www.magicofmemoir.com

1. What Made THE TENDER BAR
a Bestselling Memoir?
How to Create a “Structural
Dream” for Your Memoir
Linda Joy Myers & Brooke Warner
www.WriteYourMemoirInSixMonths.com
www.MagicOfMemoir.com

2. We’re looking forward to
these 4 weeks together!
Linda Joy Myers, PhD, is president of the
National Association of Memoir Writers and
the author of Song of the Plains, as well as
Don’t Call Me Mother, The Power of Memoir,
and Journey of Memoir.
Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes
Press, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and
a TEDx speaker and podcaster. She’s the
author of Write On, Sisters! (coming this
August), Green-Light Your Book, What’s Your
Book? and How to Sell Your Memoir.

3. What Makes The Tender Bar
a “Structural Dream”?
• Linear / Coming-of-age
• Thematic
• Tightly woven—every scene matters
• Pays close attention to his tenses—
past tense and some future/conditional
• Holds you in the “fictive dream”

4. Tracking the Structure of a Linear Memoir
Chapter 1: 1972, age 7, awareness of The Men
Chapter 2: Same age, The Voice, introduces his father
Chapter 3: Same age, Security Blanket, introduces that he’s sensitive/
relationship with his mother
Chapter 4: Grandpa, male figure but fraught
Chapter 5: Junior, introduces fatherlessness, the problem of his name
44 chapters total + Epilogue
Review the chapter titles
Arc of this memoir—age 7 through young adulthood
(which technically makes it coming-of-age)

5. p 42: “I was only trying to replace a voice, so I didn’t
need much. Just another masculine entity, another pretend father. Still, I realized
that a pretend father would be better if I could see him. Manhood is mimesis. To
be a man, a boy must see a man. Grandpa hadn’t panned out. Naturally I turned
to the only other man in my vicinity—Uncle Charlie…”
p 52: Grandmother reassuring herself that good men do exist.
“Why are there so many bad men in our family. … It’s not just our family. There
are bad men everywhere. That’s why I want you to grow up to be good… no
more tantrums…no more security blankets. You need to take care of your
mother…She’s counting on you. I’m counting on you.”
p 161: “My best guess was that I was neither boy nor man.
p 163: On his father: “What if my father was pleased to hear my voice?”
JR’s masterful weaving of themes throughout the book
—413 pages.
How does a boy become a man?
Who are the examples in his life?

6. This theme is woven throughout the story—
his mother, father, the family, men at the bar.
pp 24-25: Mother’s relationship with the truth early in book:
“On those rare occasions when my mother was caught in a lie,
she was refreshingly unrepentant. She had a ‘relationship’ with the truth…”
p 42: “Our first mutual lie.”
p 175: Blanket metaphor, part of her lie: “My mother had subtly, secretly
shipped way a sliver of herself every summer.”
p 327: Truth, rather than lie in his job at the Times: “I’d take a deep breath and
tell myself to tell the truth and I would find the words…”
p 387: Lie takeaway at end of book, watching video: “She was an inspired liar,
a brilliant liar, and she was also lying to herself…I saw that we must lie to
ourselves now and then…”
Theme of Lying

7. Objects and places as theme:
The Centennial Couch
Grandpa’s house
The blanket
The Bar
Yale
Manhasset
Arizona
The Men
Words and literature
McGraw
The Voice
Charlie
Steve
Mother
Interlocking themes:
Manhood and lying—mother & father dynamic
Belonging, the bar, and the men
Steve, Charlie, and manhood
Books, words, and writing
Women, self-esteem, and lying to oneself
Yale, self-esteem, struggle to learn and write
Mother, intimacy, and autonomy
Father, abandonment, hope

8. Memory Passages in Linear Memoir
• Recalling scenes/events/circumstances the
reader has already read
• Remembering/writing about events that happen
outside of the linear timeline of your memoir
• Using narration to guide your reader about
things your narrator might not have known at the
time

9. Examples
pp 164-165: “I asked my mother how I would spot my father at the
airport. I had no memory of him… What I remember best is what
neither of us said…. My father—as a grown man, as a father—
understood better than I what he’d done… I would recognize it years
later, when I knew much more about guilt and self-loathing, and how
they make a man look and sound.”
p 375: “Steve didn’t understand, and they didn’t explain—
the men of Publicans never explained. They just let Steve
continue calling me Junior, and they never did. Not once. It was a
break with protocol, an act of tenderness, which I’d failed to
recognize. Until that night.”
p 387: “My mother fussed with her nine-month-old son, then held
him up, admiring him…”

10. Time Markers—Moving Your Reader
Through Time and Space
• Reason for time markers: Guiding the reader
through time makes the reader feel taken care of,
and keeps them in the “fictive dream.”
• Scenes happen at a particular time—grounding
the reader and tracking forward movement of the
plot and action.
• Various time markers used—years, days, months,
weeks, hours. Keeps track of how long between one
event/scene/reflection and the next.
• Grounding in time and place begins in Chapter 1—first paragraphs:
“If a man can chart with any accuracy his evolution from small boy to
barfly, mine began on a hot summer night in 1972. Seven years old,
driving through Manhasset with my mother…”

11. P 36: “Days before my eighth birthday…”
p 39. “Some weeks later…”
p 43: “Just after The Voice disappeared…”
p 53: “I was nine and McGraw was seven…”
p 78: “Just eighteen months in the desert had changed my
cousins into precious metals…”
p 162: “Time had passed and I was almost seventeen…”
p 312: “I was twenty-three years old…”
Don’t be afraid to be direct:

12. At Yale, pp 184-185:
I walked to the library…
within minutes I faded in my leather chair…
At midnight I went back to my room.
After class I took sanctuary under my spreading elm…
Before beginning my next paper…
No matter how hard I studied that fall…
By the end of the semester…
Tracking time markers within scene:

13. See you next Tuesday!
Class 2:
THE ROMANCE OF PLACE:
How to Paint a Picture That Enchants Your Reader