Post by Vicki Mayk on Feb 24, 2019 23:10:42 GMT
Hello, All,
Here is your class material for Week Two of our memoir class. I've copied it into this message and also attached it.
Just a couple of reminders:
Please try to stay to the page limit in the assignment. This will make it easier for everyone to be able to read one another's work and comment on it.
Assignments are due at 12 midnight on Saturday or at 12 a.m. Sunday morning. To me, that means the same thing. But someone -- quite rightfully -- wasn't sure, so that is my attempt to clarify.
I will comment on everyone's work here on the boards, but I will also send you some written comments on each of your assignments.
Please feel free to reach out to me with questions.
Best,
Vicki
Lesson #2: Telling It Slant: Choosing Sensory Details To Reflect the Emotions In Memoir
Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant—
Success in Circuit Lies
Too light for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind
Emily Dickinson
When we write memoir, we are writing our memory – our perspective – of events that happened. It is our “take” on that memory. Our “slant,” to put it another way. The very act of writing memoir means that we will choose details that convey our very individual experience.
Telling it slant is more than a line in an Emily Dickinson poem. It’s also the name of one of my favorite books about writing creative nonfiction. Tell It Slant: Creating, Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction is written by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola and gives a good overview of all kinds of nonfiction writing (not just memoir). But why would those two authors choose that title? And what was Emily Dickinson saying when she told us to “tell it slant.”
Without having this week’s lesson turn into a discussion of Dickinson’s poem, let me just say that I think that the key lies in the words “The Truth must dazzle gradually.” Our readers don’t want us to just bluntly write: “It was the worst day of my life.” Or “I was terrified.” Or “No one could have been happier than I was on the day that I entered college.” Our writing and our descriptions should paint pictures with words that slowly convey emotions to readers. The writer Marilyn Bousquin calls this “slanting details to make emotional truth concrete.”
So what does that mean? Here’s a great example from Sue William Silverman’s craft book Fearless Confessions. Silverman’s first memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, recounts her childhood when she was sexually molested by her father. In the following example, she shows how her inner life as a child was reflected in the details she chose. Silverman writes:
I wouldn't, for example, simply state: "I was born in Washington, D.C., where my father worked for the government. Before I was old enough to start school, I wandered around the cemetery across from my house in my favorite red shoes. Most of the other kids, like my sister, were in school. Lonely, I spent a lot of time by myself." Can you see how flat, informational, and list-like these sentences sound? Why? Because they don't bring you inside the celluloid of my life.
Instead, I need to reveal my experience in a narrative using the senses to create an emotion
or a mood that reflects how I feel in this one moment of time: “Mornings, after my sister leaves for school, I wander past the wrought-iron iron gate into the cemetery across from my house on Southern Avenue in Washington, D.C. Tombstones, gray and cracked with age, resemble the teeth in my grandmother's mouth. Fallen leaves smell of dust, only a hint of air breathing across autumn. No one passes as I sit beneath a maple, the ground chilly and damp. My red shoes, like a beacon, like an emergency light on a police car, are the brightest splotch of color. But no one sees.”
Sue William Silverman. Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir (Kindle Locations 195-198). Kindle Edition.
The second version uses details that convey her loneliness and isolation. Unlike the first example, she never says she’s lonely and isolated – but in the second example, those feelings are conveyed in details. “Tombstones grey and cracked with age,” “fallen leaves smell of dust” and red shoes that are “a beacon that no one sees” are all details that clearly convey her isolation and a desolate feeling.
It’s important to note that the very act of remembering stories from our past will naturally evoke details that will reflect our emotions. We need to be aware of them. As we recall a happy day, our recollections of how things looked, smelled, etc. will reflect that happiness. Even if it was raining on a day filled with pleasant memories, we somehow don’t recall that rain as gloomy. On a day like that, we may focus on the comforting sound that the raindrops make on the roof or the fresh smell of spring.
I’d like to share another example. This example illustrates two things that are important when choosing details that reflect our attitudes and emotions. The first thing to remember is that, to be most effective, details should be specific. For example, if you mention trees in your description, be aware that specifying the kind of trees can have an effect on the mood and emotions created in the scene. For example, consider the difference between a scene in which towering, sturdy oak trees are described and one in which weeping willows, with their drooping branches, dominates the description. Aim for specific details to convey mood and emotions.
The second thing to remember when choosing details is to employ all the senses. We tend to default to the visual, but don’t neglect taste, touch, scent and sound. If you are trying to ensure that you include multiple senses, try following a “three beat” style for sensory details, such as two visual and one auditory detail or two scents and one tactile or textural detail.
The following example from Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club is specific in its use of multisensory details that clearly convey Karr’s attitude toward her childhood home in Leechfield, Texas.
We drove all night, Lecia curled on the backseat. I stretched out dozing on the flat shelf under the rear windshield’s slope. The sheer stink of my hometown woke me before dawn. The oil refineries and chemical plants gave the whole place a rotten-egg smell. The right wind could give you a whiff of the Gulf, but that was rare. Plus the place was in a swamp, so whatever industrial poisons got pumped into the sky just seemed to sink down and thicken in the heat. I later learned that Leechfield at that time was the manufacturing site for Agent Orange, which surprised me not one bit. That morning when I woke up lying under the back slant of the windshield, the world smelled not unlike a wicked fart in a closed room. I opened my eyes. In the fields of gator grass, you could see the ghostly outline of oil rigs bucking in slow motion. They always reminded me of rodeo riders, or of some huge servant creatures rising up and bowing down to nothing in particular. In the distance, giant towers rose from each refinery, with flames that turned every night’s sky an odd, acid-green color. The first time I saw a glow-in-the-dark rosary, it reminded me of those five-story torches that circled the town at night. Then there were the white oil-storage tanks, miles of them, like the abandoned eggs of some terrible prehistoric insect.
Karr has made great, specific choices employing sight and scent that evoke a description of her childhood home. The details clearly reflect that she does not feel nostalgic about the place. Her associations are grim and heavy. It is interesting to note that her childhood experiences also tend to the grim and sober.
Assignment, Week 2: (Due Saturday, March 2 at midnight – that is, 12 a.m. Sunday morning)
This week’s writing prompts focus on telling it “slant:” using details and descriptions to convey your feelings and emotions. Choose one of the following prompts and write two to four pages which focus on using details that will reflect our emotional “truth” in that scene.
Prompt #1: Imagine a room from your home when you were a child or teen. It should be a room that is important to you in some way. (In my case, it would be my grandmother’s kitchen, because of my strong associations with her.) Write a page describing the room as if you are a child sitting in it. If you want to do more than describe, you can also choose to write a scene about something happening in the room that includes a description of your surroundings from your perspective as a child. Then write a page from the viewpoint of you as an adult, revisiting that space. Try to reflect a change in perspective in the choice of details you use.
Prompt #2: This prompt may be especially helpful in pinpointing details that will reflect the emotions you feel about a memory/event. Identify a memory that is important to you. It might be the day your child was born, when your spouse/significant other left you, the death of someone close to you or any of the hundreds of events that stand as milestones in our memories. As you relive that memory in your mind, make a list of the details that stand out. Don’t overthink it. Let the scene play in your mind like a movie. What stands out? It might include something like the song you heard playing that day, whether it was hot or cold, the color of flowers, the high-pitched tone of someone’s voice. Jot down whatever details you recall as you remember the event.
Now write a scene about the event, building off of the details you listed so that your piece reflects your inner emotions and attitudes about that memory. Write two to four pages. You can go a bit longer if necessary, but do not exceed five pages.