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.) 

 

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

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

Maybe your place soothed you, maybe it roughed you up.

Your place, its geography and culture, impacted how you think—and even how you speak.

“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)

Perhaps your place’s weather impacted your appearance. And maybe even the way you work.

For example, after living on the equator for 11 years, where blazing heat forces people to move s-l-o-w-l-y, I’ve concluded that my most significant place, western Washington, and the Pacific Northwest’s cool, clammy climate, allows folks to accomplish a lot more than a hot climate does.

The geographical factor, in turn, influences and persuades when it comes to philosophies, accomplishments, and lifestyles. In Seattle, I rubbed elbows with others that high-energy region begat:

Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft (Bill Gates went to high school in our part of town), Costco, Boeing (I grew up a five-minute walk from Bill Boeing’s property and, as a kid, took many a hike through his woods), Nordstroms (I went to school with one of the Nordstroms).

In Seattle, in contrast to equatorial living, people walk fast. They talk fast. There you find can-do entrepreneurial philosophies. Pacific Rim philosophies. Environmental philosophies. Rainforest-dwellers’ philosophies. Loggers’ philosophies. Coffee philosophies. Volcano-survivor philosophies. Earthquake-survivor philosophies. Ferry-rider philosophies.

Your territory—good or bad—influenced 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 Dr. Linda Joy Myers invites you to enter her childhood through setting, a sense of 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 stoked 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.” 

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.” (We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight)

  

“… 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 of Kansas)

Read that last part again: “… the invitation in writing memoir is this: explore the personal and other meanings of your place. Doing so can … help you discover its larger meanings and connections.”

That’s key in writing memoir: discovering personal meanings, larger meanings, and connections.

So, search for specific words to describe your places—vivid words, distinct words, quintessential words, words unique to that locale.

Here’s a perfect example:

“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)

Are you writing about:

• a summer in Jamaica?
• Marching in Vietnam war protests?
• Falling in love? Or out of love?
• Watching a loved one die?
• Giving birth?
• Sitting with an Oscar-winning actor at a church dinner?
• Serving meals in a homeless shelter?

Picture those settings as if for the first time. That will help you recapture your sense of place. Use sensory details (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste).

Your readers need you to develop the key settings in your memoir. That will allow them to join you in your story—and that’s important because that’s how they’ll get the most out of it.

If readers can enter into your story with you, if they can experience your story with you, then your story can be more than words on a page—it can change your readers’ lives.

Related posts:

Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place

Make your memoir come alive through a sense of place

Creating a sense of place is essential for your memoir

Use setting to ground your memoir and keep readers reading

Do you need to work on your memoir’s outside settings?

Tuesday Tidbit: Use setting to ground your memoir and keep readers reading

“If the reader cannot visualize where and when your story took place … your memoir will suffer,” writes Victoria Costello in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Memoir.

And I add to that: Your readers will suffer, too.

“A well-rendered setting,” Victoria says, “grounds your memoir in a specific reality that the reader can see in his mind’s eye.

“With vivid descriptions and sense imagery, a writer creates authenticity and immediacy, which make a story more compelling…. Even if it’s a familiar location, readers see it anew through your eyes, filtered by your experiences.”

Victoria continues, “… Your top priority is to put your personality into the perspective you take. Your experience of the place is inherently different from others’. Tell us why. Be original….”

“Don’t be vague in your rendering of place.

Concrete nouns and specific details convey a place

more vividly than abstract nouns.

Compare ‘honeybees hopping across a bed of violet petals’

to ‘a beautiful garden.’”

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Memoir

So then, strive for honeybees and violet petals!

In her book, Victoria offers more tips on settings. I highly recommend The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Memoir. Your local independent bookstore will be happy to order it for you.

And if you missed recent posts about creating a sense of place, click on these below:

Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place

Make your memoir come alive through a sense of place

Creating a sense of place is essential for your memoir

So, there you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

Be sure to come back Thursday 

when we'll look at a different kind of setting for your memoir.

Creating a sense of place is essential for your memoir

In your memoir, you’ll introduce readers to significant places. Since readers were not there, you’ll need to develop those places well.

That’s why we’ve been looking at how to create a sense of place in your memoir, how to create a setting readers can visualize.

Effectively doing so can be a fun exercise for you, the writer, but it’s more than that. Creating a sense of place is essential if you want readers to experience your story with you.

Last week we considered descriptions of entrances and rooms. (If you missed that post, click on Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place.) Have you enjoyed working on the settings in your memoir since then? I hope so.

While you continue working on your memoir’s places, include sensory details—what would your readers see, touch, taste, smell, and hear?

Think back: Was the room dusty or polished, cluttered or tidy, warm or cold, old or new, welcoming or unfriendly?

Did the place smell like a florist shop, or overripe cantaloupe, or something worse?—maybe stale cigarette smoke, trash, or chemicals?

What unique sounds resided in that place? Could you hear foghorns signaling to ferry boats and cruise ships and supertankers on foggy days? Did you hear construction noises, or students practicing the flute, or people in prayer? Could you hear wind in the trees? (If so, name those trees—Aspen? Palm? Cedar?)

Spend time recollecting the other sensory details of your place—sights, textures (or feels), and tastes.

For your inspiration, study how Marilynne Robinson created a sense of place in her book, Lila. It’s fiction, but the art of describing a place is the same, whether fiction or nonfiction (memoir is nonfiction—it’s always true). Note how she included dialogue to create that sense of place.

“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?’…”

Your task, then, is to recreate your memoir’s rooms, 

buildings, and entrances to them. 

And be sure to come back next time 

because we’ll continue with this important writing skill.

Happy writing!

Make our memoir come alive through a sense of place

Today we continue creating a sense of place within your memoir, a setting for key scenes. (If you missed Thursday’s post, click on Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place.)

Why is a sense of place important? Because it helps draw your readers in—it gives them a sense of being there with you.

C.S. Lakin explains it this way: “Without setting, how can you have a story? Some (many) scenes I’ve edited and critiqued appear to be floating in space or some nebulous location. The writer seems so intent on conveying dialogue or explaining about characters that he forgets (or thinks it is unimportant) to mention where his characters just happen to be.

“And then there are other manuscripts in which setting is occasionally mentioned in passing, but almost as an afterthought…. [H]e throws out a few token lines that objectively name the place or sketch a vague description and moves on.

“And that’s a shame, because a writer like that is missing out on a great opportunity to bring his [story] to life. The more real a place is to readers, the easier they can be transported there to experience the story.” 

Your goal: Make those settings tangible for your readers.

Look for spots in your manuscript that leave yourself, your memoir’s characters, or readers “floating in space.” Make revisions to anchor each key setting. 

And remember to use sensory details (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste).  

There you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

Come back Thursday for more on 

how to create top-notch settings for your memoir.

Must-know info about your memoir’s sense of place

Have you ever read a book that left you on the outside, not welcomed in? Maybe the story felt a little cold. Unsatisfying. The problem might have been the story’s sense of place—or, rather, lack of it.

In writing your memoir, you need to establish a setting, a sense of place, because that helps draw your readers in—it gives them a sense of being there with you.

Think of all the settings within your story—

• a significant room or home or office,
• or a geographical location with its features and weather,
• or a culture with its unique smells and sounds and sights,
• or a group setting with various personalities and voices and appearances.

We’ll look at all of those in coming days, but today, let’s concentrate on creating a sense of place within a room or home or office.

Good writing is good writing, whether fiction or nonfiction (memoir is nonfiction), so let’s look at how New York Times bestselling author Rosamunde Pilcher created a sense of place in her novel, The Empty House.

Pilcher 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 … stepped into a narrow hall of polished brown linoleum and shining cream paint … it occurred to her that some hard-working woman was using up an awful lot of elbow grease.”

Pilcher has you standing beside Virginia, doesn’t she? And you conclude the brass plate, knocker, and doorknob were old, and the place’s owners had enough money to hire cleaning help, probably a woman, and that she took pride in her work.

What kind of people do you envision Virginia will encounter after she turns that brass doorknob, steps inside, and makes her way down the hall?

I expect that Smart, Chirgwin, and Williams wore black suits, starched white dress shirts, and gray-striped silk ties. And the men drank their morning tea in gold-rimmed china cups. And they spoke precise, proper English.

Contrast their setting with that 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.” (from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley).

You don’t see any of Joanna Gaines’ touches in Socrates’ smoky room. Do you picture him eating out of the pan? And wiping his sleeve across his mouth when he finished eating?

Let’s go back to Pilcher’s story with Virginia in a later scene in a different place:

“She went down the steps and along the 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.”

Stop and think. You’re walking beside Virginia, aren’t you? You’re seeing the splitting blisters on the red door, and a worn rug, and bare wooden floors. You’re hearing that irritating buzz of the fly tapping against the window glass.

There beside Virginia, you notice a stained kitchen sink and “the sitting-room cluttered with ill-matching chairs,” and “looming pieces of furniture.”

Pilcher has succeeded in creating a sense of place for you—you’re discovering this room alongside Virginia.

Here’s another example, this one from Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: 

“They were on the east side of Pittsburg, in an old factory building that had been converted into a progressive preschool. Light fell through the long windows and splashed in motes and patterns onto the plank floor; it caught the auburn highlights in Phoebe’s thin braids as she stood before a big wooden bin, scooping lentils, letting them cascade into jars.”

Edwards created a vivid picture: tall old factory-style windows (which I envision need a good cleaning), sunbeams shining on dust motes, the wooden floor, and auburn braids. And you probably heard those lentils spilling into glass jars, didn’t you?

What about the settings, the places in your memoir? 

Scrutinize your rough draft, asking yourself, “How can I enhance a sense of place—a setting within a room or home or office in my memoir?”

Ask yourself how the above examples generate ideas you might use in your memoir.

Look through good literature on your bookshelves or the library’s shelves and study how other writers create a sense of place for their stories.

All of these steps can make you a better storyteller. So, make revisions in your memoir using sensory details (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) to make your places tangible for your readers. Your goal is to help them experience what you experienced.

If readers enter the places in your memoir, they can:

• feel a connection with you and your experience,
• feel grounded in your story,
• discover the mood, atmosphere, and emotions of the event in that place,
• and, in the end, take away from your memoir important lessons and inspiration for their own lives.

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.

Tuesday Tidbit: Don’t overlook this resource!

You’re in for a treat today! Kate Krake offers you a wealth of resources in her post, The 100 Best Writing Advice Articles: The UltimateWriting Resource.

Her info is generally aimed at fiction writers but she points out that nonfiction writers will find top-notch advice, too, and I agree.

Kate has divided her post into topics, each of them important:

Creativity and Ideas

The Writing Process

Structure and Style

Character Development

Writing Dialogue

Writing Setting

Writing Tools and Rules

Productivity

The Writer’s Life

The Writing Business

Don’t overlook Kate's valuable resource!

Set aside plenty of time

to take in Kate’s materials

because they’ll make you a better writer—

they’ll help you give your “readers true things

and give them weapons and give them armor

and pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned

from our short stay on this green world…."

(Neil Gaiman)

Click here to read Neil Gaiman on How Stories Last.

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.