Episodic Memoir in a Flash

I am delighted to present this guest post by author and journalist SHERI GRAVES.

 

Sheri Graves is a writer and editor with decades of experience, starting with over 42 years as a reporter and copy editor for The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, CA. Her first novel, Deep Doo-Doo, won the 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for Crime Fiction. She taught memoir writing for seven years and is now a freelance memoir-writing coach. She also does freelance research, writing, and editing from her home in Santa Rosa.  Check out her book on Amazon.

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The biggest mistake most people make in writing memoir is to try to write the whole story-arc of their life all at once. That’s a gigantic chore and one that likely won’t end well.

It is much easier on both writer and reader if your life story is broken down into individual essays of no more than 1,500 to 2,000 words each. Actually, it can be as short as 500 words.

This memoir writing style is called “Episodic Memoir” or “Flash Memoir” and is a way to keep the reader engaged. Who is your reader? Family, friends, anyone of any age?

Don’t waste time in the beginning by setting the stage for the story to come. Many a reader falls asleep during the setup and never actually gets to the story itself. Do mention the date or at least the year this event took place; work it into a sentence casually.

Say you want to write a story about the time you went on a charter boat and came home with a 22-pound salmon. Here’s a gripping tale than can be told in exciting action-writing by opening in the middle of the catch:

“The fish fought violently for its freedom, dragging me back and forth, port to starboard, starboard to port, as it repeatedly swam under the belly of the boat. I thought my arms were being pulled from my shoulder sockets.”

One or two more short paragraphs of the battle, continuing to build tension, will make a thrilling opener for this memoir. Then, in the middle of the action, you pull the reader away from the scene to do the setup:

“I began to wonder how I had gotten myself into such a predicament. Slip-sliding across the deck while other fishermen scurried out of my way, I remembered that seemingly innocuous dinner conversation a couple of nights earlier, on Father’s Day 1992, when Tom mentioned he was planning to go salmon fishing on a charter out of Tiburon.”

Here is where you insert crisp dialogue:

“Ah, you’d love it!” Tom said with a roaring laugh as he slapped his meaty hand on the tabletop. “Come with me!”

“But I have never been fishing in my life! I have never baited a hook. I have never cast a line into the ocean. I don’t even have a fishing pole,” I said.

“Don’t worry about that,” he assured me. “I’ll help you. I have poles and line of different weights. We’ll get bait on the way to the dock. I’ll bait your hook, and all you have to do is drop it over the side. I’ll measure out the depth. When a fish grabs the bait, just pull him in!”

Now you return to the battle with the salmon:

“Yeah, I thought. ‘Just pull him in!’ HOW? Who would ever think a salmon could be stronger than a human?

I was out of breath when the fish decided on a different tack. He began swimming from bow to stern and stern to bow, making me run the length of the boat over and over again until I kept stumbling, sliding, and occasionally landing flat on my butt.

“Want me to help?” Tom yelled as I scrambled past him one more time.

“No!” I growled in my loudest voice. I flashed him the dirtiest look I could muster.

Here you insert two or three paragraphs about Tom—when, where, and how you met, various succinct details about your friendship. Then you return to the battle with the fish and wrap it up quickly with you reeling in the catch after a 45-minute fight. You write about the boat workers taking, weighing, and cleaning the fish before placing it into a plastic bag with your name on it and dropping the bag into an ice chest.

You finish off the story with two or three paragraphs about how exhausted yet exhilarated you felt, how a cold beer (name the brand) tasted so good after the battle, how Tom smiled broadly  in approval, and how you did it all over again and went home with two fresh-caught salmon. Be sure to say one weighed 22 pounds and the second was just over 15 pounds. Throw in a mention about the weather and the waves and how wobbly your legs were when you finally set foot on land again.

This format will work with just about any episodic memoir, even when there is no thrilling battle in the story. There is a moment of tension somewhere in that memory, or the event wouldn’t seem important enough to write.

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