“Make ‘em wait”

 

Continuing with

“Make ‘em cry, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em wait.”

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)

 

Why should you avoid opening a story in the following way?  

 

“We eventually found Old John, alive, buried under four feet of tree limbs—the elephant had buried him the way elephants bury their own—but for six hours we didn’t know if we’d ever find him, dead or alive.”

 

If you begin your story this way, you have given away your ending. That weakens the power of your story. It diminishes readers’ involvement.

 

Giving away the ending spoils essential elements in good stories: tension and suspense.

 

A quality story “will consist of a real person who is confronted with a significant problem, who struggles diligently to solve that problem, and who ultimately succeeds—and in doing so becomes a different character” (Jon Franklin, Writing for Story). Note the tension: (1) a significant problem which (2) the character struggles diligently to solve.

 

In other words, “A story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves” (Jon Franklin, Writing for Story). Note the tension: (1) a complicating situation (2) the character confronts. (Jon Franklin is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a well-known pioneer in creative nonfiction.)

 

Writers develop what Franklin calls “a sympathetic character” and “a real person” when they make readers laugh and “make ‘em cry,” which we covered in previous blog posts, based on Wilkie Collins’ quote, “Make ‘em cry, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em wait. Click on those links if you missed them.

 

Today we’ll look at tension and suspense, and Collins’ advice to “make ‘em wait” for resolution.

 

After all, as you lived the stories in your memoir, you endured a time lag—maybe months, maybe years—before you found resolution. You didn’t know how the incident would end.

 

You had to wait. Make your readers wait, too.

 

Here’s why: Readers open the pages of your book because they want to learn from you. They know you weren’t handed an easy fix—that’s not the way life, or God, works—so they don’t want you to offer them a trite, instant, easy fix.

 

“We desperately want our situation solved. We want resolution. But God unfolds the plot in his own time. It is in our months or years of waiting that our story comes to maturity” (Dan Allender, To Be Told).

 

James wrote about coming to maturity when he wrote, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its good work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:3-4).

 

Readers know you came to the maturity that James and Allender highlight—they just don’t know how—and they want to discover it. They want to mine the gems that formed during your coming to maturity. Pat answers or platitudes won’t do.

 

They want the real thing: They want to tag along with you to see how, step by step, you dealt with your problem so they can deal with theirs. 

 

Step by step means you let readers experience the suspense you experienced. “Make ‘em wait.”

 

Perhaps your calamity, your unwelcome surprise, your tragedy arose from cancer, or an addiction—yours or someone else’s.

 

Or maybe you said, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15), and that led to being misunderstood and scorned, and it required sacrifice and courage beyond your expectation.

 

Perhaps your child got into trouble with the law or your spouse betrayed you. Or you lost your job and health insurance, and then you lost your house.

 

Whatever your tension-inducing incident, spell it out for your readers.

 

Keep in mind that making ‘em cry

will be a companion in making ‘em wait;

they will be intertwined.

Specify, in sufficient depth,

why your crisis made you “cry”

and invite readers to “cry” with you.

 

Hold readers captive.

 

Explain what was at stake. What were the possible outcomes? Which did you hope for? Why? Which outcome did you fear most? Why?

 

Spell out complications and disappointments and setbacks.

 

Share your doubts.

 

Unravel the story as you lived it—unable to see into the future—and let readers unravel it with you.

 

Pull readers in. If you gave in to despair, write in such a way that readers experience your despair with you.

 

Admit to weeks or years of faltering faith.

 

Tell about your tears, sleepless nights, and prayers.

 

Describe the times God seemed silent.

 

Keep your frustrated goals before your readers. Leave them hanging.

 

Make them curious: Leave readers wondering about the outcome.

 

When they finish a chapter of your memoir, make ‘em worry for you. Make ‘em wonder what will happen in the next chapter.

 

Keep up the suspense.

 

Just don’t tell them the end until the end!

 

Save the resolution for the conclusion. When that time comes, tie everything together. Make sense of your crisis. Tell, specifically, how you and God succeeded in reaching a good conclusion.

 

In good memoir form, tell how you changed and matured, how you knew God better than before, how you came to understand His ways and His love. What did you learn from the times God was silent? How did the experience strengthen your faith for future situations?

 

What new person did you become as a result of the experience?

 

Let readers feel the same surprise and joy and hope you did.

Does your memoir downplay conflict and tension?

Life includes conflict and tension. Good stories, then, should include conflict and tension.

But I have read a couple of memoirs that downplayed the conflict and tension—toned it down, diminished it. Skimmed over it. What a mistake!

When writers become vulnerable and tell us those important details of their story, when they tell us how they handled those times and events, we readers grow and benefit. That’s how a memoirist becomes a mentor. That’s how God uses stories to offer others help and hope.

If you want to get your most important messages across, if you want readers to benefit from your story, include the conflict and tension you experienced. And how you dealt with it, how you came through on the other side, what you learned.

Becca Puglisi at Writers Helping Writers discovered there’s a difference between conflict and tension.

Here’s how she learned that lesson:

A critiquer returned one of Becca’s manuscripts and had noted, several times, the need for tension. (Becca’s manuscript was fiction but remember: Many fiction techniques are important nonfiction techniques, too.)

Becca asked herself, “No tension? What’s she talking about? The main character was just abandoned by her father. Her best friend was attacked by racist pigs. The family farm is about to go under. . . . There is conflict ALL OVER the place, so how can she say there’s no tension??”

Becca was puzzled but eventually recognized that conflict and tension are not necessarily the same thing. She adds, “Although the terms are often used interchangeably (and they CAN be synonymous), they aren’t necessarily the same.”

Conflict is when a character has a goal but an obstacle prevents him from reaching it.

Tension, on the other hand, stirs up the reader’s emotion, grabs hold of him, and makes him care about how the story will end—and it keeps him reading. Tension, Becca says, is “that tight, stretched feeling in your belly that makes you all jittery. That’s what you want your reader to feel. . . .”

Click on this link to read more of Becca’s Conflict vs. Tension.

So, how do you stir up your readers’ emotion?

Your own emotion—excitement, fear, joy, doubt, wonderment, or awe—will impact your reader’s emotions.

“Emotion is an involuntary action:

The best stories in the world

always have an emotional appeal.

They inspire the audience

to act, to think,

to laugh, to cry or to get angry. . . .

If an audience is moved to feel something,

they become more emotionally invested in a story

based on that connection.”

Slash Coleman

How much tension/emotion should a writer include?

Every scene should have some tension, FaithWriter’s Lillian Duncan says, sometimes big, sometimes little. “It may be internal or external. It may be real or imagined, but there should be a sense of unpredictability in every scene. . . .”

Lillian offers this word of caution: Melodrama is not a mark of good writing. “Keep your ‘flowery’ writing to a minimum.”

Click here to see Lillian’s checklist on how to avoid overwriting. It includes:

• Word choices
• Exclamation points
• Too many adverbs and adjectives
• Emotional reaction that’s equal to the event
• Cutting every unnecessary word

Read more at Lillian’s Writing Suspense. Many if not all of her fiction techniques also apply to nonfiction.

Find the conflict, tension, and emotion—

or lack of them—

in your manuscript.

Make changes as needed.

If you’ll do so, your readers will gain important insights,

 and, believe it or not,

you, too, will benefit,

 probably in enormous ways,

ways you can’t quite imagine yet!

A smorgasbord for you: Suspense

Do you enjoy smorgasbords? I grew up around Scandinavians so I know smorgasbords, but maybe you don’t.

A smorgasbord is a delightful spread of food—lots of food—an array of hors-d’oeuvres (hot and cold), salads, meats (hot and cold), fish (smoked and pickled), cheese, and relishes.

You get to sample them all!

Today’s post is a smorgasbord of writing tips for you!—tips, quotes, and links about including suspense in your memoir.

Your memoir needs suspense. It hooks your reader and makes him keen to know the outcome—but makes him wait for it.

Suspense implies an uncomfortable waiting mixed with impatience, with an eagerness for a good solution.  

Suspense arouses curiosity and keeps readers turning pages.

So let’s look at this important ingredient for your memoir: Suspense. Conflict. Tension. Friction. Anxiety.

Tension is “an essential element of any narrative worth telling. A plot without tension is a flat line, a life with no rises, no dips, no anima. Life, by definition, involves tension. . . . Tension is the medium in which we breathe every day.” Dan Allender

“Conflict is good: Stories boil down to conflict. We crave that tension and a barrier between the hero and what he/she is seeking. That’s what separates a good story from just an anecdote that may be told at the water cooler.” Slash Coleman

“Conflict has to occur not just on the larger scale . . . but also on the smaller theater of the character’s inner life. . . . Include the outer battle (the physical reaction to the conflict) and the inner battle (the psychological and emotional reaction to events).” K.M. Weiland

“The cliffhanger is a striking event that happens at the end of an episode, chapter, scene, or season of a story. It leaves doubt in the reader’s mind—usually regarding the fate of the protagonist—and all but forces them to come back to see what comes next. . . . You want each ‘scene’ to lead your readers deeper and deeper.” Robert Bruce

At FaithWriters blog, Lillian Duncan offers ways to work tension into your stories. Here are a few to enhance a memoir:

• introducing unpredictability
• ending chapters with a cliffhanger
• racing a time limit
• foreshadowing (hints at what is coming, or might come, in the future)
• throwing out a red herring (diversion)
• keeping stakes high

Read more at Lillian’s “Writing Suspense.” Many if not all of her fiction techniques also apply to memoir.

Find the drama in your story and highlight it—but keep a proper balance. Like Chip MacGregor says, “Unlike a novelist, you can’t dwell on conflict. . . . I’m looking for a book that will offer me a solution.”

K.M. Weiland says it this way. “Stories are about balance. A tale in which there is no conflict is going to be just about as boring as watching condensation dissipate. But a tale that never pauses to let its characters (or its readers) catch their breath is boring in its own way. We have to find ways to adjust the level of the conflict. We have to give our characters a chance to slow down and get their thoughts gathered. . . .”

So there you have it: A smorgasbord of writing tips!

Find nourishment, enjoyment, and inspiration in sampling them.

I’ve critiqued many rough drafts and can report that

a lack of suspense—

a downplaying of tension—

is often a problem.

Look over your rough draft.

How can you heighten suspense?

Remember: Your story is important.

It can bless individuals, families,

communities, towns, nations, even the world.

Your story can change lives for eternity.

Write your story!

Does this work?

…A man approached—wearing gray baggy pants and a tight, sweaty shirt that had once been white—and asked to take our order. I found an item on the menu I recognized, a sandwich, and ordered it in halting Spanish.

The restaurant’s aging double wooden doors stood open, and outside the sky darkened. Motorcycles and four-wheel drives stirred up dust. I watched a man walk by with a semi-automatic rifle. Clinging lovers strolled by in tight, shiny clothes. Brassy music streamed out from another joint. I was disgusted with it all. Those people were so different from my kind of people.

Eventually a waiter brought our food. Still clutching my purse, I gnawed on my sandwich: dry white bread and a piece of meat—no butter, mayo, mustard, or lettuce—but it was food.

We sat silently, eating our meal, when the restaurant went dark—utterly black.  Outside beyond the open doors, everything went black, too.

Several long seconds passed. No one in the restaurant—neither customers nor employees—said a word. Outside on the street there was not a noise. The silence continued, and that seemed strange. Why wasn’t anyone saying anything?

Then my heart lurched: This could be a guerrilla plot to kidnap us. Thousands of people were kidnapped every year in _______, and there we sat, three vulnerable gringo women, three small children. What easy targets we were.

Silently I screamed, “Lord, Lord, You wouldn’t let that happen—would You?”

I grabbed little Jenny’s hand on my right and Jon’s on my left. Still no one spoke. I wanted to scream, “What’s going on?” but I followed my traveling companions’ example and kept my mouth shut.

I heard footsteps. Someone faltered across the floor, then feet shuffled toward us. I could barely breathe. The footsteps stopped beside me. I squeezed the children’s hands until I was afraid their little bones would break. No one, I vowed, will snatch a child from my grip. They can have my purse, but not one of the children.

A rustle confirmed that someone stood within inches of me. I jumped when I heard something placed on our table.

I heard a noise. “Fffisht.” I knew that noise. It was the scrape of a match. In an instant I saw a man’s dark face in the flame’s dim glow.

Copyright © 2013 by Linda K. Thomas

This is the end of one chapter in a multi-chapter vignette I’ve written for my grandchildren. (For security reasons I removed the name of the town and country.)

In light of our past blog posts about creating tension and making readers wait for a resolution, does this work? I welcome your feedback. Leave comments below or on the SM 101 Facebook Page.

Look over one of your rough drafts. How can you increase tension and make’em wait?

Remember: An essential element in good stories is tension and suspense.

Hold readers captive.

Unravel the story as you lived it—unable to see into the future—and let readers unravel it with you.

Pull readers in. If you were scared out of your wits, write in such a way that readers experience your fright with you.

Explain what was at stake. What were the possible outcomes? Which did you hope for? Why? Which outcome did you fear most? Why?

Make your readers curious: Leave them wondering about the outcome.

Keep up the suspense.

Readers want to tag along with you to see how, step by step, you dealt with your problem so they can deal with theirs. 

Step by step means you let readers experience the suspense you experienced. “Make ‘em wait.”

Readers will read your book because they want to learn from you. They know you weren’t handed an easy fix—that’s not the way life, or God, works—so they don’t want you to offer them a trite, instant, easy fix.

Keep your predicament before your readers. Leave them hanging.

After all, as you lived your story, you endured a time lag—maybe minutes, maybe months, maybe years—before you found resolution for your problem. You didn’t know how the incident would end.

You had to wait. Make your readers wait, too.

When they finish a chapter of your memoir, make ‘em worry for you. Make ‘em wonder what will happen in the next chapter.

Related post

Make ‘em wait

Suspense, yes. Melodrama, no.

Life includes suspense. Good stories, then, include suspense.

Your memoir needs suspense. Hook your reader and make her eager to know the outcome—but make her wait for it. Suspense implies an uncomfortable waiting mixed with impatience for a good resolution . It arouses curiosity. It keeps her reading.

Today we continue with these all-important  ingredients for your memoir: Suspense. Tension. Conflict.

Becca Puglisi at Writers Helping Writers explains how she discovered the difference between conflict and tension.

A critiquer had returned one of Becca’s manuscripts and had noted, several times, the need for tension. “Where’s the tension?” and “Add more tension.” (Becca’s manuscript was fiction but remember: Many fiction techniques are important nonfiction techniques, too.)

Becca said, “No tension? What’s she talking about? The main character was just abandoned by her father. Her best friend was attacked by racist pigs. The family farm is about to go under.… There is conflict ALL OVER the place, so how can she say there’s no tension??”

Becca was puzzled but eventually recognized that conflict and tension are not necessarily the same thing. She adds, “Although the terms are often used interchangeably (and they CAN be synonymous), they aren’t necessarily the same.”

Conflict is when a character has a goal but an obstacle prevents him from reaching it.

Tension, on the other hand, stirs up the reader’s emotion, grabs hold of him, and makes him care about how the story will end—and it keeps him reading. Tension, Becca says, is “that tight, stretched feeling in your belly that makes you all jittery. That’s what you want your reader to feel.…”

Click on this link to read more of Becca’s Conflict vs.Tension.

So how do you stir up your reader’s emotion?

Your own emotion—excitement, fear, joy, doubt, wonderment, or awe—will impact your readers’ emotions.

“Emotion is an involuntary action:

The best stories in the world

always have an emotional appeal.

They inspire the audience to act, to think,

to laugh, to cry or to get angry. …

If an audience is moved to feel something,

they become more emotionally invested in a story

based on that connection.”

Slash Coleman

How much tension should a writer include?

Every scene should have tension, FaithWriter’s Lillian Duncan says, sometimes big, sometimes little. “It may be internal or external. It may be real or imagined, but there should be a sense of unpredictability in every scene.…”

Lillian offers this word of caution: Melodrama is not a mark of good writing. Avoid overwriting. “Keep your ‘flowery’ writing to a minimum.”

Click here to see Lillian’s checklist on how to avoid overwriting. It includes:

         Word choices

Exclamation points 

         Too many adverbs and adjectives

Emotional reaction equal to the event

Cut every unnecessary word

Read more at Lillian’s Writing Suspense. Many if not all of her fiction techniques also apply to nonfiction. 

Related posts:

Sneeze post: Suspense

Making suspense reader-friendly

Your memoir: make suspense reader-friendly

Suspense, tension, conflict. They are must-haves for your memoir. They draw readers into your story, make them care about you, and keep them reading.

Last week I shared a Chip MacGregor quote that I’ve been putting into practice in one of my rough drafts: I’m trying to make suspenseful passages more reader-friendly. Chip’s message: Readers don’t want to waste time in your long, drawn out moanings and groanings. They bought your book because they want to know how you solved your problem.

“Readers don’t buy books that ponder problems. They buy books that offer great solutions to problems. So offer solutions. Tell me what the answer is to my problem.”  He says we should go ahead and “set the stage by revealing what the conflict or problem is,” but (my paraphrase): Get on with it. Don’t wallow in your drama. Condense your drama. (Chip MacGregor, Memorable Words; emphasis mine.)

On the other hand, we can play downplay our suspense too much, according to K.S. Davis.

She teaches her students (both fiction and memoir writers) to beware of a “failure to sustain key moments.” Key moments: moments of tension and suspense and emotion.

In some of her students’ rough drafts, Davis discovered key moments “were just going by too quickly.” To remedy that, she advises, “…Writers, don’t be afraid to slow down and ‘linger.’ Make sure you are devoting sufficient space to the ‘key moments’ in your manuscript so that they register with your readers. Your writing will resonate much more clearly and vividly if you do.”

She says we “give the moment sufficient emphasis” by using dialogue, summarizing unspoken thoughts, and using nuance. (Read K.S. Davis’s full blog post, Lessons in Lingering.)

So, the combined message from Chip and K.S. is this:  Find a healthy balance in writing passages of suspense and drama and emotion.

You might be saying, “Easier said than done!”  I agree. Here’s what I’m doing and perhaps you’ll find it helpful, too:

I’m crafting a couple of versions of my vignette and playing around with the drama—condensing, reorganizing. (I’m so glad we live in the days of computers instead of typewriters! Back in the olden days, if we wanted to change just one word or comma on a page, we’d have to retype the entire page!)

After tweaking, I’ll set the manuscript aside for a week or so. Later I’ll take a fresh look at it and by then I should be able to see what works and what doesn’t.

What about you? What advice can you share about finding balance between too much drama and not enough? Leave a comment below.

Sneeze post: Suspense

Sneeze post?! What’s a sneeze post?

Think of a sneeze. It distributes “stuff” in various directions.

A sneeze post “simply directs readers in multiple directions at once,” says Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.

Think of a sneeze post as a roundup, a collection. If you don’t like the thought of me sneezing on you, think of me handing you a bouquet.

Today’s sneeze post is a collection of quotes and links about suspense.

Your memoir needs suspense: It hooks your reader and makes him eager to know the outcome—but makes him wait for it. Suspense implies an uncomfortable waiting mixed with impatience for a good resolution. It arouses curiosity. It keeps him reading.

Let’s look at this important ingredient for your memoir: Suspense. Conflict. Tension. Friction. Anxiety.

Here we go! Ah…ah….CHOOOOO!

Tension is “an essential element of any narrative worth telling. A plot without tension is a flat line, a life with no rises, no dips, no anima. Life, by definition, involves tension.… Tension is the medium in which we breathe every day.” Dan Allender

“A nonfiction writer needs to establish conflict right away.… [But] unlike a novelist, you can’t dwell on conflict. Nobody wants a book that defines their problem for them.… I’m looking for a book that will offer me a solution.…” Chip MacGregor  

“Conflict is good: Stories boil down to conflict. We crave that tension and a barrier between the hero and what he/she is seeking. That’s what separates a good story from just an anecdote that may be told at the water cooler.” Slash Coleman

“… Conflict has to occur not just on the larger scale … but also on the smaller theater of the character’s inner life.… Include the outer battle (the physical reaction to the conflict) and the inner battle (the psychological and emotional reaction to events).” K.M. Weiland

“… The cliffhanger is a striking event that happens at the end of an episode, chapter, scene, or season of a story. It leaves doubt in the reader’s mind—usually regarding the fate of the protagonist—and all but forces them to come back to see what comes next.… You want each ‘scene’ to lead your readers deeper and deeper.” Robert Bruce

At FaithWriters blog, Lillian Duncan offers ways to work tension into your stories. Here are a few to enhance memoir:

Introducing unpredictability

Ending chapters with a cliffhanger

Facing a time limit

Foreshadowing (hints of what is coming, or might come, in the future)

Throwing out a red herring (diversion)

Keeping stakes high

(Read more at Lillian’s “Writing Suspense.” Many if not all of her fiction techniques also apply to nonfiction.)

Find the drama in your story and highlight it, but keep a proper balance.

“Stories are about balance. A tale in which there is no conflict is going to be just about as boring as watching condensation dissipate. But a tale that never pauses to let its characters (or its readers) catch their breath is boring in its own way. We have to find ways to adjust the level of the conflict. We have to give our characters a chance to slow down and get their thoughts gathered.…”  K.M.Weiland

Next time we’ll look at more tips. For now, look over your rough drafts and find ways to heighten suspense. Have fun doing it.

Remember: Your stories are important. 

Your stories can bless individuals, families, 

communities, town, nations, even the world. 

They can change lives for eternity. Write your stories!

Make ‘em wait

Part 3 of

“Make ‘em cry, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em wait.”

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)

Why should you avoid opening a story in the following way?  

“We eventually found Old John, alive, buried under four feet of tree limbs—the elephant had buried him the way elephants bury their own—but for six hours we didn’t know if we’d ever find him, dead or alive.”

If you begin your story this way, you have given away your ending. That weakens the power of your story. It diminishes readers’ involvement.

Giving away the ending spoils essential elements in good stories: tension and suspense.

A quality story “will consist of a real person who is confronted with a significant problem, who struggles diligently to solve that problem, and who ultimately succeeds—and in doing so becomes a different character” (Jon Franklin,* Writing for Story). Note the tension: (1) a significant problem (2) the character struggles diligently to solve.

In other words, “A story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves.” (Jon Franklin,* Writing for Story) Note the tension: (1) a complicating situation (2) the character confronts.

(Writers develop what Franklin calls “a sympathetic character” and “a real person” when they “make‘em laugh” and “make ‘em cry,” which we covered in our two previous blog posts. Click on links if you missed them.)

Today we’ll look at tension and suspense, and Wilkie Collins’ advice to “make ‘em wait” for resolution.

After all, as you lived the stories in your memoir, you endured a time lag—maybe months, maybe years—before you found resolution for your problem. You didn’t know how the incident would end.

You had to wait. Make your readers wait, too.

Here’s why: Readers open the pages of your book because they want to learn from you. They know you weren’t handed an easy fix—that’s not the way life, or God, works—so they don’t want you to offer them a trite, instant, easy fix.

“We desperately want our situation solved. We want resolution. But God unfolds the plot in his own time. It is in our months or years of waiting that our story comes to maturity.” (Dan Allender, To Be Told, emphasis mine)

James wrote about coming to maturity when he wrote, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its good work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:3-4).

Readers know you came to the maturity that James and Allender highlight—they just don’t know how—and they want to discover it. They want to mine the gems that formed during your coming to maturity. Pat answers or platitudes won’t do.

They want the real thing: They want to tag along with you to see how, step by step, you dealt with your problem so they can deal with theirs. 

Step by step means you let readers experience the suspense you experienced. “Make ‘em wait.”

Perhaps your calamity, your unwelcome surprise, your tragedy arose from cancer, or an addiction—yours or someone else’s.

Or maybe you said, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord,” (Joshua 24:15) and that led to being misunderstood and scorned, and it required sacrifice and courage beyond your expectation.

Perhaps your child got into trouble with the law or your spouse betrayed you. Or you lost your job and health insurance, and then you lost your house.

Whatever your tension-inducing incident, spell it out for your readers. Keep in mind that making ‘em cry will be a companion in making ‘em wait; they will be intertwined. Specify, in sufficient depth, why your crisis made you “cry” and invite readers to “cry” with you.

Hold readers captive.

Explain what was at stake. What were the possible outcomes? Which did you hope for? Why? Which outcome did you fear most? Why?

Spell out complications and disappointments and setbacks.

Share your doubts.

Unravel the story as you lived it—unable to see into the future—and let readers unravel it with you.

Pull readers in. If you gave in to despair, write in such a way that readers experience your despair with you.

Admit to weeks or years of faltering faith.

Tell about your tears, sleepless nights, and prayers.

Describe the times God seemed silent.

Keep your frustrated goals before your readers. Leave them hanging.

Make them curious: Leave readers wondering about the outcome.

When they finish a chapter of your memoir, make ‘em worry for you. Make ‘em wonder what will happen in the next chapter.

Keep up the suspense.

Just don’t tell them the end until the end!

Save the resolution for the conclusion. When that time comes, tie everything together. Make sense of your crisis. Tell, specifically, how you and God succeeded in reaching a good conclusion.

In good memoir form, tell how you changed and matured, how you knew God better than before, how you came to understand His ways and His love. What did you learn from the times God was silent? How did the experience strengthen your faith for future situations?

What new person did you became as a result of the experience?

Let readers feel the same surprise and joy and hope you did.

*Jon Franklin is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a well-known pioneer in creative nonfiction.

“Method writing” helps your memoir come alive

"No story has a divine right to be read."

Peter Jacobi

Peter Jacobi reminds us that if we want our children and grandchildren to read our stories, we must craft compelling material. Our stories need more than facts and photos. They need our emotions.


Think about your all-time favorite books and movies. How did they hook you? Answer: Most likely you made an emotional connection with the main characters.


Peter Guber says it this way: “The best stories evoke an emotional response, touch a deep cord.…” (Peter Guber, http://www.huffingtonpost.com peter-guber/african-water-rights-in-d_b_633678.html)


Our readers need to enter into our emotion with us. If we can stir up their emotional responses, they’ll more likely read all the way to the end of our stories.


But if you’ve attempted writing your emotion in a given situation, you know that can be a tough challenge so, in Writing Life Stories, Bill Roorbach suggests writers employ method writing, a spin-off of method acting.


Here’s how method acting works: Before the curtain rises, the actor remembers a time in which he experienced the emotion he needs to act out. He spends time reliving that emotion so that when he steps on stage, he is gripped in that emotion and succeeds in playing his part.


Method writing, then, requires you to step out of the present and into the past. Whether you’re writing about a blissful time or a tragic event, take time (make time) to remember the event and rediscover the emotion you felt.

In the midst of reliving that emotion, also reflect on your accompanying thoughts and imaginings. While wrapped up in that past event, ask yourself:


What was at stake? What, in this incident, did I have to lose or gain?


At the time, how did I envision that this situation could change my life?


What were my joys, hopes, fears, and prayers?


When you’re caught up again in that event and emotion, get it onto paper because tension generates reader interest and involvement.

Make your story come alive.

Give it a pulse. A heartbeat.

Make it sing and dance, or sob and wail.

Just be sure it’s alive.

Related posts: No story has a divine right to be read
http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/06/your-story-is-important-but-will-anyone.html