Find your story, write your memoir / / Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910812968703321
• Autore: Miller Lynn <1951->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Madison, : University of Wisconsin Press, c2013
• ISBN: 1-299-31177-6; 0-299-29313-0
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (147 p.)
• Classificazione: LAN005000REF000000REF026000
• Altri autori (Persone): Lenard-CookLisa
• Disciplina: 808.06/692
• Soggetti: Autobiography - Authorship; Study and teaching
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references.
• Nota di contenuto: Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. The Occasion of the Telling: "It Begins Here because It's about This" -- A Place to Stand -- Is It an Autobiography, or Is It a Memoir? -- It's about the Storyteller -- Reliability and the Narrator -- Telling the Truth in Memoir -- The Occasion of the Telling and Organizing the Memoir -- She Died, so I Remember -- And Then, in an Instant, Everything Changed -- Now and Then, Then and Now -- Consequence and the Occasion of the Telling -- 2. The Two Yous: Finding a Place to Stand -- The Remembering Self -- The Experiencing Self -- The Dance of the Two Yous -- The Power of Testifying -- Taking Yourself by the Hand -- Negotiating Duality -- Sensory Cues as Keys to Memory -- Using Language and Imagery to Move between the Two Yous -- The Nature of Memory -- 3. Building a Narrative: Laying Down the Bones -- Beginning Your Story -- Catalysts and Conflicts -- Mapping the Tension -- Examples of Structures -- Chronological Structure -- Circular Structure -- Associative Structure -- Collage Structure -- Parallel Structure -- Locational Structure -- Choosing a Structure -- You and Your Audience -- Creating the World of Your Story -- 4. Arranging the Scenes: Giving Them Muscle -- Dramatic Structure -- Ordering the Scene -- Catalyst -- Conflict -- Rising Action -- Reversals -- Climax -- Denouement -- Particularizing the Moment -- Internal Action -- External Action -- The Emblematic Scene -- Putting It All Together -- 5. Painting the Picture: ; Language and Setting -- The Magic of Imagery -- Using Figurative Language -- Language and Sense of Place -- Setting as Metaphor -- Place as Time Period -- Language as Action -- Controlling Time -- Dialogue -- Silence -- The Secrets of Subtext -- 6. Your Story, Your Voice: Make It Your Own -- The First-Person Voice -- Between Experience and Remembering.; Beyond First Person -- Your Two Voices -- You, the Narrator -- You, the Character -- Voices of the Masters -- "She Opened Herself Up a Worm Farm" -- "The Fortuneteller Was Not Guilty" -- "Reveal[ing] Those Demons That Obsess Him" -- The Shadowy Personage Who Commits the Actual Writing -- "The Capsules of Safety, and Freedom" -- Claiming Your Voice -- You Are the Camera -- Using What You Don't Know -- 7. Honoring the Memoir Process: Taking the Next Steps -- Re-visioning Your Manuscript -- Read It Aloud -- Put It Away -- Take It Out -- An Editorial Checklist -- The Occasion of the Telling -- The Two Yous -- Building a Narrative -- Arranging the Scenes -- Painting the Picture -- Your Story, Your Voice -- Honoring the Memoir Process -- Other People, Other Rooms -- Claiming Responsibility for Your Story -- The Ethics of Guilt -- What's Next? -- Bringing Your Story into Public Space -- Your Story, Your Book -- Spotlight Exercises by Chapter -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Other Suggested Memoirs.
• Sommario/riassunto: Every person has a story to tell, but few beginners know how to uncover their story's narrative potential. And despite a growing interest among students and creative writers, few guides to the genre of memoirs and creative nonfiction highlight compelling storytelling strategies. Addressing this gap, authors Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook provide a compact, accessible guide to memoir writing that shows how an aspiring memoir writer can use storytelling tools and tactics borrowed from fiction to weave personal experiences into the shape of a story. Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir offers an overview of the building blocks of memoir writing. Individual chapters focus on key issues and challenges, such as the balance between the remembering narrator and the experiencing narrator, the capacity to honor the subjective voice, the occasion of telling (why does this narrator tell this story now ?), creating an organically functional structure for a particular story, and taking the next steps with a written memoir. Drawing on their combined years of experience teaching memoir writing, authoring works of fiction and nonfiction, and working in autobiographical performance, Miller and Lenard-Cook provide a practical guide whose core philosophy is motivated by a key word: story . Bronze winner, Foreword Book of the Year, Writing Guides