December’s details for your memoir

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

How do you do that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

“Stories create an experience.

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

What experience are you going to create?…

‘There was this beggar sitting at the gate.’

Wait a minute.

Give me a chance to experience the beggar at the gate.

See the rags, smell the odor,

hear the coins in the tin cup, see the hollow eyes.”

(Fred Craddock, “Preaching as Storytelling,”

The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching; emphasis mine)

*Resources and links:

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

Listen for stories, Do you hear them?

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



It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas?

Did you submit a story for the Advent group-writing project

hosted by The High Calling?

(See my earlier blog post, You’re invited to the Advent group-writing project ...)

Olive Tree submitted her story about Christmases past and present,

including Christmas in Turkey!

You can read it by clicking on this link: Celebrating Life Every Day!

(or http://olivetreeingodshouse.blogspot.com/2011/12/celebrating-life-every-day.html)

Diana Trautwein submitted her Advent story, too, and you'll enjoy reading it.

Just click on Advent: Remembering the Ways of God (or http://drgtjustwondering.blogspot.com/2011/12/advent-remembering-ways-of-god.html)

In October, the annual five-month rainy season ended after dumping 150 inches.

A few weeks later, under 100-degree temperatures, bushes, trees, and untamed jungle lost their leaves.

From sunrise to sunset, hot wind blew across the llanos from Brazil, stirring up spicy fragrances of sun-baked grass.

Immense open stretches simmered.

Muddy paths and tracks turned rock-hard.

And one day in December, 1976, while I walked one of those sun-cracked tracks and that heavenly fireball cooked my skin, the school principal—rotund, fifty-something—puttered up to me on her rust-red motorbike and declared, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!”

She looked at me for a few seconds and then laughed—I’m sure my face betrayed my thoughts. I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out: This looks like Christmas? You’ve gotta be kidding!

To me, Christmas looks like frost-covered evergreens and frozen puddles. Heavy coats, scarves, mittens, boots. Runny noses. Sledding. Fireplace fires. Ice skating. Skiing.

I learned a lesson that hot, dry December day: “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” means different things to different people. To the school principal, a sun-bleached landscape and blistering equatorial wind signaled she’d soon celebrate Christmas.

When you hear those familiar old words, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” what do you picture?

Some of you live in faraway lands—perhaps on the mission field or in the military—and your Christmas looks nothing like scenes North Americans see on Christmas cards or in movies or TV commercials.

At The Gypsy Mama,* Lisa-Jo Baker writes, “… I grew up in a country where Christmas meant hot and sun-burned and the beach. All this even when the shopping malls were still bursting with the strains of, ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.’ And no matter how many years I live away from South Africa, I always miss the hot and the acacia trees and the flaming sunsets.”

What does your Christmas look like?

Morley Callaghan is right: a writer watches.

A writer looks. A write sees.

This holiday season, look around. Notice details you might take for granted after all these years. Take a fresh look and capture those sights for your memoir because a generation or two from now, your memoir’s readers might be amused to learn what your Christmases were like.

Pull out old photos of Christmases past, and those of your parents and grandparents. Examine them. Take in details and find words for them. Write them into your rough drafts. They will add color, texture, and enjoyment for your readers.

Have you written a story about Christmas for your memoir?

If so, send me your vignette

by this coming Saturday—

that’s December 10—

and I’ll select one to publish here

the week before Christmas.

See all the details in my November 12 post at this link:

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/11/send-me-your-christmas-vignettes.html

*Resources and related posts:

The Gypsy Mama, Liso-Jo Baker,

http://thegypsymama.com/

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

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


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


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

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


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


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


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

Used by permission from Ann Kroeker,

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

Lynn Hopper photo

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

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

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

Your story is important, but will anyone read it?

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Welcome to new followers on the blog and Facebook:

Betty, Judi, Baboo, and Amanda.

You know your stories are important. (If you’re not convinced, look at that Bible verse way up at the top, and go back and read Are your stories important? at http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/are-your-stories-important.html)


You have God-and-you stories that only you can tell, and your children and grandchildren need to hear them.


Yes, it’s true: Your stories are important. But will anyone read them?

Nowadays potential readers have many distractions: texting, Facebook, smartphones, movies, sports, TV, magazines, iPods, Blackberries, MP3 players, the Internet, hobbies, and thousands of books besides yours.


All these, and more, compete against your memoir.


Two decades ago, Peter Jacobi wrote one brief sentence I’ve always remembered:

“No story has a divine right to be read.”

As important as your stories are, you cannot force anyone to read them.


Jacobi wrote:


“Unfortunately, as a writer … I cannot try what author Anthony Burgess did when he was ‘teaching Shakespeare at City College … at 8:00 a.m.’ He explains, ‘I decided to teach them something about how Shakespeare was educated. I began to write three lines of Seneca in Latin on the blackboard to show where Shakespeare learned about rhythm, and they started to walk out. Well, I wasn’t going to let them get away. I rushed to the door and locked it, saying, “You’re going to learn these … lines of Latin whether you like it or not.” ’”
(http://www.cramco.com/index.php/blog/page/3)


You can’t lock your “audience” in and force them to read your stories.


Because people are busy, they’ll spend time on only what promises to be worth their invested effort.


That means your stories must be more intriguing than all those distractions and choices before them.


How many times have you sat down with a book or magazine or newspaper, anticipating—maybe even craving—a good read, only to be disappointed with boring or confusing content? That happens too often, so your memoir must draw readers in and keep them turning pages.

“Some writers assume

readers are eager to grasp every word they write.

The opposite is true.…

Because we find it interesting,

or we think our life is newsworthy,

it's easy to assume everyone cares.

It's better to assume no one cares

about what we write.…”

Cec Murphey

http://cecmurpheyswritertowriter.blogspot.com/2011/04/secrets-from-professional-writers-part.html

So what’s a memoir writer to do? Answer: Write stories worth reading.


Earn the right to be read: Memoir writers must capture the reader’s interest so he’ll keep reading all the way to the end.


How do you write stories worth reading? You can find answers to that question in a bazillion books and articles and blog posts and writers’ conferences.


And from week to week I’ll post the best of those tips here on Spiritual Memoirs 101. Let’s get started.


Getting started: Details, blessed details


Stories worth reading include details that will make readers feel they’re experiencing the story with you. We’ll cover that often here in this blog.


If you’ve been following along with us each week, you’ve already started including details in your rough drafts: Think back to our last two Saturday Snippets:


Invite readers into your story: http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/saturday-snippet-invite-readers-into.html

Endless ideas: http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/saturday-snippet-invite-readers-into.html


You’ll remember from those two posts that your readers can enter into your story—can live it with you—when you re-create scenes through the five senses – sight, sound, taste, touch, smell.


This week’s assignment: Work on your rough drafts, concentrating on sights. Describe your vignette’s setting—the surrounding scenery. Does your story occur in an old farmhouse? On a trail high in the Rockies? In a hospital room? Revise your drafts so readers can see the place as if they’re standing right beside you.

Resources :
1. a thesaurus
2. a dictionary
3. do a Google search
4. read good literature to study how pros develop a story’s sights and scenery



Related posts:

What is a memoir: http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-is-memoir.html

Invite readers into your story: http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/saturday-snippet-invite-readers-into.html

Endless ideas: http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/saturday-snippet-invite-readers-into.html