www.ATIBOOK.irPersonal narrative 57this person, object, event or place interesting to your readers, using narrative, dialogue (ifappropriate), vividness of detail, and o<strong>the</strong>r features. A particular combination ofsensations—sounds, smells, colours, voices—may be a useful trigger for your <strong>writing</strong>, astimulus to your memory, a way into a forgotten experience. The experiences youdescribe here could be useful for fiction, but you need to approach your experience firstas an adult looking back.2 Ideas and Issues. All good personal narrative includes ideas; it’s a way of makingcontact with your readers and holding <strong>the</strong>ir attention. Investigate one particular issue—local, national, global—that has affected you personally. The issue could involve genderpolitics, sexuality, or education, health issues, <strong>the</strong> law, social reform. It might involvesolutions to a practical problem: housing, social benefits, traffic, pollution. You will needto describe your own experience, your story, in a way that illustrates <strong>the</strong> issue for yourreaders. You may need to do some research or to interview people with a similar (orslightly different) experience to your own. (See a related exercise in Chapter 6, Number8, page 226.)3 Turning Points. Explore a period of transition in your life. It may involve physicalchanges such as moving house, living in a different city or country, meeting new friendsor losing old ones. You might tell <strong>the</strong> story of how you felt about a loss or bereavement,<strong>the</strong> end of a love affair, or <strong>the</strong> beginning of a new relationship. Again, you will need todevelop insights, offer ideas, illustrate <strong>the</strong>m with close-up detail, narrative and focus. Tostimulate your <strong>writing</strong> you might make use of a still photograph or moving image film ofa person or group. What was happening before and after? Who were you <strong>the</strong>n? Who is nolonger part of <strong>the</strong> group?4 Journeys. Tell your story of an actual journey, short or long distance. It could beanywhere. (Eric Jackson’s dawn rush happened near Redcar.) Or it could be ametaphorical journey—back to health, a readjustment of your sense of identity, reachingor failing to reach some goal that preoccupied you. Think about <strong>the</strong> meaning of thisjourney—not only for you but for any o<strong>the</strong>r people involved, your attitude, <strong>the</strong>irs. Writeso that your readers will get to feel a sense of involvement.5 Plural narratives. The main difference between this approach and <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>rs listedabove is that <strong>the</strong>se are <strong>the</strong> stories put toge<strong>the</strong>r by a group of people who share similargoals, values, ways of speaking and thinking, yet who might not see eye to eye abouteverything. What holds <strong>the</strong>m toge<strong>the</strong>r? What threatens to drive <strong>the</strong>m apart? There’s anopportunity here for comic and serious <strong>writing</strong>, social insight, recording of experiencecommon to your contemporaries. This could be a group project, using research,interviews, sound and video recordings to reflect <strong>the</strong> experiences of friends, family,community, workforce, a team or a group sharing in one activity at a certain time andplace: a gap-year experience of travelling toge<strong>the</strong>r might be one example. The aim is tobuild a selected narrative record.As you begin to develop your memoir, it may be that some of your ways of showingand illustrating your experience provide you with <strong>creative</strong> ideas for a short story, poem,or a piece of drama. Personal narrative can provide a good jumping-off point for workingin o<strong>the</strong>r <strong>creative</strong> genres.
www.ATIBOOK.irThe <strong>routledge</strong> <strong>creative</strong> <strong>writing</strong> <strong>coursebook</strong> 58Revision and EditingLook back at your whole piece. Have you made use of detailed focus, reality-effects?Have you used o<strong>the</strong>r ways of ‘relating things well’? For example, speech and dialogue (ifand when appropriate), vividness, <strong>the</strong> sense of a story being told, an appropriate tone—possibly like conversation but in well-written form with clear, strong sentence structure.Does your <strong>writing</strong> contain ideas and <strong>the</strong>mes, an attitude? If you achieve <strong>the</strong>se it willmean that you and your readers are confident that your <strong>writing</strong> has found a forceful anddefinite aim: it is going somewhere.Is your piece a narrative? Story-like qualities (events linked toge<strong>the</strong>r—a reflection ona single, main event) will usually increase <strong>the</strong> impact of memoir <strong>writing</strong>. Does your piecelose touch with its narrative and, if so, can you revise and edit it to keep it on track?One of your aims should be to get your readers to think, to have some new thoughtsabout an experience <strong>the</strong>y may have shared. Keep <strong>the</strong>m thinking right until <strong>the</strong> end of <strong>the</strong>final sentence.
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