Back to Basics: How’s your progress in describing your memoir’s key places?

 

Are you making progress in describing the key places—the key settings—in your memoir? I hope our recent blog posts have inspired you. (Click on Details, a must for your memoir;  It’s super fun to gather “crackly” words. . . . ; and The importance of “place”. . . . )

Today I offer you more inspiration:

Write your memoir so that 

your “reader gets zipped into your skin,” 

in the words of memoir guru Mary Karr. 

When you include sensory details 

(smell, taste, sight, sound, and touch), 

readers will feel drawn into your story with you—

and when they’re “zipped into your skin,” 

your message will make its way into their hearts and minds.

Think back: Think of a book that made you feel you were in the story, smelling scents she smelled, tasting flavors he tasted, seeing sights he saw, hearing sounds she heard, feeling textures he felt. 

Often the best way to learn how to describe a place 

is to study how others have done that.

With that in mind, notice sensory details of sight and sound that Naomi Benaron used in her novel set in Rwanda, Running the Rift:

 

“He stood until the truck became a speck in the red swirl of dust. When even the speck had disappeared, he broke into a run down the road, where life paraded on as if nothing had changed. He strained up the hill, sacks of sorghum and potatoes draped over bicycle handlebars or stacked in rickety wooden carts. Children herded goats fastened with bits of string, lugged jerricans filled with water, trotted with rafts of freshly gathered firewood on their heads. Women chatted on the way to and from the market, basins filled with fruits and vegetables balanced like fancy hats.”  

 

Because I lived in East Africa for several years, Benaron’s details transported me back. For those not acquainted with that culture, her details offer an authentic view of life there. Her words make the reader feel he’s in the scene.

 

Notice details of sight, sound, and smell in another excerpt from Running the Rift:

 

“Market goers created a congestion through which the truck barely moved. In the dying afternoon, hawkers called out bargains, packed up unsold tools and clothing, used appliances held together with hope and string. Flies swarmed around carcasses of meat. The aromas of over-ripe fruit and gamy animal flesh made Jean Patrick queasy. A bicycle taxi swerved into their path. . . . The woman on the back loosed a stream of insults in their direction. The radio droned; the truck engine whined and coughed. Their bodies jostled together from the potholed road. . . .”

 

Butch Ward offers advice inspired by Jacqui Banaszynski: 

“Write cinematically. 

Movies pull us through stories with strong themes, 

compelling characters and revelatory details. 

Written stories can do the same thing. . . . 

Zoom in tight on details or images 

that have the most meaning; 

be descriptive and specific.”

 

Caution: Avoid subjecting readers to irrelevant details—details that don’t enhance your main settings, details that don’t pertain to the point of your story/vignette.  Extraneous details slow down your story.

 

Revisit key places and scenes in your rough draft and ask yourself, “What did the place smell like?” Were you in a stable, or at the perfume counter in Macy’s?

 

Ask yourself “What noises were in the background?” The rumble of trains? The hush of snowfall?

 

What did you see in the distance? Mountains? Unending desert? Jungle? What did you see within your immediate surroundings?

 

If you were with a group of individuals eating tadpoles in okra sauce, how did that feel on your tongue? What was the texture? Find words to describe the taste and smell.

 

Include details that invite readers 

to encounter the same experiences you did. 

“Zip them into your skin.”

Back to Basics: The importance of “place” in your memoir

 

In your memoir, you’ll introduce readers to places where you experienced significant events. Since readers weren’t there—and since reading your memoir could likely be the first time they’ll experience those places—develop them well.

 

Why? Because readers need to identify with you, they want to live your experience with you.

 

“Whether you write fiction or non-fiction (especially memoirs), you’ve got to completely engage your readers,” writes Sheila Bender. “Create vivid scenes using images that appeal to all the senses. . . .” 

 

So, then, be deliberate in describing the place, the setting, of major events in your memoir: Include sensory details—details pertaining to the five senses: seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing.

 

Step back in time, look around, and describe the place as if you were seeing it for the first time.

 

If your scene is indoors, take your readers into a building or a room. What would they see, feel, taste, smell, and hear? Was it dusty or polished, cluttered or tidy, warm or cold, old or new, welcoming or unfriendly?

 

If your scene takes place outdoors, what will readers see, feel, taste, smell, and hear? Include weather, seasons, time of day, landscape and geography—ocean, desert, rainforest, island, mountain. Describe plants, animals, and maybe even the place’s culture, traditions, folklore, races, languages, and mood or atmosphere. 

 

Below you’ll find examples of well-developed places. (The first two are from works of fiction, but the craft of describing a place is the same whether fiction or nonfiction; nonfiction—memoir, in our case—is always true.)

 

Here’s an excerpt from Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist:

 

 “They always went the same way, south along the Wenatchee River until its confluence with the Columbia. The Wenatchee River was narrow and familiar, clattering and riffling, surrounded by evergreens and then, later, rocky gravel banks, but the Columbia was different. It was kingly. Serious, roiling, wide. It looked as if it was not flowing very quickly, but Talmadge told Angelene that it was. No matter how many times she saw the Columbia, she was always struck by it. She sometimes dreamed about it, about walking along it and staring at its strange opaque quality, or trying to cross it by herself. . . .” 

 

This next excerpt is from Marilynne Robinson’s Lila:

 

“When they were children they used to be glad when they stayed in a workers’ camp, shabby as they all were, little rows of cabins with battered tables and chairs and moldy cots inside, and maybe some dishes and spoons. They were dank and they smelled of mice. . . . Somebody sometime had nailed a horseshoe above the door of a cabin they had for a week, and they felt this must be important. . . .

 

“They were given crates of fruit that was too ripe or bruised, and the children ate it till they were . . . sick of the souring smell of it and the shiny little black bugs that began to cover it, and then they would start throwing it at each other and get themselves covered with rotten pear and apricot. Flies everywhere. They’d be in trouble for getting their clothes dirtier than they were before. Doane hated those camps. He’d say, ‘Folks sposed to live like that?’. . .”

 

Here's an excerpt from my second memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: AFoot-Dragger’s Memoir:

           

Our mission center “was into the dry season with cerulean skies and hardly a wisp of a cloud. Daytime temperatures soared to over a hundred degrees in the shade—cruel, withering.

 

"The green scent of rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. As far as the eye could see, immense open stretches of deep emerald had disappeared, leaving the llanos stiff and bleached and simmering under unrelenting equatorial sun.

 

"Muddy paths and one-lane tracks turned rock-hard and, with use, changed to dust. Yards and airstrips and open fields turned to dust, too. From sunup to sundown, a stiff wind blew across the llanos from central South America, a gift from God because it offered a little relief. On the other hand, dust blew through slatted windows and into homes and offices and we used rocks and paper weights and other heavy objects to keep papers from blowing away. Dust settled on our counters and furniture and in cracks and crannies and on our necks and in our armpits and up our noses.” (Linda K. Thomas, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

To help you recall details, look up sites on the internet like “You might be from Seattle if. . . .”

 

For example, if you’re from Seattle, you:

• know what Lutefiske is
• know lots of people who work for Microsoft and Boeing
• know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Issaquah, and Dosewallips
• know how to pronounce geoduck, know what it is, and how to eat it.

 

And Jeff Foxworthy says that if you’re from Seattle, “You know more people who own boats than air conditioners. . . . You can point to two volcanoes, even if you cannot see through the cloud cover,” and “You notice that ‘the mountain is out’ when it’s a pretty day and you can actually see it.” (And I would add:  You know which mountain is “the” mountain.)

 

Recreate your memoir’s places for your readers. Ask yourself: What were the sounds of those places? Whispering, yelling, praying, arguing? Construction noises? Traffic noises? Or only wind in the trees? (If so, what kinds of trees were they? Douglas fir? Aspen? Palm?)

 

Spend time recollecting the four other senses pertaining to your special places: the sights, the textures, tastes, and smells.

 

Reconstruct your key scenes’ places

and invite readers to experience them in the way you did.

 

And remember from last week—use “crackly” words,

“. . . the juicy words, the hot words.”

(Priscilla Long, The Writer’s Portable Mentor)

(Click on It’s super fun to gather “crackly”

words for your memoir.) 

 

Tuesday Tidbit: Find your place’s “sounds and rhythms and fragrances”

In writing your memoir, find words to invite readers into your "place."

Use your location's unique words.

Pin down the place's philosophy and passions.

Find their sounds and rhythms and fragrances.

And have fun!

Click here to learn more about L.L. Barkat.

My hiraeth place

Today I visited my hiraeth place:

Do you remember what hiraeth is? If not, click on Hiraeth: You’ve probably experienced it.

What’s your hiraeth place?

Have you written a story about it and what it means to you?

Be sure to include sensory details: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch.

And there you have it,

your Tuesday Tidbit,

your 15 seconds of inspiration.

The importance of “place” in your memoir

In your memoir, you’ll introduce readers to places where you experienced significant events. Since your readers weren’t there—and since reading your memoir will likely be the first time they’ll experience those places—develop them well.

Why? Because readers need to identify with you, they want to live your experience with you. 

“Whether you write fiction or non-fiction (especially memoirs), you’ve got to completely engage your readers,” writes Sheila Bender. “Create vivid scenes using images that appeal to all the senses….” 

So then, be deliberate in describing the place, the setting, of major events in your memoir: Include sensory details—details pertaining to the five senses: seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing.

Step back in time, look around, and describe the place as if you were seeing it for the first time.

If your scene is indoors, take your readers with you into a building or a room. What did you see, feel, taste, smell, and hear? Was it dusty or polished, cluttered or tidy, warm or cold, old or new, welcoming or unfriendly?

If your scene takes place outdoors, what did you see, feel, taste, smell, and hear? Include weather, seasons, time of day, the landscape and geography—ocean, desert, rain forest, island, mountain. Describe plants, animals, and maybe even the place’s culture, traditions, folklore, races, languages, and mood or atmosphere.  

Below you’ll find examples of well-developed places. (The first two are from works of fiction, but the art and craft of describing a place is the same whether fiction or nonfiction; nonfiction—memoir, in our case—is always true.)

Here’s an excerpt from Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist:

 “They always went the same way, south along the Wenatchee River until its confluence with the Columbia. The Wenatchee River was narrow and familiar, clattering and riffling, surrounded by evergreens and then, later, rocky gravel banks, but the Columbia was different. It was kingly. Serious, roiling, wide. It looked as if it was not flowing very quickly, but Talmadge told Angelene that it was. No matter how many times she saw the Columbia, she was always struck by it. She sometimes dreamed about it, about walking along it and staring at its strange opaque quality, or trying to cross it by herself….” 

This is an excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s Lila:

            “When they were children they used to be glad when they stayed in a workers’ camp, shabby as they all were, little rows of cabins with battered tables and chairs and moldy cots inside, and maybe some dishes and spoons. They were dank and they smelled of mice…. Somebody sometime had nailed a horseshoe above the door of a cabin they had for a week, and they felt this must be important….

            “They were given crates of fruit that was too ripe or bruised, and the children ate it till they were…sick of the souring smell of it and the shiny little black bugs that began to cover it, and then they would start throwing it at each other and get themselves covered with rotten pear and apricot. Flies everywhere. They’d be in trouble for getting their clothes dirtier than they were before. Doane hated those camps. He’d say, ‘Folks sposed to live like that?’…”

Here is an excerpt from my second memoir, still in rough draft:

            Our mission center “was into the dry season and the sky was a clear, clean blue with hardly a wisp of a cloud. Daytime temperatures soared to over a hundred degrees in the shade—cruel, withering.

            “The green scent of rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. As far as the eye could see, immense open stretches of deep emerald had disappeared, leaving the llanos stiff and bleached and simmering under unrelenting equatorial sun. Most lush greens had turned a parched blonde. Leaves had gone brown and fallen. Even my favorite tree dropped its leaves—the young one with delicate fern-like leaves.

            “Muddy paths and one-lane tracks turned rock-hard and, with use, changed to dust. Yards and airstrips and open fields turned to dust, too. From sun up to sundown, a stiff wind blew across the llanos from central South America, a gift from God because it offered a little relief. On the other hand, dust blew through jalousied widows and into homes and offices and we used rocks and paper weights and other heavy objects to keep papers from blowing away. Dust settled on our counters and furniture and in cracks and crannies and on our necks and in our armpits and up our noses.” (Linda K. Thomas, Oh God Don't Make Me Go Don't Make Me Go)

To help you recall details about the culture and geography of your place, look up sites on the internet like “You might be from Seattle if….”

For example, if you’re from Seattle you:

• know what Lutefiske is
• know lots of people who work for Microsoft and Boeing
• know more people who own boats than air conditioners
• know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Issaquah, and Dosewallips
• know how to pronounce geoduck, know what it is, and how to eat it.

And Jeff Foxworthy says that if you’re from Seattle, “You can point to two volcanoes, even if you cannot see through the cloud cover,” and “You notice that ‘the mountain is out’ when it’s a pretty day and you can actually see it.” (And I would add:  You know which mountain is “the” mountain.)

Recreate your memoir’s places for your readers. Think about the five senses and ask yourself, for example, what were the sounds of those places? Whispering, yelling, praying, arguing? Construction noises? Traffic noises? Or only wind in the trees? (If so, what kinds of trees were they? Douglas fir? Aspen? Palm?)

Spend time recollecting the other senses pertaining to your special places: the sights, the textures, tastes, and smells.

Reconstruct your key scenes’ places 

and invite readers to experience them in the way you did.

Hiraeth: You’ve probably experienced it

Hiraeth. I ran across the word on Facebook recently.

I’d never heard of it. Have you?

It’s a Welsh word pronounced HEER-eyeth  (roll the r).

We English speakers don’t have a good word to describe hiraeth, but that has not stopped us from trying to pin it down.  

I’m especially drawn to one aspect of the definition. According to Smith College, “It often translates as ‘homesickness,’ but the actual concept is far more complex. It incorporates an aspect of impossibility: the pining for a home, a person, [or] a figure.…”

Pamela Petro says this of hiraeth: “The best we can do is ‘homesickness,’ but that’s like the difference between hardwood and laminate. Homesickness is hiraeth-lite.… The Portuguese have a word, ‘saudade,’ which is the only true cognate for hiraeth. [One meaning is] ‘the love that stays’ after someone, or something…has gone away.”

The University of Wales says hiraeth can include “a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness.…”

It has to do with a strong attachment to a home-like place and a hankering to return to it.

Hiraeth is

the ache,

the longing,

the restlessness,

the vacuum that demands to be filled.

It is something bigger than ourselves.

It lives in our blood and pulses through our veins.

It buzzes,

it flows,

it shouts,

it whispers.

It calls our names: we recognize the voice,

and it tells us that place is where we belong,

that place, where our roots go down deeper than our own roots.

That is our home of homes.

Val Bethell writes of the sensations and the yearning: “I know the meaning of … ‘Hiraeth.’

Val lived in Wales, facing west, and observed, “I would happily travel west, but north, south or east was too difficult…. The mountains shouted hiraeth, hiraeth! Silently and patiently.

“One day … I was able to obey the call. Eureka! I now know, yes I know what it means. Hiraeth is in the mountains where the wind speaks in many tongues and the buzzards fly on silent wings. It’s the call of my spiritual home, it’s where ancient peoples made their home.…

“Hiraeth—the link with the long-forgotten past, the language of the soul, the call from the inner self. Half forgotten.… It speaks from the rocks, from the earth, from the trees and in the waves.…

“Yes, I hear it.

“Yes, I understand what hiraeth means.”

Do you know that feeling?

If you’ve moved from one place to another, you probably understand hiraeth.

If you’ve lived several decades, you probably know the longing to return to some special place or time in the past—hiraeth.

I know the feeling—the longing for the geographical place I belong. Oh, yes, I know hiraeth.

I’ve lived throughout most of Washington State, a few months in Washington, D.C., three years in South America, eight years in Africa, and six years in Missouri, but always, always, Puget Sound calls my name—north of Seattle, just barely south of the Edmonds ferry dock. Richmond Beach, to be exact—but definitely not the county park. 

No, I’m talking about the old beach, the beach of my childhood, before the county discovered the place and paved a parking lot and walkways and put a bridge over railroad tracks and fences around boundaries and built fire pits and posted rules. 

No, I’m not talking about that beach—I’m talking about the wild, fresh, free Richmond Beach of my youth. I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.

That place mysteriously shaped me and defines me and still anchors me. It calls my name. Richmond Beach is where I belong. I am blessed beyond measure that my in-laws live on that very stretch of beach and I get to go home—home!—a couple of times a year. Decades later, the place still nurtures my soul and spirit.

What place (literal or figurative) mysteriously shaped you and now defines you and still anchors you and lives in you?

 What place (literal or figurative) nurtured your soul and spirit?

“No matter where I went, my compass pointed west.

I would always know what time it was in California.”

(Janet Fitch, last line in White Oleander)

Fill in the blanks: “No matter where I went, my compass always pointed ____________. I would always know what time it was in ______________.”

Write your stories!

“You leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences”

Continuing with enhancing a sense of place in your memoir:  

Why make a big deal about creating a sense of place?  

Because the landscapes of your stories, the natural settings, influenced who you were becoming in the past and who you are today.

“How hard it is to escape from places! 

However carefully one goes, they hold you—

you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences, 

little rags and shreds of your very life.” 

(Katherine Mansfield, English writer)

Geography played a role in shaping you. It served as a backdrop.

Your environment molded you—maybe it smoothed you, maybe it roughed you up.

Perhaps your place’s weather defined your appearance.

The territory—good or bad—sculpted your identity and your dreams.

Your place whittled you and carved your wings so you could fly into your future and become the person you are today.

Notice how Linda Joy Myers invites you to enter her childhood through setting and place. She writes about: 

 “...living in Oklahoma, in the middle of the Great Plains, in a town that literally was in the middle of nothing but land and wheat and sky. The wind molded us, pushed and pulled us, threw red dirt in our faces, lifted our hair straight up. As children, we had to lean into the wind to walk.… The golden wheat throbbed against the deep blue sky, all of it was everywhere, there were no boundaries. The wind stroked the wheat into the amber waves of grain of the song, and at night the moon rose, huge and round and smiling over the tiny specks of people that appeared insignificant in all that magnificence.”

In We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight, Barry Lopez writes that he was “shaped by the exotic nature of water in a dry Southern California valley; by the sound of wind in the crowns of eucalyptus trees; by the tactile sensation of sheened earth, turned in furrows by a gang plow; by banks of saffron, mahogany and scarlet cloud piled above a field of alfalfa at dusk; by encountering the musk from orange blossoms at the edge of an orchard; by the aftermath of a Pacific storm crashing a hot, flat beach.… the height and breadth of the sky, and of the geometry and force of the wind."

“… However we feel about

a particular place in our lives,

or whether the drama that unfolded there

was one of joy or sorrow,

the invitation in writing memoir is this:

explore the personal and other meanings of your place.

Doing so can not only help you locate your story

in a concrete and complex world,

it can help you discover its larger meanings and connections.”

(Tracy Seeley, author of My Ruby Slippers, the Road Back to Kansas)

Your place’s philosophy also persuaded you, for better or worse: 

For example, after living on the equator for 11 years, where blazing heat forces people to move slowly, I’ve concluded that my most significant place, Seattle, and the Pacific Northwest’s cool, clammy climate allows folks to accomplish more than a hot climate does. That geographical factor, in turn, influences philosophies. In Seattle, I rubbed elbows with others that moist, mildewed, high-energy region begat: Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon, Costco, Boeing (I grew up a five-minute walk from Bill Boeing’s home), Nordstroms (I went to school with one of the Nordstroms). Pacific Rim philosophies. Environmental philosophies. Rainforest-dwellers’ philosophies. Volcano-survivor philosophies. Earthquake-survivor philosophies. (And daily I recognize that the Pacific Northwest’s geography and philosophies have many contrasts to my current place: the heart of the continental U.S.) 

“If the place is important enough in the character’s life;

if on the most basic level he spent enough time in it,

was brought up in it or presided over it, like the Senate,

or exercised power in it, like the White House;

if the place, the setting, played a crucial role

in shaping the character’s feelings,

drives, motivations, insecurities,

then by describing the place well enough,

the author will have succeeded in

bringing the reader closer to an understanding of the character

without giving him a lecture,

will have made the reader therefore not just understand

but empathize with a character,

will have made the readers’ understanding more vivid,

deeper than any lecture could.”

(Robert Caro)

For your memoir, search for “crackly words” (Priscilla Long) to describe your places—specific words, vivid words, words unique to that locale. 

“If we read the Palestinian poet Darwish … we will find ourselves mouthing jasmine, doves, olives, veils, whereas if we read a poet like Marcus Goodyear, we will find ourselves breathing to the staccato of cactus, cattle, tree poker.” (L.L. Barkat)

Examine your manuscript. Look for ways to enhance a sense of geographical place.  

If you’re writing about a time of feeding your soul and spirit, describe your setting.

Are you writing about a time your wellbeing wasted away? Describe the setting.

Did you find healing? Describe that setting.

Are you writing about a summer in Italy? Marching during the civil rights movement? Falling in love? A summer job in Alaska? Watching a loved one die? Walking out on your abusive spouse? Meeting the First Lady? (My mother did.)

Picture those settings as if for the first time. Doing so will help you recapture your sense of place, make revisions, and invite your readers to join you. Be sure to include sensory details (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste). 

Your goal is to help readers experience what you experienced.

Your memoir needs a sense of place

A couple nights ago, after six weeks of illness, I craved something warm and comforting so I sat down with an old Rosamunde Pilcher novel. She did not disappoint me. 

I also noticed how she uses fiction techniques memoirists can employ in writing true stories. 

Let’s look at the way Pilcher develops a sense of place within homes and buildings.

She writes of Virginia approaching a solicitors’ office in England:

“Smart, Chirgwin and Williams … were the names on the brass plate by the door, a plate which had been polished so long and so hard that the letters had lost their sharpness and were quite difficult to read. There was a brass knocker on the door, too, and a brass door knob, as smooth and shining as the plate, and when Virginia turned the knob and opened the door, she stepped onto a narrow hall of polished brown linoleum and shining cream paint and it occurred to her that some hard-working woman was using up an awful lot of elbow grease.” (The Empty House)

With those few words, Pilcher invites readers to enter her story’s setting and place. 

Pilcher bids readers to stand beside Virginia as she approaches an aged entrance (“polished so long and so hard that the letters had lost their sharpness and were quite difficult to read”), a building owned by people able to afford brass hardware and a cleaning woman that kept the place shiny and smelling like floor polish. Readers envision that down the hall, Smart, Chirgwin and Williams wore black suits, starched white dress shirts, and gray-striped silk ties. We expect they drank morning tea in gold-rimmed china cups. We assume they spoke precise, proper English.

Contrast that with the setting and place of a tough ex-convict, Socrates Fortlow, in an abandoned building in Watts:

“He boiled potatoes and eggs in a saucepan on his single hotplate and then cut them together in the pot with two knives, adding mustard and sweet pickle relish. After the meal he had two shots of whiskey and one Camel cigarette.” (Walter Mosley, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned)

Socrates inhabited no well-to-do solicitors’ digs. No Martha Stewart touches adorned his smoky room. Readers suppose Socrates ate right out of the pan and, afterward, wiped his sleeve across his mouth there in his small, dingy room. We wonder if he had tangled hair and stained jeans.

Establishing a setting, a sense of place, is important for your memoir because it draws readers in. It gives them a sense of being there. 

Notice how Pilcher’s details, in a later scene, carry you alongside Virginia as if you are walking with her:

“She went down the steps and along a dank pathway that led along the side of the house towards the front door. This had once been painted dark red and was scarred with splitting sun blisters. Virginia took out the key and … the door instantly, silently, swung inwards. She saw … a worn rug on bare boards.” 

“A fly droned, blundering against the window-pane.” 

Virginia noticed the stained kitchen sink and “the sitting-room cluttered with ill-matching chairs,” and “looming pieces of furniture.” 

Did you feel you were discovering this place with Virginia?

If readers can enter your places, they will:
get to know you,
feel connected to you,
feel grounded in your story, 
discover the mood, atmosphere and emotions of that place and time, 
and, in the end, take away from your memoir important lessons for their own lives.

Examine your rough drafts. Look for ways to enhance a sense of place, a setting within buildings or homes. Make revisions using sensory details (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) to make your places tangible for your readers.

Your goal is to help readers experience what you experienced.

C’mon back! Next week we’ll look at a sense of place for outdoor scenes.


You’ll enjoy this additional reading: 

Walk with Ann Kroeker through her grandmother’s home   

Your story is important, but will anyone read it?  

Include the slime and grime in your memoir