Then, after you’ve poured yourself a nice cup of tea (or other preferred beverage), sit in your most comfortable chair, and begin the revision process.

I like to revise in layers focusing on one of the following fifteen elements at a time, and then going through again with the second layer, and so on. You might prefer tackling several at once. The key is to take your time to make your piece the best you possibly can.

Let me emphasize though that at some point, it’s OK to declare it done. I recently heard a literary agent say that you can’t publish a book, if you don’t finish writing the book! The same is true here. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be you!

So let’s dig in!

1. Revisit Your Purpose

Before diving into revision, remind yourself of the purpose behind your essay. In the case of Accidental Mentors, you’re lifting up the life and actions of another, but ultimately, you’re still the subject. It’s about how this woman affected your life. Clarify your purpose to maintain focus during the revision process.

2. Capture Authentic Emotions

One of the most compelling aspects of memoir is its ability to convey genuine emotions. In your revision, ensure that your essay captures the raw and authentic feelings associated with the events you're describing. Be willing to revisit the pain, joy, or uncertainty that fueled your writing. That’s key to writing that moves others.

3. Voice and Perspective

Memoir often benefits from a distinctive voice and perspective. It's the unique lens through which you view your life and share it with your readers. Don’t be afraid to let your writing sound like you. During revision, make sure your voice remains consistent throughout the essay.

4. Show, Don't Tell

In creative nonfiction, the "show, don't tell" principle is paramount. Rather than telling your readers how you felt or what you experienced, aim to show those emotions and experiences through vivid descriptions, dialogue, and sensory details (read more about Sensory Details in Part 2 and Crafting Unforgettable Moments in Part 3 of this series). If your essay includes conversations or interactions, ensure that the dialogue is natural and serves a purpose. Conversations should reveal character traits, advance the plot, or contribute to the emotional depth of the essay.

5. Structure and Flow

Memoir can be nonlinear, but it should still have a coherent structure that guides readers through your narrative. Revise your piece to verify that your storytelling flows logically and that transitions between past and present and different themes are clear. I’ll admit this isn’t a strength of mine. My editor (wife) is constantly reminding me to strengthen my transitions. It takes practice, at least for me!

6. Beginnings and Endings

The introduction and conclusion are crucial elements. The introduction should grab your readers' attention and set the stage for the story you’re about to tell. However, don’t be afraid to dive right into the action through the use of a dramatic scene. Then you can take a step back to provide necessary background. The conclusion should provide closure or a meaningful reflection. In this case, it’s helpful to focus on the lesson you learned from your accidental mentor.

7. Character Development

In Accidental Mentor stories, give us enough about your character and her background so readers can come to know and understand her, at least so that readers believe what you’re sharing about the lesson she taught you. And don’t forget, readers also have to see you, too, so they can appreciate why this lesson mattered. Help us see you and your subject as clearly as possible.

8. Themes and Symbols

Reflect on the overarching themes and symbols that run through your story. Even in a short piece, symbols and recurring motifs can add depth and layers of meaning to your narrative. During revision, emphasize or refine these elements if they contribute to your story's richness.

9. Timeline, Chronology, and Setting

An Accidental Mentors story often involves a different time in your life. Invite your readers into the year and season when the story takes place and offer other cues to help your readers navigate any shifts in time. And then make sure you place your subject into a particular place. Readers want to know where you are, so don’t be afraid to describe the setting and place you and your subject there.

10. Honesty and Authenticity

During revision, ask yourself if you're being fully authentic in your storytelling. Tell your truth as you know it. Sometimes, it's necessary to share vulnerabilities and admit uncertainties. An exercise I often use and sometimes include in my writing is “I don’t remember, but I imagine…” It’s perfectly fine to not remember everything and still write about it, but let your readers know if you’re using what my writing mentor, Anne-Marie, refers to as “likely details.”

11. Conflict and Resolution

Memoir often features internal and external conflicts. Revisit these conflicts to make sure they are well-defined and that their resolution (or lack thereof) is clear and meaningful to the narrative. In other words, don’t leave your readers hanging. If you introduce conflict, let the reader experience resolution.

12.  Invite Feedback

As with any writing, feedback is invaluable. Share your piece with family, friends, or a writing group, and seek their insights. Other perspectives can help you identify areas that might require revision or clarification.

13.  Ethical and Privacy Considerations

Memoir may involve portraying real individuals in potentially negative or controversial ways. That’s of course, not the intention of Accidental Mentors, where we’re honoring women for their contributions to our lives. However, if your subject is living and you know how to reach them, I encourage you to share your story with your mentor before submitting it. Tell them what your goals are in writing the piece, ask them if you got anything wrong, and ask if they’re comfortable with your sharing it publicly. Let them know that Accidental Mentors only uses first names of living subjects unless they are already public figures.

14. Title and Opening Hook

A well-chosen title and opening hook grab your readers' attention. Revisit these elements to make sure they effectively draw readers into your story.

15. Grammar and Structure

As with any form of writing, your piece should be free of grammatical and structural errors before you submit it. Proofread carefully to ensure that your essay is polished in terms of spelling, punctuation, and syntax.

Conclusion

The revision process for memoir is a deeply personal experience. It's where your own life becomes art, where raw experiences are transformed into evocative stories. By revisiting your essay with these guidelines in mind, you can craft a story that resonates with authenticity, emotion, and lasting impact.

That is, after all, the ultimate goal of Accidental Mentors. We want to publish stories about women that will inform future generations that everyday women in the 20^th and 21^st centuries led impactful lives. You and I know they did. Through solid writing and careful revision, you can ensure that your Accidental Mentors feel appreciated, honored, and recognized.

Series Schedule

Today’s is the last in a series of four posts designed to give you tips to help you craft your own Accidental Mentor (and other) stories. Here are the topics I’ve covered:

• Sept 21 - Part 1: Connect with the heart of your story to find the lesson

• Sept 28 - Part 2: Incorporate sensory details to turn two dimensions into three

• Oct 5 - Part 3: Crafting unforgettable moments: Write scenes to transport readers into the story

• Oct 12 - Part 4: Revise, revise, revise to make it your best work

Time to submit!

Now it’s time to write, revise, and then submit! I’ll be accepting submissions through at least December 31, 2023, but please submit sooner than that if you can, so I can begin sharing them.

Have a joy-filled week,

Annette

P. S. Thanks to ChatGPT for guidance in creating this post. It didn’t write it, but it pointed me in the direction I wanted to go.

In this post, I’ll explore the art of crafting compelling scenes, covering key techniques, and pitfalls to avoid.

What is a scene?

Let’s start at the beginning so we’re all on the same page. In the context of storytelling, a scene is a discrete part of the narrative that focuses on a specific event, moment, or interaction within the larger story.

The easiest way to become familiar with scenes is to watch a TV show or movie. A show almost always starts with a scene. When the cameras cut to another location and/or characters, it transports you into another scene. Stop the video at the point when it switches scenes and rewind to the beginning.

When you watch the scene a second time, look for these common characteristics of a scene and then answer the listed questions about your story.

1. Location and Time: A scene typically takes place in a specific location and at a particular time. It provides a sense of setting, allowing viewers/readers to visualize where and when the events are occurring. Where and when is your scene taking place?

2. Characters: Scenes involve characters. In this case, you and your mentor might be the characters, or maybe it’s about you observing your mentor interacting with others. The actions and dialogue you write drive the scene's narrative. Who are the characters in your scene?

3. Conflict or Purpose: In a larger story, a scene often serves a specific purpose to advance the plot, develop characters, reveal important information, create tension, or convey emotions. Conflict or tension is a common element within a scene, as it keeps readers engaged. In a micro-story like the one you’re crafting for Accidental Mentors, a scene’s purpose can be used to demonstrate the lesson your mentor taught you. Is the conflict or purpose of your scene clear?

4. Emotion and Atmosphere: Scenes are often characterized by the emotional tone they transmit. They can be filled with joy, sorrow, suspense, anger, or any other emotion. You can create atmosphere within the scene through sensory details, dialogue, and description. Both contribute to this emotional impact. What emotion or atmosphere are you trying to express?

5. Sensory Details: Effective scenes engage the reader's or viewer's senses. Descriptions of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures help create a vivid and immersive experience. Have you incorporated sensory details that contribute to the emotional and atmosphere of your scene? (For more about sensory details, see Part 2: Write two dimensions into three with sensory details of my Story Craft series.

6. Beginning, Middle, and End: A scene usually has a clear beginning, middle, and end. It starts with an introduction of characters and setting, develops through the conflict or purpose, and concludes with a resolution or transition to the next scene. Don’t be afraid though to jump into the middle of the action and then take a step back. That’s where the artistry of crafting a scene happens. What’s your scene’s beginning, middle, and end?

7. Transitions: Scenes are connected to one another through transitions. These transitions can be smooth or abrupt, depending on the narrative style and the story's pacing. They help maintain the story's coherence and flow. In a short piece like the one you’re writing, you might not have more than one scene. If so, transitions aren’t necessary. If you do have multiple scenes, be sure to connect them in some way.

8. Point of View: Scenes can be presented from a specific character's point of view, giving readers insight into that character's thoughts, feelings, and perspective. Alternatively, scenes can have an omniscient narrator or a more objective viewpoint. Memoir is generally written from a 1^st person point of view—typically, you are the narrator telling the story—but, as the writer, you have to decide if that’s right for your story.

According to Jordan Rosenfeld and Martha Alderson,

The reader should feel as though every scene has purpose, deepens character, drives the story forward, and ends in such a way that they just have to know what happens next.

The faster you can bring the reader into the action, the more engaged they become in the story. Use dialogue, action, and character interaction to set up the conflict that communicates your message.

A scene does not have to be long. In many cases, you can say all you need to say in four or five sentences. Here’s an example of a slightly longer scene from my Accidental Mentors post about my wife, Wendy:

I don’t remember why I called her, but I remember the enthusiasm of her greeting catching me by surprise. After all, it was morning, and I’m not a morning person. She undeniably is.

“Guess what?” She asked without waiting for me to reply. “It’s WCVE’s (now VPM) member drive! I get to donate!”

“What?” I asked, certain I’d misheard her. Who in their right mind is enthusiastic about a public media station’s annoying member drive?

“Yeah, I’m calling in to make a pledge and challenging other librarians to donate. It’s so exciting!” she explained. “I gotta go now so I can call in before I get to school!”

I stood in our kitchen dumbfounded. Who is this woman? Is she for real?

What does this scene show you about who Wendy is? What does it show you about the narrator?

Pitfalls to Avoid

In the quest to write effective scenes, be mindful of common pitfalls that can hinder your storytelling:

• Overloading with Detail: Find a balance between vivid descriptions and excessive details. Keep the scene moving. Remember the adage, “Show. Don’t tell.”

• Exaggeration or Fictionalization: Although it can be tempting to add fictional details, avoid embellishing or inventing events to make your story more dramatic. My writing mentor, Anne-Marie, teaches that it’s generally OK to include “likely details,” but it’s usually best to identify them as such. For example, you might write,

I don’t remember what the weather was like that day, but since it was a December day in Michigan, I can imagine the gunmetal gray sky and the chill reddening my cheeks.

• Lack of Emotional Depth: Think about the emotion(s) you want the reader to feel as they read the scene and then include dialogue and details that help them feel that emotion with you.

• One-Sided Portrayals: Although Accidental Mentors is designed to contain inspirational stories, try not to make your mentor sound too angelic or readers won’t be able to relate to them. Inspiration requires connection, so keep it genuine with a tilt toward her positive attributes.

• Forgetting the Larger Narrative: As you write a scene, make sure it contributes to the message you’re trying to convey. Scenes should add to the story by showing your mentor in their element.

Get writing!

I hope I’ve given you some more things to think about that will help you play with crafting a scene to help you tell the story. If you’re new to writing scenes, don’t let the craft overwhelm you. You’ll get better at it with practice. In the meantime, write from your heart and you’ll get your message across.

And most importantly, have fun!

Next week, in the final installment of Accidental Mentors Story Craft, we’ll focus on revision techniques that will strengthen your writing and make sure it says exactly what you want it to say.

Series Schedule

Each Thursday between September 28 and October 12, 2023, I’ll publish a post designed to give you some tips to help you craft your own stories. Here are the topics I’ll cover:

• Sept 21 - Part 1: Connect with the heart of your story to find the lesson

• Sept 28 - Part 2: Incorporate sensory details to turn two dimensions into three

• Oct 5 - Part 3: Crafting unforgettable moments: Write scenes to transport readers into the story

• Oct 12 - Part 4: Revise, revise, revise to make it your best work

By the end, I hope to receive a flood of submissions from you. If you feel ready, please feel free to submit sooner than that. Submissions are open now:

Have a joy-filled week,

Annette

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Sources

The Fundamentals of Writing a Scene | Jane Friedman

The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer | Sandra J Scofield

Writing Memoir Scenes That Work: Choosing What Stays in Your Memoir and What Goes - Writer's Digest (writersdigest.com)

OpenAI 2023

Engaging readers’ senses

In 1993, I visited Tikal in northeast Guatemala, the largest of the ancient Mayan cities. I climbed to the top of the tallest temple using a rickety ladder for the final leg. Green parrots flew overheard and howler monkeys played in the trees below. It was a sacred experience and one where I felt close to God.

That’s the first version of a paragraph I wrote years ago about a day I spent in one of the largest archeological sites of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization (and the site of the opening scene of the first Star Wars movie!). It’s an adequate visual sketch, but it doesn’t engage the reader senses. It’s descriptive but has no depth.

Two-dimensional writing such as this keeps the reader in their head. They can think about what you’re describing and might even develop a visual image of it but struggle putting themselves there.

Your job as a writer is to move the reader from their head to their heart, to help them see and feel what you’re writing about, to connect with memory and mood. To do that, you have to help the reader access all their senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight.

Here’s the same scene with a few sensory details.

I scaled the rickety wooden ladder to the pinnacle of the Temple of the Great Jaguar of Tikal in northeast Guatemala. As I cast my leg over the top rung and onto the narrow summit, my palms scraped the limestone roof comb or headdress of this ancient funerary shrine. Patches of moss softened the crusty surface and filled my nostrils with its earthy tones twenty stories above the earth. Green parrots squawked as they circled me in the sky we now shared. A band of howler monkeys bellowed from the forest below, outraged at the invasion of their treetop territory.

In this place of honor and mystery, I breathed in God—timeless, endless, expansive—like a Mayan blanket wrapped around my shoulders protecting and healing me from the ravages of centuries gone by and connecting me to a people about whom I had much to learn.

By adding sensory details, “palms scraped the limestone,” “earthy tones,” “parrots squawked,” “monkeys bellowed,” “I breathed in God,” and “a Mayan blanket wrapped around my shoulders,” the reader can imagine being there, they can feel their own palms being scraped, smell the earth tones, and hear the cacophony of parrots and monkeys. When the blanket wraps around them, they take a deep breath and feel connected to something larger than themselves. That’s the beauty of incorporating sensory descriptions into your writing.

My writing mentor, Anne-Marie, asks her students when crafting a scene to consider questions such as these: “What’s the light like in the room?” “Is something cooking on the stove?” “Is the chair’s arm you’re rubbing with your fingers rough or soft to the touch?”

And, yes, incorporating sensory details often makes writing longer (unless you’re a poet. They have a way of cutting words that’s far beyond me!). But you can also add a sensory detail with a simple aside. In my Accidental Mentors piece about my grandmother, I wrote:

My memories of those early years are fuzzy, but I do remember how much I enjoyed crawling up on her lap while the aroma of her floral-scented perfume enveloped me. 

How would it change the image, what you thought about or knew about my grandmother, if I had stopped at lap?

My memories of those early years are fuzzy, but I do remember how much I enjoyed crawling up on her lap.

By adding a simple detail: “her floral-scented perfume enveloped me,” the reader feels what it was like to be on her lap. Suddenly, my grandmother becomes their grandmother or, their imagined grandmother—the reader feels enveloped, not just by her “floral-scented perfume,” but by the arms of a loving woman. Even if that’s not an experience they’ve ever personally had, the experience becomes three-dimensional for them.

Exercise to elicit sensory details

Imagine yourself in a place that appears or will appear in your Accidental Mentors story. It can be a room, a house, a neighborhood, a school, a forest, a town, anywhere that offers a setting for your story. Describe where you are by answering the following questions:

1. What’s the temperature? How does the temperature feel on your skin?

2. What is the light like? Is it daytime or nighttime or somewhere in between? Can you see clearly, or do you have to squint?

3. What sounds do you hear? Are there people present? What about animals or machines? What’s making noise? What are the sounds like? What’s the silence like?

4. What does it smell like in the space you’re in? Is it musty or fresh, fragrant, or odorless? Why does it smell?

5. What does the place taste like? Warm, gooey, cinnamon buns your mother baked on a winter’s morning or stale crackers that sat too long in the cupboard?

6. Describe something in this place. It could be a car, a piece of furniture, or a picture on the wall. What does it feel like when you reach out to touch it? Use as much sensory detail as you can to describe it.

After you finish playing with the senses through these questions, select sensory details that contribute to creating the mood you want readers to feel—details that best demonstrate the lesson you learned from your mentor.

Get writing!

I hope I’ve given you some things to think about that will help you write and revise your first draft. Don’t try to make it perfect—just write! You’ll have plenty of time to revise it after you get your initial thoughts down.

And most importantly, have fun!

Next week, I share some thoughts about immersing your readers in a scene filled with sensory details, dialogue, and action.

Series Schedule

Each Thursday between September 28 and October 12, 2023, I’ll publish a post designed to give you some tips to help you craft your own stories. Here are the topics I’ll cover:

• Sept 21 - Part 1: Connect with the heart of your story to find the lesson

• Sept 28 - Part 2: Incorporate sensory details to turn two dimensions into three

• Oct 5 - Part 3: Write scenes to transport readers into the story

• Oct 12 - Part 4: Revise, revise, revise to make it your best work

By the end, I hope to receive a flood of submissions from you. If you feel ready, please feel free to submit sooner than that. Submissions are open now: Submission Guidelines! 

Have a joy-filled week,

Annette

Leave a comment

This is your opportunity to acknowledge and thank the women on your road to who you are today. You’ve read about mine. Now it’s your turn. I believe with all my heart that if we do this, we can bring some much-needed light into the world. Won’t you join me?

Series Schedule

Each Thursday between now and October 12, 2023, I’ll publish a post designed to give you some tips to help you craft your own stories. Here are the topics I’ll cover:

• Sept 21 - Part 1: Connect with the heart of your story to find the lesson

• Sept 28 - Part 2: Incorporate sensory details to turn two dimensions into three

• Oct 5 - Part 3: Write scenes to transport readers into the story

• Oct 12 - Part 4: Revise, revise, revise to make it your best work

By the end, I hope to receive a flood of submissions from you. If you feel ready, please feel free to submit sooner than that. Submissions are open now.

So, let’s get started.

My biggest surprise

My biggest surprise in writing Accidental Mentors was how deeply spiritual the project was for me. The more revisions I did of each piece, the more personal they became and the more emotional the experience of writing them. The best pieces in Accidental Mentors (yes, I fully admit some are better than others) are those where I allowed the emotion in—where I let myself laugh, cry, or even feel embarrassed. The less afraid I was of letting myself feel these emotions, the stronger my writing became.

As you consider writing about the women in your life, prepare yourself for the reactions that might follow. If you do, I am confident your writing will be richer than if you stay on the surface and only write what is immediate and present in your mind.

So how do you do that? Here are a few of the things I learned in the process.

Feel “all the feels”

Before I started writing, I had to allow myself (force myself?) to take time away from the keyboard just to relive my time with the woman I wanted to write about. I encourage you to do that too. Take an imagined walk with her, visualize yourself talking with her, and more importantly, her talking with you.

Whether or not the woman is still in your life, write her a letter (that you’ll probably never send), or write yourself a letter as if you were her. I’ve written a series of letters to my mother and have found that the more I do this, the more I remember about our relationship and what was important to each of us in it.

Grieving all over again

If the woman I was writing about had passed away, I searched through photos of our time together, scanned old yearbooks, watched videos—whatever I could do to make her present to me. I let our relationship wash over me, feeling the good and the bad, the happy times and the sorrowful ones.

Several times in this process, I found myself overtaken by grief that I thought had long since been resolved. This reminded me that as much as our society would like us to believe otherwise, grief never leaves us. Instead, it lives within us like a favorite old book. We might put it on a shelf and move on to other stories, but if we pull it out again and open its tattered and torn pages, the story feels as alive as it did the first time we read it.

Women still in my life

If the woman was someone with whom I continue to have contact, I focused on our early encounters before thinking about our current relationship. I tried to recall my first impressions and what I imagined her first impressions were of me. I thought about places we’ve gone and things we’ve done together.

I also challenged myself to explore how I feel when I’m with her now, at this point in our relationship, and what it feels like when I’m not with her. This often helped me realize that what I value about her might be different than what I thought I valued. I loved it when that happened because it was like receiving an unexpected gift from an old friend.

What about women who are absent from my life

And then there were the women who are alive but, for a host of reasons, I’m no longer in touch with. In some cases, that’s her choice, in others, mine, and still others, life just got in the way and we drifted apart. I still chose to include them in Accidental Mentors, but I will be honest in saying that these were the toughest to write.

One of the joys of this project was reaching out to women who’d I’d lost touch with. These included my 3^rd-5^th grade teacher, an old junior high school friend, former college basketball team members, early lovers, and even a daughter of my mom’s best friend. When I told them what I was doing, they were touched to be included and appreciated the opportunity to reconnect.

In some cases, though, I had to allow the negative feelings that might have characterized our relationship at the end to flow through me so the positive could resurface. Be prepared for that to happen if you choose to write about someone you’re no longer in touch with because things didn’t work out between you. In my case, I decided that they still deserved to be recognized as women who shaped my life, and I’m glad I included them. In a few of them, it helped me find peace with them. I only regretted writing one piece, which is no longer in the manuscript. And that taught me something too, so it’s all good.

Be specific

As you start writing, don’t worry if the lesson you want to focus on isn’t clear to you. The more you write about her, the more clarity you’ll have.

One way to focus is to journal about your recollections of each woman, and, truth be told, that’s a great approach. I’m certain my wife, Wendy, whose license plate reads JOURNL would agree. For me, it was enough (or maybe, more honestly, all I could handle) to put myself mentally into the places we were together, feel whatever feelings arose, and recall the time or times when this woman had something to teach me. The method you choose is up to you. The goal is the same, and that is to go as deep as you can into your memories to extract a gem of truth.

You might already know the lesson or lessons you want to share through the story you’re writing. If that’s the case, that’s great! In 600-to-800-word stories, you want to bring the reader as quickly as possible into the moment when you first learned the lesson you’re focusing on. That calls for you to get specific. Take us into a scene where you witnessed the thing you’ve tried to emulate (more about writing sensory imagery and scenes in Parts 2 and 3 of this series).

Sometimes there wasn’t a moment, an incident, or a conversation that sparked the realization that a woman taught me something valuable. For some of the women I wrote about, realizing they were a mentor to me came only after looking at our relationship in its totality. If I wrote this way, however— about the whole of a woman—the piece fell flat. I had to find some incident or detail that a reader who doesn’t know this person could appreciate about them. If that’s the case for you, keep searching, keep journaling, keep remembering—something will come to you.

Protect privacy and confidentiality while still publicly honoring your mentors

I want to leave you today with a final consideration and that is about protecting privacy and confidentiality. In my posts, I tried to share things that I knew the subject would be comfortable with my sharing. I rewrote several stories after I reread them and questioned how the person would feel about having certain information or a private conversation become public.

In several cases, I shared the final draft with the subject before I published it, like in the case of my friend Susan whose mom died by suicide, to make sure they were comfortable with the content. I encourage you to think carefully about how you want to handle this.

In a traditional memoir, you have every right to publish your story, your memories, your account of things that happened in your life, even if other people in your story don’t agree with your take on things. You might experience backlash, but it’s still your choice. The purpose of this project, however, is to honor and appreciate the subject, so it makes sense to take extra effort not to expose or harm them with what you write.

We’ll revisit this when we talk about revising in the fourth post in this series, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind from the start.

Get writing!

I hope I’ve given you some things to think about that will help you to get started with an early draft. Don’t try to make it perfect—just write! You’ll have plenty of time to revise it after you get your initial thoughts down.

I’ll see you next week with some thoughts about crafting sensory images for your readers.

Have fun!

Annette

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