Thoughts on Memoir, Movies and Storytelling
A potential client contacted me recently. He had written a 70,000-word memoir and was looking for an editor. I asked him to send me the first chapter so I could evaluate the degree of editing that would be required. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly ready to be edited. In fact, it needed to be completely rewritten.
What was its problem?
It told his story rather than showed it. It presented one fact after another (sometimes in random order and almost always in passive voice) about the place in which he grew up, his father and mother, his siblings, the influence of fundamental religious teachings on the community. It had some interesting details, but it had no emotional impact on me as a reader.
We made a mutual decision not to pursue working with each other. He was not open to writing coaching–only to finding a copyeditor–and I was not willing to go forward as an editor on a project that still needed so much work. But I have been thinking about what I would have told him if he had been open to suggestion.
And that is…think of your memoir as though it were a movie script.
Choose a certain number of scenes for the opening act (i.e., Chapter One) and plot them out ahead of time. What is going to happen in scene one? Who are the characters? Where are they located? What are they doing? What are they saying? What is the main character (the memoir writer) feeling as a result? After writing this out–including snippets of dialogue you want to incorporate–do the same thing for the remaining scenes in the chapter.
Then begin to write.
Such an approach would go a long way toward helping the writer understand how to show rather than tell. It would help him realize that he needs to tell a story that draws his readers in, evokes emotion in them, and connects them deeply to particular characters and events.
I would also suggest to this writer that he check his bookshelves or go to a bookstore and take a look at the first page of several really well written memoirs or biographies. Look how they begin. What does the writer do that draws you in immediately and makes you want to keep reading?
In Three Cups of Tea, for example, David Oliver Relin opens with a scene in the cockpit of a helicopter that is flying over the Hunza Valley in Northwestern Pakistan, which is surrounded by some of the highest mountain peaks in the world. Relin nervously watches a flashing red light indicating that they are almost out of fuel, while the Pakistani Pilot, Brigadier General Bhangoo, nonchalantly taps the fuel guage and explains that it is unreliable. Greg Mortenson is sitting next to the general with a map on his knees that hopefully indicates exactly where they are and how long it will be until they can land.
Relin continues to provide wonderful details that put the reader inside the cockpit. He also presents dialog that reveals the personality of the men in just a few words. And he does this page after page, making it extremely hard for the reader to put the book down!
Clearly, we can learn a great deal from analyzing the way that masters tell their tales, and it would have been a great place for my potential client to start.