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IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: Memoir
These exercises were written
by IWW
members
and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its
members.
You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that
you found
them at the Internet Writers Workshop
(http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/).
Exercise: Memoir
Prepared by: Carter Jefferson
Posted on: 10/15/2006
Exercise: In 500 words or less, show us a scene you remember that
includes your feelings and what you learned from the incident. It
should include a beginning,
middle, and end.
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Memoirs are big sellers these days.
Vivian Gornick, whose Fierce
Attachments has been considered a
classic of the genre, says a memoir should "shape experience, transform
event, deliver wisdom."
It's not a resumé, a simple record of someone's life, but a
narrative,
like an old-fashioned novel. Writers must produce scenes in which they
relive important
moments, showing not only "what happened" but how they felt when it
happened, what they learned from the experience, and how it affected
their lives.
Almost nobody thinks it's right to spend one night in jail and write a
"memoir" that tells readers the writer lived through six months in
prison, but how "true" must a
memoir be? Critics, scholars, and readers debate this fiercely. Few of
us can recall exact words spoken in the past, so nearly everyone is
willing to accept dialogue that amounts to the writer's best
recollection. Whether one may conflate experiences, that is, take parts
of several conversations and make them one, or relate a trip to the
riverbank that's actually a combination of several such trips, is at
the heart of the argument. When you write your memoir, you'll
automatically choose a side in this controversy. You don't have to say
which, but you do have an obligation to the reader and to yourself to
understand the reasons behind your choice.
If you learn something from an experience, and let the reader
vicariously live that experience, the reader will understand your
feelings and may learn something as well. In your memoir, telling us
you shot a rabbit is not enough. You
must show us your feelings, and make clear how this event affected you.
The experience doesn't have to be earth-shaking; it can be something as
ordinary as learning
to ride a bike or roller blade. Or it could be as life-changing as
adopting a child.
Memoirs, like novels or stories, are made up of scenes. A scene has a
beginning, a middle, and an end--it follows a narrative arc. It
includes a setting, at least one character, and some sort of action.
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Exercise: In 500 words or less, show us a scene you remember that
includes your feelings and what you learned from the incident. It
should include a beginning, middle, and end.
In your critiques, let the writer know whether the scene rings true;
whether you know the writer's feelings, and can understand them; and
whether you can see any part of what the writer may have learned about
life, and about herself
or himself. Did the scene meet the requirements listed in the exercise?
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.
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