Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

Every person has a story to tell, but few beginners know how to uncover their story's narrative potential. And despite a growing interest among students and creative writers, few guides to the genre of memoirs and creative nonfiction highlight compelling storytelling strategies. Addressing this gap, authors Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook provide a compact, accessible guide to memoir writing that shows how an aspiring memoir writer can use storytelling tools and tactics borrowed from fiction to weave personal experiences into the shape of a story.

            Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir offers an overview of the building blocks of memoir writing. Individual chapters focus on key issues and challenges, such as the balance between the remembering narrator and the experiencing narrator, the capacity to honor the subjective voice, the occasion of telling (why does this narrator tell this story now?), creating an organically functional structure for a particular story, and taking the next steps with a written memoir. Drawing on their combined years of experience teaching memoir writing, authoring works of fiction and nonfiction, and working in autobiographical performance, Miller and Lenard-Cook provide a practical guide whose core philosophy is motivated by a key word: story.

Bronze winner, Foreword Book of the Year, Writing Guides


1112867754
Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

Every person has a story to tell, but few beginners know how to uncover their story's narrative potential. And despite a growing interest among students and creative writers, few guides to the genre of memoirs and creative nonfiction highlight compelling storytelling strategies. Addressing this gap, authors Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook provide a compact, accessible guide to memoir writing that shows how an aspiring memoir writer can use storytelling tools and tactics borrowed from fiction to weave personal experiences into the shape of a story.

            Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir offers an overview of the building blocks of memoir writing. Individual chapters focus on key issues and challenges, such as the balance between the remembering narrator and the experiencing narrator, the capacity to honor the subjective voice, the occasion of telling (why does this narrator tell this story now?), creating an organically functional structure for a particular story, and taking the next steps with a written memoir. Drawing on their combined years of experience teaching memoir writing, authoring works of fiction and nonfiction, and working in autobiographical performance, Miller and Lenard-Cook provide a practical guide whose core philosophy is motivated by a key word: story.

Bronze winner, Foreword Book of the Year, Writing Guides


12.95 In Stock
Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

eBook

$12.95 

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

Every person has a story to tell, but few beginners know how to uncover their story's narrative potential. And despite a growing interest among students and creative writers, few guides to the genre of memoirs and creative nonfiction highlight compelling storytelling strategies. Addressing this gap, authors Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook provide a compact, accessible guide to memoir writing that shows how an aspiring memoir writer can use storytelling tools and tactics borrowed from fiction to weave personal experiences into the shape of a story.

            Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir offers an overview of the building blocks of memoir writing. Individual chapters focus on key issues and challenges, such as the balance between the remembering narrator and the experiencing narrator, the capacity to honor the subjective voice, the occasion of telling (why does this narrator tell this story now?), creating an organically functional structure for a particular story, and taking the next steps with a written memoir. Drawing on their combined years of experience teaching memoir writing, authoring works of fiction and nonfiction, and working in autobiographical performance, Miller and Lenard-Cook provide a practical guide whose core philosophy is motivated by a key word: story.

Bronze winner, Foreword Book of the Year, Writing Guides



Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780299293130
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date: 05/31/2013
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 128
File size: 319 KB

About the Author

Lynn C. Miller is the author of the novels Death of a Department Chair and The Fool's Journey and coeditor of Voices Made Flesh: Performing Women's Autobiography. A playwright and solo performer, she is former professor of theater and dance as well as women's and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Lisa Lenard-Cook is the PEN-shortlisted author of Dissonance, Coyote Morning, and The Mind of Your Story. She is a faculty member at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and at the Narrative Arts Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Together, they cofounded ABQ Writers Co-op, a creative community for Southwest writers.

Table of Contents

Introduction

 

1 The Occasion of the Telling: "It Begins Here because It's about This"

A Place to Stand

Is It an Autobiography, or Is It a Memoir?

It's about the Storyteller

Reliability and the Narrator

Telling the Truth in Memoir

The Occasion of the Telling and Organizing the Memoir

She Died, so I Remember

And Then, in an Instant, Everything Changed

Now and Then, Then and Now

Consequence and the Occasion of the Telling

Exercises: Now, You Begin

2 The Two Yous: Finding a Place to Stand

The Remembering Self

The Experiencing Self

The Dance of the Two Yous

The Power of Testifying

Taking Yourself by the Hand

Negotiating Duality

Sensory Cues as Keys to Memory

Using Language and Imagery to Move between the Two Yous

The Nature of Memory

Further Spotlight Exercises

3 Building a Narrative: Laying Down the Bones

Beginning Your Story

Catalysts and Conflicts

Mapping the Tension

Examples of Structures

Chronological Structure

Circular Structure

Associative Structure

Collage Structure

Parallel Structure

Locational Structure

Choosing a Structure

You and Your Audience

Creating the World of Your Story

Structure and Understanding

Additional Spotlight Exercises

4 Arranging the Scenes: Giving Them Muscle

Dramatic Structure

Ordering the Scene

Catalyst

Conflict

Rising Action

Reversals

Climax

Denouement

Particularizing the Moment

Internal Action

External Action

The Emblematic Scene

Putting It All Together

Further Spotlight Exercises

5 Painting the Picture: Language and Setting

The Magic of Imagery

Using Figurative Language

Language and Sense of Place

Setting as Metaphor

Place as Time Period

Language as Action

Controlling Time

Dialogue

Silence

The Secrets of Subtext

6 Your Story, Your Voice: Make It Your Own

The First-Person Voice

Between Experience and Remembering

Beyond First Person

Your Two Voices

You, the Narrator

You, the Character

Voices of the Masters

"She Opened Herself Up a Worm Farm"

"The Fortuneteller Was Not Guilty"

"Reveal[ing] Those Demons That Obsess Him"

The Shadowy Personage Who Commits the Actual Writing

"The Capsules of Safety, and Freedom"

Your Story, Your Voice

You Are the Camera

Using What You Don't Know

7 Honoring the Memoir Process: Taking the Next Steps

Re-visioning Your Manuscript

Read It Aloud

Put It Away

Take It out of the Closet

An Editorial Checklist

The Occasion of the Telling

The Two Yous

Building a Narrative

Arranging the Scenes

Painting the Picture

Your Story, Your Voice

Honoring the Memoir Process

Other People, Other Rooms

Claiming Responsibility for Your Story

The Ethics of Guilt

What's Next?

Bringing Your Story into Public Space

Your Story, Your Book

 

Appendix: Spotlight Exercises by Chapter

Glossary

Bibliography

Other Suggested Memoirs

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews