Terry Helwig's Blog - Posts Tagged "dialog"
Memoir Can Read Like a Novel
A comment I love hearing about Moonlight on Linoleum, is: "Your memoir reads like a novel." This comparison to literary fiction affirms the countless hours I spent constructing floor plans of our trailer house, perusing old photographs with a magnifying glass, locating marriage certificates and divorce decrees, interviewing relatives and friends, and creating an elaborate time line that spanned two decades. My voluminous research became the building blocks for vivid scenes in my memoir that anchored the action of our family's story.
Instead of telling our story in generalities (we lived in a trailer), I tried to invite the reader into our trailer. I described the roughness of the wood Daddy used to build two benches and a picnic table for our tiny kitchen--the only way eight of us could fit around a table. No need to tell the reader that picnic table became the heart of our home--it's presence in scene after scene said it for me.
Imbedded in my scenes were bits of dialog and descriptions that stirred the senses. I wanted my readers to "meet" my parents, to smell the rose-water on Mama's skin and the Old Spice on Daddy's cheek. I wanted them to see Mama fiddling with the beaded fringe on her white moccasins and listen to her own description of her unfaithfulness: "When the cat's away the mouse will play." I wanted readers to hear Daddy whispering "Lookie there," while pointing to one of the world's wonders, whether it be a sunset, an arrow head or tarantula lumbering across a two-lane highway.
I looked for the narrative arc in my story, seeing myself as a protagonist. What was my emotional truth? When were the desires of my heart thwarted or rewarded? More often than not the emotional truth I uncovered revealed a universal truth, which novels often reveal. Plumbing the depths of human longing is not exclusive to either fiction or memoir, nor is writing scenes laced with dialog that tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. There's no reason why true stories can't read like novels, too.
Instead of telling our story in generalities (we lived in a trailer), I tried to invite the reader into our trailer. I described the roughness of the wood Daddy used to build two benches and a picnic table for our tiny kitchen--the only way eight of us could fit around a table. No need to tell the reader that picnic table became the heart of our home--it's presence in scene after scene said it for me.
Imbedded in my scenes were bits of dialog and descriptions that stirred the senses. I wanted my readers to "meet" my parents, to smell the rose-water on Mama's skin and the Old Spice on Daddy's cheek. I wanted them to see Mama fiddling with the beaded fringe on her white moccasins and listen to her own description of her unfaithfulness: "When the cat's away the mouse will play." I wanted readers to hear Daddy whispering "Lookie there," while pointing to one of the world's wonders, whether it be a sunset, an arrow head or tarantula lumbering across a two-lane highway.
I looked for the narrative arc in my story, seeing myself as a protagonist. What was my emotional truth? When were the desires of my heart thwarted or rewarded? More often than not the emotional truth I uncovered revealed a universal truth, which novels often reveal. Plumbing the depths of human longing is not exclusive to either fiction or memoir, nor is writing scenes laced with dialog that tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. There's no reason why true stories can't read like novels, too.
