Tag Archives: Denis Ledoux

Memoir Writing Tips, Themes in Memoir

Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Conveying Theme Effectively

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Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Denis Ledoux/@denisledoux

 

“When we start to look for the undercurrent that connects all parts of our story, we begin to see the river running through it.” Mary Carroll Moore, author, artist,teacher from her book,How to Plan,Write and Develop a Book.

 

Please join me in welcoming memoir author, teacher and editor Denis Ledoux back for this fourth and final session of Memoir Writing Tips in preparation of The Memoir Network’s “November is Lifewriting Month.” This week’s topic is Conveying Theme Effectively.

 

Here are the previous sessions: Action, Describing Characters and  Establishing Your Setting.

 

It has been a pleasure to feature you in these four sessions, Denis.

 

Welcome back!

 

Denis Ledoux author profile
Denis Ledoux, Author, Teacher, Editor

 

Underlying all of your stories is its theme. The theme is really a message, the global way in which you understand your story – either in its entirety or in its parts. The theme conveys the essence of the you (or the them) that you want the reader, and history, to know and understand. The theme provides spirit to your piece, the breath of life that individualizes your life story.

 

1) The theme is dependent on your insights. Insights are glimpses of understanding. (“Oh, that’s why – or how – she did that!”) When insights accumulate, as you view your stories over time, and bring them into ever sharper focus, you begin to see larger, broader conclusions about your subject’s life – and even the meaning of life itself. The themes of your stories evolve from, and are synonymous with, these conclusions.

Self-serving excuses should not be confused with insight. For instance, we might write in our life stories that it was because of our parents’ style of raising children or of the strictures of our ethnic group or of the limitations imposed by our socio-economic class that we have not achieved certain goals. Of course, this “insight” fails to account for our failure as adults to create our own opportunities to overcome these very real shortcomings or to turn them into advantages in a creative way. This so-called “insight” then is really a self-serving excuse to avoid doing work on how we live our lives.

 

2) Discover the theme of your story as you proceed. It is all right to begin writing without a specific theme in mind. As you write, and re-write (rewriting is crucial in deepening your sense of the story’s meaning), be attentive to the theme which may gradually reveal itself to you. This process can be an intriguing one if you are open to it. Theme is revealed as you find yourself using certain words and phrases or expressing certain ideas over and over again. Discovering your theme in this way is not only important but it can catch your interest and make your life writing compelling. It will keep you coming back to your writing.

 

3) Let’s look at the shell of the plot to see how theme functions:

Your father was laid off; a difficult time followed for the family; your father received additional training and obtained a different job.

 

Your treatment of this plot will vary according to your theme. Let’s suppose the following is your theme: “events whose consequences we can’t understand happen gratuitously to us in our lives, but we can always make the best of things.” In the elaboration of this particular theme (message), you will find it natural to set your father’s being laid off not only with his reaction at the time but also with its consequences. Because of your positive theme, you will write about the new circumstances that developed for your father and about his psychological growth (character). To develop your theme, you will show how important it was for him to “roll with the punches,” to allow himself to experience being without the identity his job and his role as family provider had furnished, and ultimately to exercise choices that led to new, satisfying pursuits.

 

So much for one plot development. Now imagine that your theme (obviously based on different insights) had been: “life deals each of us gratuitous, unwarranted dirty tricks and my father was no exception.” In this story you would emphasize the role other people played in your father’s being laid off and how no one helped him. You would dwell on the negative elements–how the economic demands made on him by his children left him with few choices, how his insufficient education (due in turn to his parents, his ethnic group, etc.) limited his job options. You would probably undervalue the training that led to a different job and fail to acknowledge the psychological growth that he experienced as a result of training and his new job challenges.

 

Both of these plot developments would be based on the same facts, but the stories themselves would be very different because they are inspired by very different themes. As a writer, you must be aware that your theme (the message you seek to impart) affects the interpretation of every fact in your story.

By conscious use of theme, you can make a story into your own distinct and unique account.

 

Good luck with your writing.

 

***

Thank you Denis for giving us examples of how our insights can help us find themes and how our themes can affect the interpretation of every fact in our story.

This has been an informative and inspirational series on memoir writing. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us!

 

 

Author Bio: Every November, Denis offers November is Lifewriting Month. NILM provides writing prompts via e-mail, free tele-classes on memoir-writing techniques and many surprise memoir gifts. Denis is the author of the classic Turning Memories into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories. Most recently , he completed his mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and his uncle’s, Business Boy to Business Man. Denis is currently working on a book about “writing with passion.” Jumpstart materials are also available for writers wishing to be memoir professionals in their communities.

 

How about you? What’s your experience in finding the themes in your stories?

 

Denis has generously offered to give away the Memoir Start-up Package at the end of the series to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

startuppackagemedium
The Memoir Start-up package

We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

 

 

Next Week:

Monday, 10/28/13: “Overcoming Childhood Abuse and Healing the Spirit: An Interview with Memoir Author Marion Witte” , author of Little Madhouse on the Prairie. Marion has graciously offered to give away a copy of her memoir to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

Winners of  The GoodbyeYear, Kvetch: A Memoir of Music and Survival and The Memoir Start-up package will be announced on Monday, 10/28.

 

memoir-writing, Uncategorized

Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Establish Your Setting

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Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Denis Ledoux/@DenisLedoux

 

“Rule one: Write about settings you’re familiar with.”  Jeffery Deaver

 

This is the third session in a series of Memoir Writing Tips by  Memoir Author and  Teacher Denis Ledoux in preparation for “The Memoir Network’s “November is Lifewriting Month .” Today’s topic is Establishing Your Setting.  Here are :Session One on Action and Session Two on Character Description.

 

Welcome back , Denis!

Denis Ledoux author profile
Denis Ledoux, Author, Teacher, Editor

 

Every story needs a believable setting. Setting will both put your characters in their context and make them seem real.

 

The setting is both where and when your story occurs. The where is the place in which the story occurs. It includes interiors and exteriors of buildings, the landscape, and the political demarcations (town, county, country, etc.). The when includes the calendar time as well as the history of the characters and of their community (family, group, nation, etc.). Setting, like character, is also best established with ample sense-oriented details.

 

Always place your story in a recognizable setting. That is, use descriptive writing to show us where your story occurs! Let us see the double Cape, with its faded red paint and two dormers directly above the downstairs windows. Give us a view of the living room inside, to the left of the front entrance, where you were sitting in one of the stuffed wing-backed chairs. Let us notice you passing your finger over the worn arm rest as you come to a frayed upholstery cord and thoughtlessly pull it. Point out the full-leafed maples and oaks (not just generic trees) outside the clear window next to your chair and hear the car that is crunching stones in the driveway. Let us taste the pastries–cobblers and brownies and molasses cookies–that you are being served on large oval china that belonged to the grandmother of your hostess.

 

Without the sort of tangible physical setting provided in the paragraph above, your story remains an ethereal piece–inhabited by phantoms in a conceptual space. You story needs to have a sense of place that is very real. Descriptive writing full of sensory details will do that.

 

Your character also inhabits intangible settings that are not physical. Writers must pay attention to these spiritual, historical, cultural, and economic settings in order to effectively convey full characters! What is your character’s cultural community: Yankee, Jewish, Lithuanian, African, or Chinese? Show us how the person interacts with this background. We need to know about the person’s economic status: is she the wife of an upper-income lawyer or a single woman who works as a secretary at a hardware store in a small town; is he the third son and sixth and last child of a mill worker and a store clerk or the only child of a heart surgeon father and corporate lawyer mother? Is your character the first person in her family to graduate from high school? The reader needs to know the education levels, religious affiliations, and spiritual affinities of the people you are writing about. Your characters will otherwise remain stick figures without any contexts–or, to use another image, fish out of water.

 

In short, as part of the setting, we need to know the entire context that surrounds your character. These include: physical, intellectual, spiritual, cultural, economic, educational, professional, occupational, personal and public. These aspects of your characters must be explored through descriptive writing.

 

The setting is a very important aspect of your lifestory. It can change your story from a parochial one that is of interest only to family and friends to a universal story that becomes the voice of a generation and of an shared experience.

 

Good luck writing!

 

***

Thank you Denis for showing us how descriptive writing about where and when our stories take place can help our stories become “the voice of a generation and of a shared experience.” Your specific examples are very useful.

Author Bio: Every November, Denis offers November is Lifewriting Month. NILM provides writing prompts via e-mail, free tele-classes on memoir-writing techniques and many surprise memoir gifts. Denis is the author of the classic Turning Memories into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories. Most recently , he completed his mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and his uncle’s, Business Boy to Business Man. Denis is currently working on a book about “writing with passion.” Jumpstart materials are also available for writers wishing to be memoir professionals in their communities.

 

How about you? Do you have questions for Denis on how to incorporate setting into your writing?

 

Denis has generously offered to give away the Memoir Start-up Package at the end of the series to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

startuppackagemedium
The Memoir Start-up package

We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

 

 

Next Week:

 

Monday, 10/21/13:  “WOW! Women on Writing Book Tour  and Giveaway with Memoir Author Toni Piccinini on The Goodbye Years: “The Messy Middle””

 

Wednesday, 10/23/13: “Kvetch: A Jewish Memoir of Music and Survival, African Style by  Memoir Author Greta Beigel”

 

Friday, 10/25/13: Session Four of “Memoir Writing Tips by Memoir Author, Teacher and Editor Denis Ledoux: Conveying Theme Effectively.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Character description, Memoir Writing Tips

Memoir Writing Tips by Denis LeDoux: Describing Characters in a Memoir Can Be Easy Enough

18 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Denis LeDoux/@DenisLedoux

 

” I want to move with the character and describe the world in which they are living.” Gay Talese

 

This is a second session of memoir writing tips by Denis LeDoux in preparation for November is Life Writing Month (NILM). Today’s topic is describing characters.  Here is the first session on action.

 

Welcome back, Denis!

 

 

Denis Ledoux author profile
Denis Ledoux, Author, Teacher, Editor

The people in your story are your characters. It is your job to bring vivid literary characters to the attention of your readers. You must use descriptive writing to present believable characters. Without other people, our lives and memoirs risk becoming dull. Although ideas are pivotal for many individuals, relationships are even more commanding. We are intrigued with who other people are and how they function. “Who’s that? What are they doing? Where did they come from?” These are question we want answered. To write a strong story, capitalize on this interest.

 

In lifewriting, you create a strong, vivid sense of people by describing characters in sensual details. (The senses, of course, are: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.) The most effective descriptions of people make use of these.

 

Here are ways you can use sense details to describing characters more vividly:

 

Taste– Let the reader sample foods associated with your past or with the person you are writing about. Perhaps a food image or a metaphor will give a deeper sense of the person’s personality.

 

Many people mistakenly believe that characters in a story have to be well-known to be interesting. When they write their stories, they search their pasts for when they might have crossed paths with the famous. Consequently they write about when they were in the same elevator with some luminary back in 1968. This is not necessarily something that will make your story interesting. A representation of a vivid character is more likely to entice your reader. Describing characters well is about details not about fame.

 

Sight- What did the person you are writing about look like? Describing characters well requires you mention height, weight, color, shape, posture, mannerisms, contours of the face, prominent features. How did that person move, talk, walk, sit? Describe the person’s clothing, sense of style, hairstyles. In what ways ways did that person typically express emotion with body posture?

 

Sound- This includes voice modulation, timbre, and pitch as well as favorite expressions, accents, dialectical usage. Don’t forget throat clearing, foot scraping, or the knocking of a wedding ring against glass as a hand cleared frost from a windshield.

 

Smell-Your text should make references to perfumes, colognes, pipe tobacco, barn odors, the scent of a kitchen, the aroma of a bath, or the smell of a workshop. Smell is one of the most evocative senses in describing a character. A particular herb or soap or cleaning fluid can immediately return us to another time and place. Be sure to use that power in your descriptions.

 

Touch- Help the reader feel how rough your character’s skin was, or how smooth the clothing, how gentle the hands, or how furtive the caress.

 

Remember: describing characters well need not be that hard.

 

Good luck writing!

***

Thank you Denis for showing us all the ways to bring our characters alive on the page by using the five senses.

 

 

 

Author Bio: Every November, Denis offers November is Lifewriting Month. NILM provides writing prompts via e-mail, free tele-classes on memoir-writing techniques and many surprise memoir gifts. Denis is the author of the classic Turning Memories into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories. Most recently , he completed his mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and his uncle’s, Business Boy to Business Man. Denis is currently working on a book about “writing with passion.” Jumpstart materials are also available for writers wishing to be memoir professionals in their communities.

 

How about you? What’s your experience in describing characters?

 

Denis has generously offered to give away the Memoir Start-up Package at the end of the series to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

startuppackagemedium
The Memoir Start-up package

We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

 

 

Next Week:

Monday, 10/14: “Interview with Jerry Waxler on “The Memoir Revolution.”

 

Wednesday, 10/16: “Interview with Memoir Author  and Ex-Nun, Karen Leahy: The Summer of Yes”

 

Friday, 10/18: “Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Establishing Your Setting”

 

 

Memoir Writing Tips

The Memoir Network’s Blog Carnival: What Memoir Writers Have in Common with Sculptors

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Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler

Author’s Note: I am honored to be presenting this previous post as part of  Denis Ledoux’s The Memoir Network’s Blog Carnival in preparation for “November is Lifewriting  Month” (NILM):

 

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” Michelangelo

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Photo Credit: Rock uploaded from istockphoto

As I look at my pile of stories waiting to be shaped into a memoir, I find myself pondering the task.

 

I’ve come to the conclusion that memoir writers are really like sculptors.

*  We start with an amorphous pile of vignettes like a sculptor starts with a slab of marble.

*   We spend endless hours looking at the pile before us and envisioning what its final shape will be.

*   We study our craft ahead of time so we know where to start, what tools to use and how to keep going.

*    We keep digging and carving into our pile until it begins to take shape.

 

A sculptor starts with a slab of marble and a vision. We start with a collection of stories, generated by various methods. Here are a few I have learned and used:

1.  Identifying turning points (Linda Joy Myers) listing key life events along a timeline.

2.  Mind mapping – a hand-sketched or software-generated diagram of ideas and events.

3.” Place I’ve Lived” exercise (Jerry Waxler) – compilation of “scene pops” from describing all the homes you have lived in.

4.  “The Tree of  Me” Exercise (Sharon Lippincott) a drawing of concentric circles rippling from the core of you, resembling the rings of a tree. Each ring represents a significant date and events. From this visual, threads and patterns can be  identified.  As you can see from mine, it can get convoluted and cluttered:

My "Tree of Me" drawing
My “Tree of Me” drawing

My “Tree of Me” drawing

5.   Patchwork Quilt- think of your story as a patchwork quilt with each square representing a scene in the story. You start out by collecting the squares until you are ready to sew them into a pattern.

There is debate in writing circles about approaches to story structure called Planner or Pantser. 

Do you work from an outline (planner) or do you “fly by the seat of your pants” (pantser)?

For the purposes of defining story structure, I am a planner.

When I  reached the point of readiness to pull my stories together into a first draft, I had a general sense of my story, I wanted to leave myself open to new discoveries as I sifted, sorted, rearranged the pieces and envisioned where my story would take me. I’d heard that one shouldn’t even worry about the beginning or end until the rewrite, the next step after the first draft.

Dave Hood, Author of Find Your Creative Muse blog describes narrative structure in creative nonfiction  as “the sequence of events and the way in which a writer tells the story,” citing a variety of  frameworks that can be used.

Linda Joy Myers points out that “a memoir is a story, created and constructed with skill and focus” and requires a “story structure and narrative arc that includes three acts of dramatic structure.” She goes on to reinforce the importance of identifying “your main meaning of your story, what the book is about in one sentence (pitch) and what will the reader gain from reading your story.” Show the transformation.

 Rachelle Gardner brings up the importance of writing “real-world stories with a plot, scenes with action and dialogue rather than chronicling a series of devastating emotional events. Make sure your book has a protagonist with a choice to face (a conflict), obstacles to overcome, a desired outcome and consequences (the stakes) if the goal is not reached.”

Memoirist Meghan Ward emphasizes the importance of having a strong story arc early on as you write.

Like a sculptor needs carving tools to shape a creation, I needed a plan to fit my story into, keeping the above goals in mind about story and theme:

Annie Lamott spread her papers in a trail on the floor and rearranged them until they made sense to her as described in her writing instruction book, Bird by Bird.

Stephen King described his office space as covered in post-it notes with ideas and phrases in his memoir, On Writing.

David Price advises that “you won’t see what the story is actually about until you’re at the end” in his book, The Pixar Touch and cites the following framework for storytelling:

“Once upon a time there was…Every day… One day…Because of that…Because of that…Until finally…”

Joseph Campbell believes we are all on a mythic journey, a “Hero’s Journey.” His framework recognizes a triggering event that propels the hero into action through” the dark night of the soul” where many obstacles must be overcome until resolution /transformation is achieved.  Enjoy this YouTube video.

Author and Writing Coach Mary Carroll Moore uses the W Storyboard Structure which provides the framework for  plotting out the story in the shape of a W, using three acts, starting with the triggering event going to the first turning point, building to a climax, second turning point then moving forward toward resolution/realization/transformation. She reviews it in more detail here.

Storyboarding is the method I had chosen to start sculpting my story. I began by writing vignette summaries on colored post-it notes and placing them on a trifold poster board for Acts One, Two and Three, incorporating key points from Mary Carroll’s W Storyboard Structure and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey framework.

Mapping out my story on a storyboard using" W Story Structure" by Mary Carroll Moore
Mapping out my story on a storyboard using” W Story Structure” by Mary Carroll Moore

 

“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to other eyes as mine sees it.”  Michelangelo

 

 

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Photo Credit: “Michelangelo’s Pieta” by Allie Caulfield uploaded from Flickr Creative Commons

Like the master sculptor, Michelangelo, we all need tools to “hew away the rough walls” that would imprison the “lovely apparition” of the story we need to tell.

 

How about you? Have you envisioned your masterpiece?

 

What methods have you used to discover your story? What methods appeal to you?

 

I’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

 

 

Announcement: Congratulations, Louise Mathewson! Your name was selected in a random drawing of commenters to receive Shirley Showalter’s memoir, Blush.

 

This Week:

Wednesday, October 9: ” How I Found My Memoir Searching for My Roots”, a guest post by Paige Strickland.

Friday, October 11: “Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Describing Characters in a Memoir Can be Easy Enough.”

 

 

 

Action in Memoir, Memoir Writing Tips

Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Action is Essential in Memoir

26 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Denis Ledoux/@DenisLedoux

 

“Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”  William Shakespeare

 

I am very pleased to feature memoir author, teacher, editor and founder of The Memoir Network, Denis Ledoux in a four-part series on Memoir Writing Tips every Friday in October. Denis is presenting sessions on action, character description, setting and theme in preparation for “ November is Lifewriting Month (NILM).” The topic for today is action.

 

Welcome, Denis!

 

Denis Ledoux author profile
Denis Ledoux, author, teacher, editor

 

Action is Essential in Writing

In writing a life story, it is important to pay attention to three aspects: action, character, and setting. These will enhance your story every time. To neglect these elements is to risk having your story fall flat. In this article, we will concentrate on action.

The action of your story is its PLOT. Something must happen in your story to retain the interest of your reader.

Listen to how a child tells a story. It is all action. Nuances of character and setting are immaterial to the child. It’s what happens that counts. Our reliance on action, on plot, doesn’t wane as we grow older, but our ways of using it grow more sophisticated.

The amount of action necessary to retain interest varies enormously according to the sensibility and the education of different readers. Someone who prefers reading about ghosts and unpredictable supernatural occurrences will not find the English psychological novelist Virginia Woolf very interesting. But it remains true that readers–both of pulp fiction and of serious writing–need some sort of action to move the story along. Although much of Virginia Woolf’s action is interiorized, it counts as plot nonetheless.

When Writing About Action You Can Start in the Middle

One writer’s trick is to start in the middle of things. If you are writing about the time you got fired from a job, don’t start with the first vocational aptitude test you took in high school. Instead, start when you are first detecting a problem with a supervisor and then proceed from there to the unhappy conclusion. This sort of quick pacing will keep the interest of the reader.

Keep explanations and background material brief. Avoid the lengthy, informational flashback. Providing too much context can overwhelm your story and dissipate the energy of the action. Compare the next two paragraphs:

Groveton, an industrial city founded in 1809 and having a large population of Slovaks who started coming in 1892, Hungarians who first migrated in 1896, Byelorussian who arrived in 1899, the Greeks whose numbers swelled after 1901, Armenians who arrived around 1909, was the birthplace of my father.

My father was born in Groveton, an industrial city awash with waves of immigrants: Slovaks, Hungarians, Byelorussians, Greeks, and Armenians.

The second paragraph gives the information the reader needs to picture this bustling city but without the unneeded dates. The list of nationalities becomes central to our understanding of Groveton, and seems to wash over us like the immigrants themselves. In the first paragraph, the reader has no guidance to know if the dates are significant, and so labors through them. If it is indeed significant that Armenians arrived around 1909, that bit of information can be slipped in when it becomes important. Notice, too, that the second paragraph gets the most important information up front: My father was born in Groveton.

In the first paragraph, the writer tried hard to keep the action going by choosing different verbs to describe the arrival of each group. But the essential fact is that they all arrived and contributed to the life of the city. State that, and keep going.

Perhaps all of those immigrants arrived during your father’s childhood, and so the dates become more significant. You can still handle them in a less onerous way, read the example below:

My father was born in 1891, just before the first wave of immigrants from Slovakia arrived. He watched Groveton change almost yearly as waves of immigrants from Hungary, Byelorussia, Greece, and Armenia arrived over the next 18 years.

Your choice of words and sentence structure can contribute to the action, even in a paragraph that is conveying information to the reader

Good Luck with your writing!

***

Thank you Denis for showing us the importance of incorporating action into our writing and for giving us specific examples on how word choice and sentence structure can contribute to the action.

 

Author Bio: Every November, Denis offers November is Lifewriting Month. NILM provides writing prompts via e-mail, free tele-classes on memoir-writing techniques and many surprise memoir gifts. Denis is the author of the classic Turning Memories into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories. Most recently , he completed his mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and his uncle’s, Business Boy to Business Man. Denis is currently working on a book about “writing with passion.” Jumpstart materials are also available for writers wishing to be memoir professionals in their communities.

 

How about you? Do you have questions for Denis on how to incorporate action into your writing?

 

Denis has generously offered to give away the Memoir Start-up Package at the end of the series to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

startuppackagemedium
The Memoir Start-up package

We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

 

 

Next Week:

Monday, 10/7:  “The Memoir Network Blog Carnival: What Memoir Writers Have in Common with Sculptors.”

 

Wednesday, 10/9:  “How I Found My Memoir While Searching for My Roots: Akin to Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity” by Paige Strickland

 

Friday, 10/11:  “ Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Describing Character in Memoir Can Be Easy.”