Memoir Writing Level 1 (Self-Paced)

Memoir Writing I is a 10-week workshop, which includes lectures, exercises, and the critiquing of student projects. It’s for beginners or anyone who wants to brush up on the fundamentals. Farther down, you can view a syllabus for this course.Every life holds many tales. Whether your life is wildly unconventional or relatively normal, there’s bound to be something fascinating about it. That’s why the contemporary memoir—everyday people telling their stories—has become such a popular phenomenon. A memoir covers an aspect of a life, whether it’s a short piece about, say, a bicycle ride with a friend, or a book about, say, your entire childhood.To make readers care, your memoir must be told with the finesse of fiction. Here you will learn techniques for focusing your life stories, as well as well as writing craft and how to market your work.Whether you seek to write essay-length pieces or a book, we’ll show you how to best tell the stories from your life.This course gives you a firm grounding in the basics of memoir craft and gets you writing a short memoir (or two) or a book. Course components:LecturesWriting exercisesWorkshopping of student projects (each student presenting work two times)Memoir I is for beginners or anyone who wants to brush up on the fundamentals.Each week a new topic is explored through lecture and writing exercise. The topics covered in this course include:Introduction to Memoir – The contemporary memoir defined. Short and long memoirs. Finding the “who cares?” in your story. Focusing on an aspect of your life. Types of memoirs—coming of age, adversity, relationship, career, travel.Mining Your Memory – How “true” must it be? Researching your past. The balance of being “actor” and “observer.” Not using memoir as therapy. Facing the truth.Character – Thinking of real people as characters. Making characters dimensional through desire and contrasts. Creating character profiles. Showing vs. Telling. Methods for showing characters.Plot – Finding a major dramatic question. Shaping a beginning, middle, and end. The difference between short and long plots. Pros and cons of outlining.Description – Using the senses. Specificity. Techniques for creativity. Finding the right words. Merging description with point of view.Dialogue – The importance of scene. Turning real life conversations into dialogue. Quotation marks and tags. Stage directions. Summarized dialogue. Characterization through dialogue. Subtext.Point of View/Voice – Point of view defined. First person and other memoir alternatives. Voice defined. Exploration of the various types of voice. Tips for finding your voice.Setting/Pacing – Creating setting through time, place, and weather. Description of setting. Mood and emotion of setting. How to manipulate time through pacing. Flashbacks.Theme – Theme defined. Types of theme. Weaving theme into a story.Revision – Exploration of the various stages of revision.The Business – Proper format for manuscripts. How to target publishing houses, literary magazines, and agents. How to send your work out. Query letters.Note: Content may vary slightly among individual classes.Important:Schedule posted is the Start and End date of the class. You may access the class at any time, day or night, within the schedule provided. Please see Online Class Delivery for more details.Registrants will receive email instructions and information on how to access the online classroom.