Finding Your Narrative
A step by step guide to the seemingly impossible feat of finding the threads of your story
When I decided to write a memoir I didn’t know where to start. I had one pivotal moment in mind – the video call a few days after my daughter’s birth when my brother met her for the first time – but I didn’t know how to weave in all the other story strands I knew I wanted to include. The mental illness that ran through my maternal line; the fact that my great-grandmother and grandmother both abandoned their children; my brother’s genetic disorder; my marriage to a man who didn’t want children; and finally my ambivalence about whether I wanted to have a child given all of the above. How would I take all these pieces of clay and mold them into a shape that was not only beautiful to me but would make other people see their universal stories in my very personal narrative?
So many people come to me and say they want to write a memoir but they have all these story strands swirling in their head that look like this:
The problem: they need the narrative threads of their story to look like this:
How does one turn the swirling mess in their head into a linear narrative?
Make a bulleted list of all of the moments/events that rocked your world. Don’t judge what comes up. Don’t say “why did that rock my world?” Just write it down. Some questions to ask yourself to unlock these moments: What memories haunt you? What are you obsessed with? What keeps you up at night? What ordinary moments yielded extraordinary insights?
Notice the patterns that bubble up when you look at your list. Are there certain years or time periods when most of these events took place? Are most of these moments about a certain person or thing? Do they all bring up a certain feeling? Is there anything that they have in common?
Pay attention to the connective tissue. Are there words or ideas that you want to unpack? Megan Stielstra wanted to unpack the theme of “fear” when she wrote The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Olivia Laing was driven by the idea of loneliness when she wrote The Lonely City. Water was the common thread in Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water. What themes or ideas could be the framework for your writing?
Turn your story into a quest or investigation. No, you don’t need to be Nancy Drew to excavate your life in search of clues. But you do need to consider the quest or questions at the heart of your story. What secrets are driving your narrator? Or what are they trying to figure out? Even ordinary life is full of mysteries. Why did my dad die? What made my mom lose her mind? What if my grandmother hadn’t abandoned her children? The unanswerable questions are often the best ones.
Get someone else to read your work and tell you what excites them. You tell your friend a story and she says, “OMG, tell me more.” That’s what your book needs too. It needs friends and strangers alike to want to turn the page to know what happens next. And the only way to get your reader excited to read your book is if you’re excited to write your book. So, what does that mean? See #4 above. If you have a quest or question that you’re trying to unlock or unravel that gets your juices flowing, your reader will feel that excitement and stick around to find out the answer/see how you resolve the question.
*Featured Courses*
Outlining Class (one day)
Your outline serves as the skeleton of your book. Without it, there is no roadmap and nothing to turn to when you hit inevitable roadblocks. This two hour class will provide you with the template you need to take your story to the next level by providing you with actionable instruction on what to include in your outline and why.
Finding Your Narrative (six weeks)
This is an interactive 6-week class on finding the narrative thread in your story. We will look at the structures and narrative arcs that have worked for other writers, and hammer out the threads of your story: What themes keep popping up in your writing? What ideas keep you up at night? What pieces of your personal history haunt you? Will you bring in outside research? Other people's stories? How will all of these threads come together? You will walk away with a clear sense of the foundational themes that drive your writing.
*FREE Spark Session*
You can expect a juicy reading to activate your creative brain, a mini-craft lesson, a writing prompt + 20 minutes of generative writing time. When we’re finished, you’ll have an opportunity to share your piece with a community of like minded writers. Sign up here!
Other Upcoming Courses…
Getting A Book Deal (four weeks)
This four-week crash course is your chance to get in front of one of the buzziest book agents in the business, and hear about what the marketplace is looking for. You will also walk away with insider tips on everything from how to write a query letter that will get you noticed to how to decide whether to go with an indie or The Big 5 (or to self-publish) to how write an elevator pitch that distills your book idea into a digestible concept that sells.
Hysterical Women (four weeks)
Sylvia Plath. Susannah Kaysen. Elizabeth Wurtzel. Catherine Cho. Esme Wang. Terese Marie Mailhot. Juliet Escoria. We will use the writing of a selection of these authors (and more) as a launching point for our own exploration of the darkness in our minds. Come ready to talk about the taboos and tough stuff that most of us keep hidden away in locked boxes and to dive into writing exercises designed to get you to “go there.”
The Secrets to Pitching Essays That Get Published (four weeks)
Writers need to pitch editors to get their work noticed, but the skills needed to pitch an essay or article are vastly different than those needed to write one. In this four week class, we will learn the basics of pitching from how to know what editors are looking for to how to know which publications will be the best fit for your work. You will also have the opportunity to pitch your idea to a panel of editors, including Christina Amoroso (Editorial Director, Bustle), Noah Michelson (Head, HuffPost Personal) and Denne Michele Norris (Editor in Chief, Electric Literature) in the final week of class and hear feedback about what works/what doesn’t from an insider’s perspective.