Memoir Boot Camp: Session 1. Writing About Other People, taught by Claire Bidwell Smith

1. Session 1
Writing About Other People
Taught by
Claire Bidwell Smith
E L E V A T E Y O U R M E M O I R
B O O T C A M P

2. What to Consider When
Writing About
Real People

3. Should you tell them you are
writing about them?

4. Differing memories and experiences

5. Emotions

6. Legalities

7. Disguising and
Composite Characters

8. Moments
From Claire’s
Personal
Experience

9. CRAT
Craft
Considerations

10. p. 199
My father didn’t come to Poughkeepsie to tell me
something I already knew about the familial impact of
racial terror in our nation. He didn’t come to tell me
something I suspected about the violation of his
mother and his brother. He was running, ducking,
deflecting, and he didn’t want to run, duck, or deflect
anymore. I felt all of what he told me but I knew there
was more his body needed to say. That night, I saw in
that slumping, sleeping black man the ten-year-old
black child who ran away from home because he
tired of the beatings his father gave his mother and
siblings. I saw the fourteen-year-old black child
charged with hiding the money his father made from
bootlegging. I saw the sixteen-year-old black child
forced to share his valedictorian honor with a white
student with a lower GPA. I saw the nineteen-year-old
black child who sold weed to make it through college.
I saw the twenty-year-old black child who proudly
repped the Republic of New Afrika . . . I saw the
twenty-seven-year-old black child who sent his son
and ex-wife postcards every week.
Examples

11. -=
p. 43
She grew up in a big white house in a good neighbor-
hood. My grandfather struggled with depression, and
his wife was stern with desperation. The four girls,
fueled by jealousy, driven by competition, tore at one
another in their claim for parental approval.
The Thoroughbred, my grandfather called my
mother.
Penny was pudgy, with red hair and freckles;
Pammy was plain but perfect; and Phyllis, “Oh,
Phyllis . . . ”
My mother’s sister Phyllis died at thirty-three. She
died of a cat scratch, of blood poisoning. Phyllis was
an alcoholic. Every story I’ve ever heard about her is
the kind you forget immediately, the details at once
jumbled even as you’re crossing the threshold of the
room you heard it in.
There’s much I don’t understand about my mother
growing up, about the venom whispered after lights
out, about the pinches, the dress stealing, the silent
treatment, the lap claiming. I only saw the aftermath.
Examples

12. p. 5
Freeman Diallo. When I gave birth to
you, I had labored for twenty-four
hours. The first words ever said about
you came from your father. “He’s
beautiful.” They cut you out of me, a
thin, wavering bloody line, and then my
flesh stretched wide for you, and you
were born brown mixed with red like
the clay of the Black Belt. I had barely
dilated, only a centimeter. Like I
couldn’t bear to let you go. And the
obstetrician said that in another time in
history I wouldn’t have made it. Too
small, too tight. Thank God you came
into this world when you did. Thank
God for the scalpel that broke you into
this time.
Examples

13. p. 85
Charlie introduced me formally, stiffly, to
each man. Pleased to meet you, kid, said
Joey D, a giant with a tuft of gingery hair
atop his spongy orange head, and features
glued to the head at odd angles. He
seemed to be made of spare parts from
different Muppets, like a Sesame Street
Frankenstein—head of Grover, face of Oscar,
thorax of Big Bird . . . Joey D had the manic
energy of a small man. He speed-walked,
fluttered his hands, spoke in word spasms
that left him winded. Like hay fever
sneezes, whole sentences exploded from
his mouth in one burst
Oceansgoingtoberoughtoday!
Examples

14. Writing Prompts
• Write about someone you loved deeply without using the word love.
Show through action, dialogue, and setting.
• Write a character sketch about someone you didn’t like, someone
who hurt you, or a person you felt you could never forgive. Show the
person through action and dialogue.
• Enter into your work-in-progress, noticing opportunities to write
about other people. Write a new scene.

15. Share

16. Next Week
Session 2:
Likeability and Culpability
Taught by Terese Mailhot
**Same Zoom link and password each week**