite and edit to make it the very best it can be!

Start by examining your memoir’s beginning. Ask yourself, Will this catch the attention of my readers and make them want to keep reading?

Experiment with several versions of your opening paragraph. Work on making it strong and vivid and inviting. And have fun doing it!

Come back Thursday and we’ll look at specific ways to craft powerful openings and pull readers in.

Tuesday Tidbit: How you can become a stronger writer

Here’s your 15 seconds of inspiration,

your Tuesday Tidbit:

Matilda Butler at Women’s Memoirs encourages memoir writers to read lots of memoirs, to “read broadly and think deeply.”

She says,

“Even memoirs that aren’t particularly good

can teach lessons.

You can ask yourself:

What do in like in this book?

What is off-putting?

How would I handle the story differently

if I were writing this book?

Is the opening weak?

What ideas do I have

to make the opening stronger?

Thinking about a memoir,

questioning a memoir,

even rewriting a few paragraphs

of a memoir

will make you a stronger writer.”

Thanks to Matilda for these helpful tips.

If you’re not a regular reader of Women’s Memoirs’ blog, do check into it.