Pages

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Writing a Memoir: How to Craft a Compelling Story

I found this article on The Urban Writers Blog quite interesting. Not only was it a good read but when printed out provided a useful template for composing an outline for a Memoir. 

Telling a story isn't like giving an interview. Family experiences, life experiences, and adventures you had require a proper, compelling story structure to set up the reader's attention for the type of emotional truth you're trying to tell, but in a way that makes them understand where your powerful story is coming from.

To do that, you need to first learn how to write a great memoir outline like a true writer who's been story-telling their whole life.

Before your story gets summed up in the outline, understand that writing a great memoir isn't the same as writing an autobiography.

How to Outline a Memoir

Every good book begins with a thorough outline. When writing a memoir, you too should have an outline that tells your story through the lens of a particular theme.

Unlike laying out stories in an autobiography, each scene, character development, and plot in your memoir focuses on sharing a particular experience that goes with your theme and sends the type of message that you want to send.

With that in mind, check out different memoir examples and pay attention to the two following essential elements:

  1. How scenes, story, and character development relate to the main theme.
  2. What message is being sent through those scenes, and how does it correlate with the theme?
Reblogged: Check out The Urban Writers website for the full article

Free Writing Courses - The Open University

An amazing range of free courses relating to all aspects of Writing is available from the OU or Open Learn as they like to be called these days. 

A good starting point maybe this one about Writing what you know 

This free course, Writing what you know, will help you to develop your perception of the world about you and enable you to see the familiar things in everyday life in a new light. You will also learn how authors use their own personal histories to form the basis of their work.

After studying this course, you should be able to:

  • ~ articulate the notion of 'write what you know'
  • ~ write 'blind' descriptions of known objects and note new observations
  • ~ have an enhanced ability to list sensory perceptions
  • ~ write short texts about a personal memory of either a place or a character.

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Oral Histories - Dear Grandma

 Oral Histories

Questions you wished you had asked your Grandma

 Dear Grandma

When were you born and where?

It is important not to leave it too late to gather together your family history.

Get started with a few simple questions or a few family snapshots. You know it makes sense.

Order the book "Dear Dad - From you to me" from Amazon 

Record your conversations using the Memo app on your mobile phone.
 If you can't find the app use Google to get instructions.
There are also other recorder apps in the app store.

Click this link to download an example list of questions to get you started.

Click this link for a copy of the Oral Histories Talk leaflet




Tuesday, July 4, 2023

The March of AI in Academic Writing - Paperpal

Paperpal — is an AI-powered personal writing assistant. Especially useful if your first language is not English. Think of Paperpal as the elder brother of Grammarly, specially designed for academic writing.
There is a very useful blog a good place to start.

There is a good review on Twitter by @MushtaqBilalPhD check the link 

Scribbles #7

Newspapers Club an idea for October?

https://www.newspaperclub.com/

Poetry-zine

https://observer.com/2021/03/electric-zine-maker-diy-open-souce-tool/amp/

Oral histories

Dear Grandma... How to ask the questions you should have asked Grandma, a talk by Alistair J Parker PhD at next Wednesday's Friends Coffee Morning. 
https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/oral-history

Poetryfoundation.org

Interesting collection of poems with critiques and analysis 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

 BBC Scotland - Loop an interesting resource 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05tp96w

 Joanna Penn episode on the use of SudoWrite AI

How can fiction authors use Sudowrite to assist with writing tasks they need help with? What functionality does Sudowrite have that will be useful to different types of writers? Amit Gupta gives his tips in this interview.
https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2023/06/29/using-sudowrite-for-writing-fiction-with-amit-gupta/amp/

 Blogs