Writing in the Margins
Welcome to week four of Patchwork! We’re more than halfway through this session – it’s hard to believe we’ve been writing together for almost a month now!
This week we worked with Brian Bouldrey’s The Autobiography Box, which includes cards in four categories – Remember, Discover, Dramatize and Structure.
Although The Autobiography Box is specifically designed for, well, autobiography, we discussed the ways in which autobiographical tools can be used in fictional writing to offer a way into characters’ experiences and to help shape scenes. Specifically we looked at how some of the cards in The Autobiography Box can provide focus or structure for scenes, either fictional or autobiographical.
The prompts this week can be used in three ways:
– Use each as an individual prompt and write four separate pieces. In this case, set your timer for 15 minutes per prompt, as usual. Make sure to stretch, check your posture, keep yourself hydrated and breathe!
OR
– Use the prompts as a process for a single piece of writing. Use the first prompt to generate your source material (you might want to give yourself a bit longer in this case, or give yourself two 15 minute sessions to write), then use each of the following prompts to help refine the source material.
OR
– Use the prompts to help process your existing writing. Use the first prompt to generate some new writing, and then use the following prompts to put that new writing into the larger structure of your writing project.
Our first prompt was pulled from the “Remember” cards. This is Bouldrey’s suggested first step in the autobiographical process – digging into our memories and getting them down on the page. Our prompt was “focus on a smell.” Scent is strongly linked to memory, but any of the senses are great prompts for getting our memories out on the page!
Our second prompt came from the “Discover” cards. These cards are valuable for any writer, because often what we get down in our first writing – whether we are remembering our own story or writing down the first draft of a fictional scene – includes clues that we can, if we put on our writerly detective hats, follow into deeper truths and more nuanced stories. Discovering is different from remembering because this is the part of the writing process that allows us to learn things about our memories. Our memories are often snapshots, and the discovery process turns them into immersive images. Our second prompt was “look for the ripples of a significant event in your life.” These events are often, but not always, traumatic. They are events that seem to recur, or that start a theme in our lives. Often they are events that push us out of our comfort zone.
If you are writing on each prompt separately, write about an event that has rippled through your life. If you are working on a single piece of writing, look for ways that the “remembered” prompt can be expanded to include either ripples or echoes. If you are working with a larger body of work, put on your detective hat and go sleuthing for repeating themes, echoes, ripples, reccurances!
Our third prompt was from the “Dramatize” cards. Even in autobiography, dramatizing is important! Remembering gives us our raw material, discovering helps us mine it for meaning, dramatizing allows us to polish the story, to chip away at the unnecessary elements and add in the colour and depth that will draw a reader in and allow us to tell a deeper truth. This prompt was “cliché.” Clichés can be a problem in writing, but used intentionally clichés can also be an asset. Play around with the idea!
Be gentle with yourself in this prompt. Sometimes we shame ourselves when we feel that our stories are cliché, but remember that your story is valuable, unique and beautiful no matter how cliché it may sometimes feel! Give yourself permission to see the clichés in your own life, or in your writing, and to see beyond them to your unique perspective. Your story is worthwhile! What may seem like a cliché is often a moment of resonance and commonality, and that is a wonderful thing. Take a deep breath. You are doing good work!
Finally, we pulled a prompt from the “Structure” cards. This is the final step in the autobiography process as Bouldrey has outlined it (at least, the final step in the first draft!). Structuring our story allows us to take all of the memories that we have mined for meaning and dramatized for effect, and put them in a narrative order that works for our particular piece of work. There are an infinite number of possible structures, including linear, thematic, experimental, chronological, and more! This prompt was to “tell a story as a fairytale.” Fairytales have very specific structures, and telling a story in a way that mirrors an existing story style can be helpful in learning how to play around with storytelling styles that we might otherwise never engage.
If you’re writing on each prompt, this is fairly straightforward. However, if you’re working with a single piece of writing, this is more challenging! In that case, rewrite your original memory as if it were a fairytale – who is the hero(ine), what is the moral, where is the danger? Add the archetypal characters and elements that characterize fairytales.
If you’re using these prompts to help work through your larger body of work, look for fairytale elements in your existing story and pull them out to create a fairytale, or rearrange your story to be more of a fairytale. Think about your life in terms of a traditional fairytale, a story of human nature, danger, strength, weakness, triumph, trickery, empowerment. These elements exist in every life, no matter how mundane we may feel ourselves to be. Within the larger structure of your writing project, this prompt may seem counterintuitive, but just sit for a moment with your story and think about where the fairytale elements might be. Let it give you a different perspective on your own story, even if you don’t actually bring any “fairyland” into your narrative.
And that’s that!
Happy writing, Patchworkers!
