Instilling bravery

“How would you instill bravery and strength in boys when the current culture seems to work against these traits?”

My husband and I—oldsters—received an invitation to lead a parenting class Sunday evening. We had handed out paper and asked parents to submit questions for us.

All questions were good but the one above caught my attention. (If you’re a regular here, you knew it would, didn’t you?) The question just begged me to tell what memoir is all about, and I didn’t let the opportunity slip away. (You knew I wouldn’t, right?)

After a brief explanation of what memoir is, I asked the audience:

Who inspired bravery in you? What’s the bravest act you ever witnessed?

What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done? Write your story and give it to your kids.

Who taught you the importance of being strong? Who modeled for you how to be strong when it was mighty tempting to be weak? Write those stories and give them to your kids.

Think about this, too: Stories of failures can pack a lot of punch.

With that in mind, what’s the most un-brave act you’ve seen? The most cowardly action you’ve taken?

What is the most un-strong deed you’ve witnessed in others? When did you give in to weakness?

Have you ever pinned down, specifically, the values and traits and strengths you want your kids and grandkids to possess? If not, start today: Compile a list.

How about some of these for a start?

honesty

integrity

faithfulness

kindness

unselfishness

a sense of humor

wisdom

self discipline

commitment

tenacity

Don’t wait another day! Begin making your list.

In coming days and weeks, beside each trait, jot down a few words to remind you of a story demonstrating that trait.

Then sit down at your computer, or get out pen and paper, and start writing rough drafts of those stories.

Can you write one story a month? If so, you will have twelve stories a year from now!

Stories are important.

Stories have a bigger impact than statistics,

a lecture, a chart, a meeting,

an article, or intellectual reasoning.

And nagging.

You have stories that only you can tell.

Your children and grandchildren

and great grandchildren need your stories.

Look for photos to accompany those stories—either your own or from the Internet. Photos can help in a couple of ways.

First, they’ll help you remember details, settings, sights, sounds, tastes, feelings, smells. They’ll help you remember songs of the era, clothing styles, hair styles, and historical settings. Use such details to draw readers right into your experience.

Second, photos add a depth of understanding and experience to your kids and grands when they read your story. According to an ad at Biblegateway.com, approximately 83% of human understanding happens visually, and our brains process images 60,000 times faster than text—so dig out those old photos. They’ll involve readers in your story and help them remember it.

“Our stories aren’t just part of a timeline.

They are part of human legacy.

They are the things that connect generations.

They connect geography, they connect culture,

they connect ethnicity and race.”

Jacqui Banaszynski,

“Pebbles in the Pond:

Touching Hearts One Story at a Time”

Related posts:

What is memoir?

Details for your memoir 

Your story is important

Our dysfunctional families

Does your family tree include a few messed up people?

You probably answered “yes,” and that’s OK.  Really. Take heart: Jesus’ human genealogy included some messed up people, too. 

In a recent Sunday sermon, son-on-law Brian pointed out that Jesus’ family tree included a liar, a schemer, an adulterer, a murderer, a drunkard, a prostitute.…

We all have blemished families, in varying degrees.

But here's the good news: God used Jesus’ less-than-perfect human family and God can use yours and mine, too.

How can that be? It doesn’t seem possible that God could use defective, broken, scarred families and their stories.

How could God use OUR stories? 

“It’s purely because of grace,” said Brian.

God doesn’t make us submit an application listing our qualifications. “It’s not about qualifications,” he said. “We base our lives on God’s promises of faithfulness and grace.”

What would we be without God’s forgiveness and lavish grace?

I want to fall on my face in tears when I think what I’d be without God’s merciful grace.

Our lives matter

because

of God’s grace and forgiveness

and healing and faithfulness. 

Our lives matter

because

God reaches out to us

in our disasters and calamities

and gives us second chances:

He heals us spiritually,

mentally, emotionally,

physically, relationally.

That’s how we can go on with our lives. And that’s why we can, and should, tell what He has done in our families and daily activities.

In fact, we need to tell our stories. Jesus said, “Go back and tell your family all God has done for you” (Mark 5:19; Luke 8:39).

God uses stories. They are among His most powerful tools.

You are part of a story

much bigger than yourself.

Your story is important.

It’s part of God’s story,

and God’s story is part of your story.

Connect your story with God’s story—

not as a hobby, but as a ministry to your family.

Write your stories. Yes, acknowledge the problems, but instead of dwelling on wreckage and malfunctions, tell what God has done to turn lives around. 

Other dysfunctional people—that’s all of us—need to know how God helped you. Tell us your stories: We want to know how God can bring help and healing and hope into our own lives and families.

Related posts:  

Some of Us Have Tangled Family Trees

Your stories are important

Your words could take up residence in someone’s soul

Jesus replied with a story

The “secret sauce” 

Keep writing your stories

Your memoir can have an outcome beyond your expectations 

“Say it”  

Creating future stories

Since you are busy this week with holiday doings, and since I am busy this week, I’m keeping this post brief.

I’m spending time with my three grandsons, all the while thinking—as a good memoir geek would—that this week we are creating story material for future memoirs!

Happy New Year, friends!

Grandpa and the boys found something in a tide pool.

What could it be?

A baby octopus!

Your words could take up residence in someone’s soul

"Someone needs to tell those tales….

For each and every ear it will be different,

and it will affect them in ways 

they can never predict. 

From the mundane to the PROFOUND. 

You may tell a tale that 

takes up residence in someone's soul, 

becomes their blood and self and purpose. 

That tale will move them and drive them 

and who knows what they might do because of it, 

because of your words. 

That is your role, your gift." 

Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus 

God’s fingerprints

“In the moment, 

it can be hard to see where God is leading us,

but looking back 

we often see his fingerprints.”

Richard Stearns,

President, World Vision United States

Stearns captures what memoir is all about, especially what SM 101 is about: Looking back over life—inspecting, reflecting, pondering—and discovering God had us in His hands all along, and His fingerprints are all over everything.

Take joy!

Write your stories!

What do you want your memoir to do inside your readers?

Sometimes one sentence 

packs more punch than a whole blog post, 

so here’s the message I have for you today:

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