The following is a class Honey House offers and has presented to several groups, from a parks and recreation program to a botanical gardening club.
Setting the Bones of Memoir
Four Steps to Finding Your Transformation, Moments of Change, and Theme
by Cesca Janece Waterfield
This class effectively unearths vital details that inform good memoir writing. It is flexible, innovative, and diverse, and offers writers creative ways to tell personal stories. Writers will stride out of this class knowing that they have the tools to write memoir.
The writing prompts that reveal the writer’s stories also encourage self-discovery, so this class also draws people primarily seeking to know themselves better.
These writing exercises help create stand-alone pieces and they also help build the basis for writers who aim to complete longer work. Each activity has a memorable concept and name that writers can continue to use after they leave.
Now, about those activities… For any story to resonate with a reader, regardless of genre, the main character must show change and reach some measure of transcendence, no matter how small. That’s where Activity 1 comes in. With a simple sentence structure, writers zero in on several transformations in their lives, giving them a choice of memoir topics.
Activity 2 fills in the blanks about this transformation and helps locate the details. We discuss the flexibility of painting those details with personalized strokes. For example, the writer can make their “entry” in the middle of the narrative (in medias res), with a flashback, or discover other entrances.
The three-sentence description of Activity 3 helps writers discover and refine their essay’s themes. It can also further clarify structure.
Finally, Activity 4 is a good prompt to close the workshop since it invites later examination. It helps writers discover both their personal purpose for writing, and the audience of their memoir. This activity is where the writer answers, What truth is important for me to get at? Who wants to hear what I find?
This workshop allows writers to create a memoir that engages readers by making clear who is remembering and why that story is remembered. And they have fun in the process.
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