Refining to Highlight the Finest Illustration of You as the Central Character
overwrite first, then select for details that show something about you
It’s about you in memoir and memoir manifesto nonfiction. You’re the expert, storyteller, and the person who we will become invested in. We need to trust you, feel something for you, and be willing to give you many hours of our time. We pick up your book knowing what the webpage, bookseller blurb or back cover tells us. Whether or not the person reads your book, is up to refinement.
The refinement process starts with asking, “what do I want them to learn/learn about me” here. And then pulling the details forward that serve this end.
Write the scene, use as much details of the setting yes, but also of the people in it. If you remember dialogue, add that. If you remember the look in someone’s eyes, go there. Craft it fulsomely and allow refinement to catapult in to the reader’s curious mind—your ultimate purpose.
You will need to loosen your prose, and let things drop to the cutting room floor.
It’s funny, when we sit with our first draft, we are so precious about it. We think “I couldn’t possibly leave that out.” The purple gingham bedspread is essential. The diamond earrings, a gift from her lover, are too.
The Scene Is The Thing
If what you want us to know about you, the main character of your nonfiction book, is that you’re not the kind of person that cares much about stuff, appearances, or finery, then the scene you write in that room is about you seeing the diamond earrings and gifts from the guy your sister is dating as bribes, not symbols of love. Show us your skeptical eyebrow raises. Show us how you whisper to her under your breath, “this is bullshit. He is trying to buy you.” We get to see you authentically, and the scene pulls us in because we know that conflict is inevitable.
Overwrite and then return with a refinement question in mind. Here are some suggestions:
What do I need my reader to learn in this scene?
How can I inform them about my childhood experience without taking pages to talk about my parents?
What do they need to recognize about themselves because I tell them about my coaching framework?
Let the refinement begin.