| NOT WRITING THE OBVIOUS | | | | character', to be confusing. Our lives and |
| The use of sensual clues: colors, smell, sound, | | | | personalities will always have ragged edges, and |
| touch, taste. | | | | our memoirs should reflect that if they are to ring |
| As writers we have to be not just poets, but | | | | true. |
| painters. A painter has to decide what details to | | | | So the richness of your memoirs will in part have |
| keep in, and what to leave out. What bogs down | | | | to do with the depth and subtlety of your |
| so many memoirs is an abundance of deadly | | | | perception of others. Many of these characters |
| detail. It's partly an anxiety to be truthful, to | | | | will have been brought up in a different era, and in |
| reproduce faithfully what a person was like, or | | | | different social situations, their personalities and |
| what happened, step by laborious step - but it's | | | | attitudes formed by these differences. The |
| partly laziness. We have not taken the bald facts, | | | | tensions, subtleties and challenges these |
| the basic ingredients and magic-ed them into a | | | | differences produce have somehow to be |
| creative picture. | | | | conveyed, that's partly why it's important to |
| Think of a portrait painter, an impressionistic | | | | capture the character of time and place, as well |
| interpretation can often reveal more about a | | | | as of personality, when dealing with, say, our |
| character and situation than a minutely detailed | | | | parents and grandparents. Make sure that in any |
| painting which robs the portrait of soul, and | | | | reported speech, you use the idioms of the |
| frequently obscures personality with it's detail. | | | | period. More subtly, make sure that the reactions |
| If you want an illustration of how to use the | | | | of your characters reflect the understandings and |
| senses to evoke a scene, read the opening | | | | moraes of the times in which they lived, rather |
| paragraph of "The Visitor", A Prospect of the | | | | than current attitudes. |
| Sea, by Dylan Thomas (J.M. Dent 1955). | | | | OURSELVES AS CHARACTER. |
| Describe..... | | | | It was a revelation to me when I first heard |
| CHARACTER IN MEMOIR WRITING | | | | someone say that when writing memoirs you |
| Writing autobiography is of course, not just about | | | | must remember to think of yourself as a |
| us. We're writing about all the others who people | | | | character. Once you're on the page, you too are |
| our lives, our memories, our realities, so a good | | | | a character to be manipulated for the purposes |
| autobiography will have characters, in the same | | | | of your story, for what you are trying to say. |
| way that a work of fiction has characters. Some | | | | This perception helps us to be objective and the |
| characters will just be vignettes, people who pass | | | | discipline we apply to other characters and how |
| through the story temporarily, but there will be a | | | | we reveal them, we can apply to ourselves as |
| core of permanent characters, and these must | | | | the subject of the autobiography. We too have |
| evolve as the narrative progresses. | | | | become a character in a book. That liberates us. |
| What makes character? It has been said that a | | | | It gives us an objectivity about our experiences. |
| good character has internal conflict. Some authors | | | | Many new writers tell the story of their lives like |
| say you have to know characters inside out, to | | | | a synopsis, instead of unraveling it, bit by bit, like |
| have their psyche at your finger tips. That may | | | | any other adventure story, because an adventure |
| be OK for fiction, but we are writing non-fiction, | | | | story it certainly is. As memoir writers, we still |
| writing about people who really have, or do exist, | | | | have to build in suspense, paradox, unknowability. |
| and who have lived lives that are not mere fiction. | | | | To this end one approach is to try writing in the |
| Our role then is primarily to observe, but to | | | | moment, ie. writing about your childhood self |
| observe with such sensitivity that we can detect | | | | within the confines of the understanding of that |
| paradox. We don't have to try to resolve these | | | | child, and not necessarily with the hindsight of |
| conundrums, not even when the paradox involves | | | | maturity; being the character in love who really |
| our selves. This sensitivity to complexity is what | | | | doesn't know what will happen next, the |
| can give our narrative text depth. | | | | character setting out on a journey, destination |
| There can also be a tendency, when writing | | | | unknown. |
| autobiographical material, to tie things up into | | | | So when you write about yourself, use your |
| parcels, to 'concretize' emotions or reactions | | | | memory, but also your writer's eye. Your writer's |
| because then they're dealt with, and we know | | | | eye is both objective and engaged. You enter in, |
| where we are. This is what Mum was like, this is | | | | trying at one level to empathize with your |
| what happened, and this is what I feel/felt about | | | | characters, including yourself, and yet you remain |
| it. In wanting to understand ourselves we can end | | | | an observer, for ever on the outside. |
| up putting ourselves, and others, into boxes, for | | | | Wordsworth, you recall, described poetry as |
| neatness sake. Perhaps that's something to be | | | | emotion recollected in tranquility. He experienced |
| wary of. As people we evolve, and so we must | | | | it, then, as a poet, he distanced himself to |
| allow the characters in our narrative to evolve, | | | | observe the experience. That's a bit what I'm |
| and to surprise us sometimes, to act 'out of | | | | getting at. |