notes from class on memoir and creative nonfiction techniques/ sfuadcnf.com

1. As a form of Creative Nonfiction
“Good memoirs are a careful act of construction.” —William
Zinsser
• Frey
• * Joyce Maynard

2.  “…your story is your story to tell…”
—page 21, Tell It Slant
 Based on our reading in Chapter 2, “Writing
the Family” (Tell It Slant), what are some of the
challenges you think you might face in
working on your memoir piece?

3.  Real Life
 Reflection
 Research
 Reading
 “Riting”
Adapted from Lee Gutkind, editor of Creative
Non-Fiction magazine

4.  Sensory detail: the body, smell, sight, sounds,
taste, touch
 Immersion into and with actual events,
locations, people
 Scenes (showing) versus telling stories from
real life that draw in the reader
 Description from real life of people and places

5.  What is the meaning behind the real experience
or story the writer is telling?
 Differentiates a story from an anecdote
 Reflection means asking yourself questions
about your story, whether it’s a personal
experience or a story outside yourself.
 Why did it stay with me? What did I learn from
this? Why does it matter?

6.  The mission of nonfiction, in part, is to inform
and educate.
 Even a personal story requires research in
order to provide significant details.
 The research connects the personal story to a
larger intellectual context.

7.  Even people writing about their own lives
often extend outside themselves
 To verify
 To add context
 For example…

8.  Expanding your knowledge and ideas by
DEVOURING the works of other writers.
 Not just other creative nonfiction writers, but
other artists and fiction writers and scientists
and musicians and on and on. The more you
know, the more context you have for your own
discovery

9.  The rough-draft writing of inspiration and
exercises
 The revision writing of addressing the elements
of creative nonfiction: sensory detail, scenes,
structure, characterization, language, voice,
theme
 Editing: cleaning up grammar, sentence
structure, word choice and, sometimes, the
complete structural redrafting of pieces.

10.  Strong writing contains specificity; weak
writing is vague, reliant on clichéd imagery
and abstraction
 Consider the use of sensory detail as described
in chapter one in Tell It Slant.
 Create for the reader the experience through
the use of details

11.  You’ve heard this before: Show, don’t tell
 In this case, we are talking about showing
action rather than recounting it
 Scene happens in real time: action + dialogue
 Exposition is summarized
 This has a special challenge in non-fiction and
memoir in particular. What’s that special
challenge?

12.  Scenes happen in real time, through action and
dialogue
 Exposition summarizes action and dialogue
 Scenes slow the writing down
 Exposition—summary—condenses and speeds
it up
 So you want to choose wisely and make sure
the impactful elements are conveyed through
scene, and not summarized

13.  Character in writing is created through a
combination of direct and indirect
characterization.
 Description of appearance and dialogue are
two of the main forms of characterization, and
you want to aim to use both in these.

14.  Narrative means, in the simplest terms, how
we tell the story, or how we “frame” the story.
 Is it chronological? Ordered by the importance
of the events? Circular, coming back to the
beginning of the piece? Are there sections that
each begin with a uniform element?
 Narrative construction in writing is how we
make transform memories/ ideas into...art

15. In Night of the Gun, David Carr writes:
“Memoir is a very personal form of creation
myth.”
In Tell It Slant, the authors write: “Memory itself
could be called its own bit of creative
nonfiction.”
How do you interpret these statements?

16.  “A metaphor is a way of getting at a truth that
exists beyond the literal.”
 Metaphor is a common device or “technique”
in poetry. Metaphors create direct
comparisons, and create a new way of seeing
or thinking about the original
idea/object/person.

17.  “Repeat after Me” by David Sedaris
 “The Love of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed
 Voice
 Description
 Scene
 Theme
 What other writing elements do you note in these
excerpts that correspond to the sensory chapters in
Tell It Slant that we read: smell, taste, hearing,
touch, sight

18.  What are some words you would use to
describe the voice of this piece?
 Examples of voice

19.  Group 1: characterization: find examples of
direct characterization for the characters in this
story.
 Group 2: scene versus exposition. Find
examples of scene versus summary and discuss
why the methods are used as they are
 Group 3: discuss the narrative frame and
structure of the piece
 Group 4: theme and metaphor: what’s the
larger meaning of this story, what is the
meaning behind the meaning of the title.

20.  “The Love of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed
Voice: how would you describe it?
Group 1: Scene versus Exposition
Group 2: sensory details
Group 3: theme and metaphor
Group 4: structure

21. Pick an event from your life that was
meaningfully and that raised questions for
you—that has potential for a short memoir. Use
the prompt on p. 12: “I remember”…
First, let’s read, p. 57, “First Actors,” (Tell It Slant)
Write a scene that either is the event or related
to the event, make it as detailed as you can—
not a summary, but a scene.
Just plunge in: 20 minutes

22.  Revise or continue working on today’s free-
writing exercise for a 2-4 page first draft, due
next week
 Or: Use one of the exercises from Tell It Slant,
pages 12-16 and write something new for a 2-4
page first draft
 Or...write something different based on an
idea/ inspiration for a 3-4 page first memoir
draft due next week.