Writing True Stories: The complete guide to writing autobiography, memoir, personal essay, biography, travel and creative nonfiction - Softcover

Miller, Patti

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1760293083 ISBN 13: 9781760293086

Verlag: Routledge, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

The complete guide to writing autobiography, memoir, personal essay, biography, travel and creative nonfiction.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Patti Miller is an award-winning memoirist and nonfiction writer, whose 2012 book, The Mind of a Thief, was longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Nita Kibble Prize, shortlisted for the WA Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction, winner of the NSW Premier's Prize for History and on the syllabus for English for the VCE in Victoria. Since then she has released Ransacking Paris, 2015, and The Joy of High Places, 2019, to critical acclaim. Her two previous writing books, Writing Your Life and The Memoir Book, have been continually in print since publication. Patti is a highly successful life-writing teacher and mentor who offers courses at the Faber Academy, as well as many other writing centres around Australia and in Paris and London. Her tenth book, True Friends, will be released in April 2022.

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Writing True Stories

The Complete Guide to Writing Autobiography, Memoir, Personal Essay, Biography, Travel and Creative Nonfiction

By Patti Miller

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2017 Patti Miller
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-76029-308-6

Contents

Prologue, 
Part One: Starting Out, 
1 Exploring the territory, 
2 How to use this book, 
3 WORKSHOP ONE Getting started, 
4 WORKSHOP TWO Memory and other sources, 
5 WORKSHOP THREE Bringing it to life — Detail, 
6 WORKSHOP FOUR Bringing it to life — Scenes, 
7 WORKSHOP FIVE Finding your voice, 
8 WORKSHOP SIX Structure, 
9 WORKSHOP SEVEN Inventing the story — Narrative, 
10 WORKSHOP EIGHT Style matters and editing, 
Part Two: Masterclasses, 
11 WORKSHOP NINE Midway blues — Continuing on, 
12 WORKSHOP TEN Madeleines and unicorns — Sensory detail, 
13 WORKSHOP ELEVEN Research, 
14 WORKSHOP TWELVE The storyteller's seat — Narrating position, 
15 WORKSHOP THIRTEEN Beauty of form — More structure, 
16 WORKSHOP FOURTEEN The magic spell — More narrative, 
17 WORKSHOP FIFTEEN Difficulties of truth-telling, 
18 WORKSHOP SIXTEEN Avoiding self-indulgence, 
19 WORKSHOP SEVENTEEN Borderlands — Memoir and fiction, 
20 WORKSHOP EIGHTEEN Creative nonfiction, 
21 WORKSHOP NINETEEN Wish you were here — Travel memoir, 
22 WORKSHOP TWENTY Random provocations — The personal essay, 
23 Where to now? — Publishing, 
Reading list, 
Useful contacts, 
Acknowledgements, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Exploring the territory

Knowing our story will help us to know ourselves, others, the mystery of life, and the universe around us better than we had before.

ROBERT ATKINSON

What is it like for anyone to be in the world? This is the vast and private knowledge that each one of us has — and the great mystery. No one else can really know what it is like for you to be here on this planet. Others could conceivably find out everything that has happened to you, your entire history, but they still could not know how you experience being here. For me, this is the starting point for writing true stories: a desire to express how one experiences life — its shape, its texture, its atmosphere — and a consuming curiosity to know how other people experience it.

Whether you want to write autobiography, memoir, travel narratives, personal essays, creative nonfiction, biography or even edge towards the borderlands of fiction, this book will help you write 'true stories'.

You have experienced being here in the world, have known the joys and perhaps heartaches of life, faced challenges, had adventures, fulfilled dreams, witnessed change, made observations — whatever your achievements or trials, your stories are worth writing. You may have worked as farmer or scientist, prime minister or office administrator, high-school teacher or computer-game designer; you may be famous, unemployed, disabled, wealthy; in every case you have lived your own unique life. Experience of living and a desire to write are the starting point of writing your stories.

It does not matter how old you are or whether you have done anything others consider extraordinary or not. Writing is first of all observation, and then putting the observation into words. For good life writing, the quality of your observation is key — it is how you see life that matters, rather than what you have done. Truthfully observing your life and the world around you is the starting point of all writing.

The essential truth is always: what is it like to be in the world? To me, that's one of the most interesting questions of all. What childhood dream, or perhaps dread, led you to this point in your life? What roads travelled, or less travelled, have you taken? What do you believe about yourself? Do you have a compass and if so, what is it made of?

Still, the desire to express experiences in writing is, by itself, not enough. Life is made of days but writing is made of words — can one level of reality be transmuted into the other? Post-modernist thought argues that words can never represent life; they can only represent a parallel world of words, a world of signs. Words are not a 'window' through which we can see reality, they are more like permanent contact lens that construct the world we see according to the colour and thickness of the lens. More than that, the 'lens' also shapes our inner world. Feelings themselves are, to some extent, shaped by words. It is almost impossible to imagine how we could experience the world without language, because we use words to imagine too. Still, acknowledging our 'lens', accepting that words will always form our experience, we can try to set down what we see through them, and how.

Defining the territory

What is life writing? Is autobiography different from memoir? And what is the difference between memoir and 'memoirs'? And creative nonfiction? Briefly defining the territory could be useful before heading off on the journey.

Life writing is a general term that encompasses the broad territory of nonfiction writing on subjects of actual experience and observation, an umbrella term which includes autobiography, biography, memoir, memoirs, personal essay, travel and sojourn writing.

Autobiography is an account of a whole life — from one's origins to the present. It can include some family history but concentrates on the individual life, exploring childhood experience, personal development, relationships and career.

Biography is an account of someone else's life, although it too can spread out at its edges to include elements of memoir. The biographer can become part of the story.

Memoir is an aspect of a life shaped by any number of limitations including time, place, topic or theme. One can write a memoir of childhood, or of a year in Turkmenistan, or of a relationship with a parent. Travel and sojourn writing are also part of memoir, although they have some particular requirements of their own.

The term 'memoirs' has come to mean the reminiscences of the famous in relation to their public achievements. A general or a politician might write memoirs, and in them we would expect insight into military campaigns or political machinations rather than insight into their relationship with their mothers or other aspects of their private personalities.

Personal essays explore ideas in a wide variety of areas — politics, psychology, everyday life — using personal history to elaborate and illustrate the idea. They can also include facts, interviews, imagination, lists — whatever the essayist want to use to develop his or her idea.

Creative nonfiction, sometimes called literary nonfiction or narrative nonfiction, describes 'true stories' that use the techniques of fiction — such as scene and evocative detail — and often the narrator's experiences and perspective. It can include true crime, nature and travel writing, some kinds of biography and almost any area of knowledge — history, geography, politics, psychology — as its subjects.

For you, the writer, the definitions and distinctions may not matter until your manuscript reaches the publisher, who will decide how to categorise it.

The reasons why

Asking why you want to tell this story helps you to focus on the task ahead as well as to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Routledge
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1760293083
• ISBN 13: 9781760293086
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Routledge; https://www.routledge-ny.com/; ; Stockst?dter Str. 20; Gro?ostheim; Bayern; Deutschland