Something different today -- a list. A list you may want to keep to improve writing of all kinds, even tho this relates to my own advice to me writing memoirs. Please add to it . . .
Background: There are five types of writing: Descriptive, Compare and Contrast, Expository, Narrative, and Persuasive. The best writers use them interchangeably. Types of books: Wikipedia shows 30 categories. For example, just one subcategory, Book Formats, shows 12 types, like hardcover, softcover, audiobooks and ebooks -- your minimum considerations when publishing...
1. Free associate! Write
it down! Draft or vomit, doesn't matter. Nothing written means nothing to improve and edit. Computers and cell phone Notes help tremendously.
2. There are no rules
anymore in writing. Download your writing companion Elements of Style by Strunk and White, for free from http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/style.html
You should know the rules in
order to break them.
3. Use your own
unique "voice." Express it or find it with practice. Express that voice:
experiences and emotions, thoughts and opinions
-- that's what readers expect in memoir and what they want.
4. Don't give the
story away up front. Use foreshadowing but let it unfold.
6. Your narrator's Point
Of View (POV), age, aspect and tense should
agree. Ex. flashbacks are always
past tense and a younger age/voice. Review the 12 tenses at http://www.myenglishteacher.eu/blog/12-all-english-tenses-with-examples/
7. Dig deep! Honesty
is the concrete foundation of all good memoirs and autobiographies. Red Smith: “You
simply sit down at the
typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”
8. Show don't Tell.
Use verbs, verbs, actions and reactions and dialogue. Give details that include
all 5 internal senses: imagination,
thought, comprehension, memory and the common faculty; and 9 external: sight,
hearing, touch, proprioception,
smell, taste, temperature, pain and balance. Add lots of dialogue and thoughts.
9. Like Elmore Leonard said, "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." Cut distracting details that don't add to your story arc. Edit, polish, edit, polish . . . again and again.
10. Either complete
the scene, or let the reader know completion is coming.
11. Clarity and consistency -- the most important considerations.
Don't ever confuse the reader. Explain
later, but explain.
12.Pick a clear
ending: Redemption, Mystery solved, Obstacles overcome, Saving the World, or
new Revelations.
13. Show backstory as your story unfolds, as films do. Never stop the flow. Pick a moment in
time, an event, scene, experience;
and move from one to the next. Closely
follow your story arc.
14. Memoirs are chronological,
no matter how you write it. Carefully constructed flashbacks are fine, but
never give away future
developments in the present moment. That's a different kind of book -- a semi-autobiography while alive.
15. Use foreshadowing
and tell your reader its key points later in your story, or don't tell them at
all.
16. Get to the point!
Even suspense lasts for only so long.
17. There must be resolution
and closure. If not one, leave clear indications of another novel to follow.
You can't leave your
reader hanging, or with no satisfying resolution; or they'll hate your book, and
you. 18.
Set a target date. Know when to stop.
Rodney Richards Copyright 2014
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Surviving Bipolar Disorder in the modern age . . . a journey of Hope for the afflicted.
My poetic memoir Episodes available at www.amazon.com/episodes-rodney-richards/dp/0615914705/
My poetic memoir Episodes available at www.amazon.com/episodes-rodney-richards/dp/0615914705/
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