need a draft to be done

 

In 750-1000 words, write memoir in which you focus on a complication you had to deal with.   Keep the time frame for the memoir within a span of no more than 24 hours.  Look, for example, at “Big Boy,” in which Sedaris writes a memoir about a complication in a time span of about 10 minutes.  Some possibilities might

• explore a relationship  with another member of your family, friends, community
• explore a relationship with someone at your job or at school

Develop your story by integrating the basic features of a memoir.  Remember, you’re telling a good story to your audience.  Know where you’re story is going so that each part leads up to, what Andrew Stanton called, your “punchline.”

Your memoir will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

1. How well the story integrated the basic features of a memoir
2. How the story used effective strategies, such as an effective tone, dialogue, and rich/vivid details
3. How well the story uses clear, coherent, and correct sentences

Special Strategies for Writing a Memoir

Good memoirs, because they are personal stories, integrate special strategies that connect to readers and become memorable. Memoirs should

· evoke an appropriate tone

· use effective dialogue

· Incorporate rich and vivid details

Evoke an Appropriate Tone

Tone simply means the attitude of you, the narrator. What emotions are you trying to evoke in your readers as they read your story? Your memoir can display your attitude about the place, the time, the characters, or the complication—or all of these. But you want your tone to be appropriate; your attitude should reflect the point you want to make in your memoir. Your tone should be carefully determined and developed.

To develop tone, choose words carefully when describing important people, places or things. Consider the connotations of the words. What emotions do theses descriptive words suggest to readers? For example, if you describe your where your parents live as a “house,” that creates a different tone than if you describe the place as a “home.” The word “house” suggests a structure or building where people reside. The word “home,” however, suggests feelings of love, safety, comfort. Do you want to go to the house? Or do you want to go home? These are two different questions because of the tone that one word creates.

You can also use dialogue to create a specific tone because what you choose to have your characters say and how they say it will shape your attitude about them.

Use Effective Dialogue

Dialogue not only helps shape your attitude about the characters, but it also helps make your story richer in detail. Dialogue can reveal characters’ value systems and emotional state. Here are some guidelines for using dialogue:

· Use dialogue to move the story forward. Dialogue is a key moment in the memoir and should not be used carelessly. Everything people say in the story must have point. If you read only the dialogue in a memoir, you should be able to glean a good idea about the story’s main point.

· Write the way your characters speak. People don’t speak in grammatically correct sentences, usually, or even in complete thoughts. Listen how people talk and this will give you a way to write your dialogue. But be careful and not to fill your sentences with “ums” and “ahs.” Those will actually clutter your dialogue.

· Identify who is talking. Put your dialogue in “double quotation marks.” Also, you need to use dialogue tags to indicate who is speaking (e.g. he said, she said, Anna yelled, Charlie whispered). Not every statement needs a dialogue tag; however, if you leave off the tag, it should be obvious who said the line.

· Create unique voices for characters. Each of your characters should different. You can vary their tone, cadence, dialects or style to give them each a unique voice.

Incorporate Rich and Vivid Details

When telling stories and connecting readers to your own personal experiences, you should use rich, vivid descriptive details. Effective description means describing in detail the people, places, or things that help you achieve your tone or move the story forward. Here are some guidelines for rich, vivid descriptive details:

·
Use the five senses. What does it smell like? What does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? What does it taste like? Often, a good memoir will incorporate all of the senses in some way.

· Use figurative language. Similes and metaphors help you compare a part of your memoir to something else that readers might already be familiar with. For example, if you want to describe the taste of blood on your lips after you were punched in the nose, you can say “it tasted like tin, or like I was sucking on a penny.” By comparing the taste of blood to the taste of a penny, it creates a vivid sensory impression in the reader’s mind.

· Use specific, concrete details. Rather than say you went to the hospital, say you went to Mile Bluff Medical Center. That concrete detail grounds your memoir in reality and adds a layer of authenticity to your writing. Although your reader may not know where this place is, the reader begins to trust your descriptions. Also, rather than say you had lunch, describe what you had for lunch—a chicken burrito and a Coke. If the person, place, or thing is a key feature of your memoir, spend some time giving it rich and vivid details.