Write your own memoir (750 – 1,000 words) where you reflect upon an important personal experience. Be sure to include the essential text features of a memoir: identify a problem, explore the ramifications of the problem in your life, expand upon a moment of epiphany, and provide a resolution. Use the elements of effective writing such as sensory-rich imagery, showing vs. telling, dialogue, etc.
Memoir Cautions:
Do not overwrite detail and imagery
ex: He walked down a street that was as dark as the soot of the fires burning in hell, and lit only by the smudgy pinpricks of murky orange street lights shining through the wispy, scrolling, meandering gray fog. At this time of night, the streets were quiet and still as death-lack of sound as opaque and uniform as the blackness itself. When he occasionally heard some small distant sound-such as a caterwauling squabble between alley cats, or some abrupt and unnerving shout uttered by an unseen voice- the sound was muffled, dark, and full of loneliness. It was the kind of night that gave a guy the creeps.
MAKE SURE YOU PROVIDE ENOUGH CONTEXT
Remember that you are telling your reader a story. Give them all the details and background they need to follow it. For example, avoid jumping to a hospital scene if you have not mentioned symptoms leading up to it.
KEEP AN EVEN POETIC AND NARRATIVE TONE
Poetic passages can be powerful, but remember that you are telling a story. Do not lose track of the narrative in poetic language.
DRAW A SIGNIFICANT INSIGHT FROM YOUR EXPERIENCE
Make sure you work toward a significant idea. Your insight must show growth and maturity. The lesson or self-discovery you identify works as a kind of thesis, and it requires depth just as much as it does in an analytical essay.
BUILD STEADILY TOWARD YOUR INSIGHT; THE READER SHOULD SEE IT COMING
Avoid the “an the moral of the story is…” approach. Carefully build toward an unveiling of your insight. The truth you uncover should flow naturally from the examples that precede it.
AVOID CONTRADICTORY IMAGES AND MIXED METAPHORS
“I don’t think we should wait until the other shoe drops. History has already shown what is likely to happen. The ball has been down this court before and I can see already the light at the end of the tunnel.”
FOLLOW THE SUGGESTIONS:
-Use specific details
-Create sensory rich descriptions
-Show much more than you tell
-Write and correctly punctuate useful dialogue
-Come to an insightful understanding of the conflict and yourself.
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