At this year's AWP conference in Chicago, Ellen Cassedy and Nancy K. Miller were part of a panel organized by the University of Nebraska Press on Family Stories. Kamy Wicoff was in attendance, and loved what they had to say on the subject so much (memoir writers, don't miss these wonderful posts) that she asked Ellen and Nancy to summarize their remarks in two posts for She Writes.
Today Ellen Cassedy's -- and stay tuned for Nancy K. Miller's tomorrow!
"Who Cares About Your Family Story? Ten Tips to Ensure Readers Will Care"
by Ellen Cassedy
I love books based on family stories – especially those that provide me with a perch, a home, and intimate place from which to experience a larger culture or a bygone era.
For me, the vibration between the ordinariness of everyday life and the sweep of history is not only a pleasure but also a political and a moral matter. Observing what happens from the point of view of unfamous people, we learn that human history is made not only by generals and kings but by each one of us.
That said, who cares about your family story, or mine? Here are ten ways I’ve discovered to keep readers engaged with the story that engages you.
1. Step back.
When my book first began to take shape, what was foremost in my mind were my own feelings. On my family roots trip to Lithuania, the land of my Jewish forebears, shivers went down my spine in the old Jewish cemetery, and tears overtook me in the now-empty market square.
I was writing about what I cared about. But that – simply that – was not a story, and certainly not a book.
Paradoxically, what enabled me to shape my raw experiences into a narrative was detachment.
When I stepped back, I was able to place my family story within the broader context of a nation’s encounter with its “family secrets,” its Jewish past.
My particular family story came to illuminate something larger. And that’s what made it a book.
I came to be motivated by my responsibilities to my readers – which leads to the next point.
2. Take care of the reader. A diary can help.
Put yourself in her shoes. Telling a true story, rather than inventing one, can make it harder to see what you know that your reader doesn’t.
As my journey progressed, I kept a diary, writing down everything I was seeing and learning and thinking day by day. That way, even when I knew how the story would end, I could look back and see what my readers would be wondering at any given point along the way.
3. Give the reader a home, or homes.
In the difficult moral and historical terrain into which I led my readers, I realized we needed places to catch our breath – familiar touchstones to hold onto, places to rest.
The classroom at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, with its rows of battered wooden desks, became one such place, and my kitchen table in Vilnius, with its knobby cucumbers and its loaf of black bread, became another.
These recurring images gave my narrative a rhythm, like the refrain of a song.
4. Create vivid characters.
With a first-person narrative, that means creating yourself as a character. Ellen Cassedy, the reader’s trusty guide, has to be as vivid as Uncle Will with his grizzled chin and his secret past, or Ruta, the passionate young woman driving a Holocaust exhibit around the country in her pickup truck.
5. Create vivid scenes.
Just like a work of fiction or a play, a memoir needs places where the narrative slows down and draws the reader in close.
In addition to jotting down in my diary everything I could see, hear, and smell, I took pictures with my camera.
Later, at my desk, when I was conjuring up, say, the old man who wanted to speak to a Jew before he died, I could see his green cap, his aluminum cane, and the blood-red gladioli that framed his front door.
6. Focus.
In writing a story from life, I found I was less a builder than a sculptor, carving away everything not needed.
My side visit to Poland had to go. The amazing yoga class in Vilnius had to go. Even my discovery of my great-grandfather’s grave had to go. Deeply moving though it was, it didn’t advance what had become the real story.
7. Create suspense.
In my first draft, I revealed Uncle Will’s fearsome secret on page 3. Now I make the reader wait till page 51 for even the first clues.
8. Blend the personal and the historical.
Break up what Ursula LeGuin calls “the lumps in the oatmeal.” Instead of requiring the reader to swallow background information in big chunks, find ways to stir them in. Make them go down easy.
9. Be honest.
It’s been said that “writing begins with taking notice.” That means noticing what’s going on inside you as well as outside.
In writing my book, I trained a microscope on the minutest details of how I was began letting go of the cross-cultural hatreds I’d been taught as a child.
10. Pay attention to every word.
It goes without saying that I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote. Because I cared – and I wanted my readers to care.
If you’d like to comment on this blog post, please do. I’ll choose one comment at random and send you a copy of my book. To read an excerpt from my book, go to my website and click on About the Book.
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Ellen Cassedy’s book is We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, 2012). Her first post for SheWrites was “Who Cares about Your Family Story? Ten Tips to Ensure Readers Will Care.” Her [TIPS OF THE TRADE] series appears monthly. See all of Ellen's Tips for Writers.
Thanks- That is very helpful and inspires me to search more deeply. And yes I have used Jewish Gen- that is how I found all the other Prince family researchers. And I curious about Yiddish as well.
Hi, Judy. It sounds as if you're pursuing both family history and a larger social history, which I applaud! For Jewish-Polish history, I'd go to a university library and talk with the librarian. The New York-based organization YIVO could be very helpful, too. There's a new Jewish museum in Warsaw that might have resources. For Jewish genealogy, I highly recommend the organization "JewishGEN," which you've probably already encountered -- they have tons of useful resources. (By the way, no, I don't speak Lithuanian or have relatives in Lithuania. For my journey into Lithuania past and present,I used guides and interpreters. A fascinating journey -- and an eventual book!
Hi Ellen,
I haven't received your book yet and I had several questions. Based on what little I have read, I am guessing that you spoke Lithuanian and had family members living in Lithuania when you did you research there. My Jewish roots go back to my third great grandmother, Sarah Prince who came to Charleston, South Carolina in the mid 1800's via England. I was able to connect with a huge bunch of US & Canadian based family doing ancestor research and write an article for the celebration of the presence of Jews in North America 350 years ago. Even though I know Sarah came from Warsaw, I do not know her maiden name, and do not really think Prince was her husband's Polish surname so am unable to connect any further back. The data I received from research in Poland is fairly speculative from a genealogical perspective. We sense that they left Poland because of pogroms. Do you have some advice as to where to point me to find out more.
Judy, good luck with your family story. Congratulations on going back into it. I'm glad my "Ten Tips to Ensure Readers Will Care" are keeping you company.
Really helpful to read as I start to go back and review my genealogical research and breath some fresh air into the writing I have already done.
Debbie, thanks for writing, and good luck with your passion!
Women like you inspire me to continue with my passion. These encouraging tips are so fundamental to writing...thank you for posting.
I'm inspired by how many of us are working on turning our family stories into material that people OUTSIDE our families will be interested in. I do think it's an up-and-coming genre that we are all helping to create. Write on...
This is great! Paper Children--An Immigrant's Legacy is my family story. I have a seminar entitled, "Why Your Family History Matters."
Great tips, much appreciated. I am writing a memoir about caring for my mother to honor her last wish. I have taken notes about your tips and will review my drafts with new eyes!!! Thank - you again.
Ellen, these are great words of wisdom. I'm turning my blog to a book ... someday. I would love your critique, constructive input. I'm at http:/
Ellen, thank you so much for this post. Since I'm currently embarking on a memoir about my family, I found it extremely helpful.
Heather -- Thanks for writing. Good for you for cutting -- but remember to save what you delete. You might well be able to make something out of those scraps later. I keep my old drafts and often go back and glean something from them.
What a helpful list of tips for memoir. Thanks for posting them. During my editing I'm realizing a lot of my story needs to be dropped for it is fun and interesting for me, but doesn't move the plot along. Have a blessed day.
very informative, thanks. especially the part 'I rewrote andrewrote and rewrote'. a lesson to us all.
Hi Ellen! Loved your blog about searching for family history. My husband's family was from Lithuania, my grandfather escaped the czarist army and I, too, yearn to learn Yiddish. My novel, Paper Children--An Immigrant's Legacy, is based on my grandmother's story. I made tapes of her in my twenties and had letters from her family trapped in Warsaw during WWII translated. it's a post-Holocaust story, one that echoes through generations of women. I went to Poland for research. Your excerpt is intriguing. All the people with accents are almost gone. I'd love to chat with you. I'm doing a workshop in Fla. this month called "Why Your family History matters." You'd be a great partner for me!
Marcia
www.marciafine.com
When I read, "In writing a story from life, I found I was less a builder than a sculptor, carving away everything not needed," I thought, "That's beautiful. Yes!" My dilemma is in audience: my kids who have asked me to write everything I can remember. Maybe the solution is to sculpt the final draft, satisfying my artist side, and leave that AND the rough draft for my children. Your tips, Ellen, are not only useful in a practical, get-down-to-business sense, but thought-provoking.
Wonderful comments. I think Wendy Brown-Baez's suggestion to create yourself as a THIRD-PERSON character is fascinating, and possibly a help with Dee Dee Mozeleski's ever-difficult task of being honest. Stepping back as a way of getting close.
Cynthia Hartwig's 11th tip -- create a 100-word lexicon of the historical period you're writing about -- and her reference to Priscilla Long's book are very welcome. Thank you!
Here's an11th tip: write up a lexicon of 100 words from the historical period you're writing about. If you capture the language of the time, it gives your voice more authority and credibility, as if you've lived in those years. This is a tip from Priscilla Long's The Writer's Portable Mentor, an excellent resource on craft for both fiction and nonfiction writers. Thanks, Ellen.
Like Linda, I don't want to be honest! Amazing, right? That's what memoir is about - honesty, and each time I write ,it gets harder, but maybe the good part is that I keep trying? Bah humbugh is right! Linda took the words right out of my mouth, or fingers.
Thanks for articulating these steps. I also write and teach memoir. I think sometimes seeing yourself as a character is hard to do. Sometimes when the material is too emotional, I write the story in the third person as fiction and then re-write it back to first person and true. The fictional telling gives me the distance you speak about and also gives me insights into my own desires, dreams, and choices I made.
Re: FOCUS: Judith van Praag (see comment below) puts it in an intriguing way: "The pieces you chip off the block still work, the way a corset does under a period dress unseen, but with clear effect." And, don't forget to save the pieces you chip off. You may well be able to use them later in something else you write.
Re: BE HONEST: Linda Lichtman's honest response -- "I don't wanna be honest" -- made me want to hear more.
Ellen, In #6 Focus, your "less a builder than a sculptor, carving away everything not needed", speaks to me. FOCUS is a note I often order myself to do.
The last line of your first or sample chapter "'You must listen to the silences as well as to the sounds,' he said" runs home the notion that the pieces you chip off the block, still work, the way a corset does under a period dress unseen, but with clear effect. Thanks for sharing pointers so clearly connected to your own family story. Since 2003 I've been working on a biography, a novel and a screenplay derived from the novel's story. All the material is based on my family history, known and unknown. Your pointers are helpful to check off what I've done, and what remains to be given the once over, once again, perhaps not the last time. Thanks! Look forward to read your book.
Tip #9 - BE HONEST! I don't wanna be honest. My memoir is about the relationship between my mom and me - She was far from perfect - but OH I don't want to share that - she'd be so mad at me - but the more I discover about the relationship - the more I realize the contrast between how I would have liked the relationship to be and the dynamics of what it was! Honesty! Bah Humbug - I'm slowly embracing it!
Wonderful to read all these great comments! It's clear that some compelling memoirs are in the works out there. Let's keep up the discussion. I'll wait a few more days before selecting one comment at random and sending that person a copy of my book.