Journal With Impact: Memoir Theme Poetry

Workshop: Six Conversations for Writing Creative Journals

“A ‘we’ approach makes the reader feel that the writer is with him, not talking at him.” Jane Fitz-Randolph

            “How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and Thou wilt not hear?

            I cry to Thee, ‘Violence!’ Yet Thou dost not save.

            Why doest Thou make me see iniquity, and cause me to look on wickedness?

            Yes, destruction and violence are before me; strife exists and contention arises.

            Therefore the law is ignored and justice is never upheld,

            For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted.”

Protest also encompasses a deeply spiritual perspective as well, as we hear from Habakkuk when the Chaldeans assaulted Judah. (Chapter 1:2-4 NAS version)

Self-development style essays are undergirded by empathy, and a sense of  “we” are in this together. It’s not coming from a telling attitude but rather as someone who has walked this path and is a listening ear. These article types are both compassionate and inspirational. Their applications apply to memoir poetry as well, with the focus being more heart and soul.

The range can be very wide from dealing with emotional situations, like anger management, confrontations, like being bullied, health issues and family tensions, as well as career choices and developing skills.

Sometimes turning the topics, and themes into poetry can amplify your connections in fresh and innovative ways. Like the vignettes they can become an introduction, or opening, or an example of your memoir’s theme and a consistent thread.

Even if you don’t decide to use the poems in your published version, writing them can deepen insights whether or not you have ever written a poem. Even basic lines can deepen perspective.

Action Steps

1. Make a list of the struggles you have experienced either personally or with a close family member.

2. Choose one that made a significant change in your life, either by an attitude perspective or by a specific course of action.

3. Write it up as if you are sharing one-to one with a close personal friend.

4. Using the guideline below write a few of your thoughts in poetry.

Share: What words of hope do you want to share in your memoir?

Read deep, marcy

List Poems are one way to develop images and discover word connections.

1. Write a list poem. This works well for non-poets to get past the inner critic and just write for fun. It also helps get us in touch with abstract concepts.

Choose one of the following words: hope, love, faith, trust, beauty and do a cluster brainstorm for it.

2. Now write up your thoughts as a list poem adding whatever new ideas rise to the surface as well. Keep writing the repetition in each line:

hope is…

or, I believe beauty…

or, set up as a question; is love…?

Or, can love be found in a …..?

3. Leave it alone for a day or two then come back. Now go down your list of images. Can you change each line into a metaphor?

For example: hope is ...a waterfall.     Hope is a waterfall like rushing wind.

                                         Hope is an hourglass waterfall.

Although you may not end up using the words themselves, the practice will help you connect to the emotion you want your situation to generate heart to heart.

Overview Character Development: Theme

Workshop: An Introduction to Writing for Children and Young Adults

“Theme is your melody, the motive, the dominant idea you develop through your story. This is what the story is about.”  Lee Wyndam

 Traditional

As mentioned last week the traditional stories have been handed down from generation to generation, first orally and later many were put into print. They include proverbs, parables, wisdom stories, creation, family heritage, cultural, songs, fairy tales, and folk-tales.

One surprise is that this workshop section we are discussing character development and when we revisit the powerful traditional stories we often find that many rely on stock characters, especially the folktales and parables. The characters are called by their class name only—beautiful daughter, poor woodcutter, banished prince. The characters are usually familiar and predictable to their audience, which frees the listeners to concentrate on action and ideas.

This opens the relationship of theme to action and often a discovery about universal human yearnings. Sometimes the connection was subtle and sometimes blatant. Jesus often used this style in His own teaching, and His parables always had an unexpected end from the one His listeners expected. They were still stories though, not didactic teachings, which made them so powerful. His themes were implicit within the story and its twist would continue to effect the listener long after.

The other power of theme in the basic stock characters was the strong cultural base common to traditional genres. Yet within each culture there usually would be an identifiable emotional connection/resonance. Even when the end turned out to be unexpected the historical and personal resonance would be familiar enough to capture the listener’s attention.

So how can we borrow that concept along with developing ‘real’ characters? Aim for the heart thematically. Make it integral to your story question.

Betrayal                        What happens when your best friend tells all your

secrets

                                                to the school gossip?

 Theme

The idea that holds the story together, the central idea, or main meaning must contain the theme. Then the truth behind the story will last long after the characters/events of the story are forgotten.

                       

Think again about some stories you remember that made you laugh or cry or create a hunger in you. Which books do you re-read? Why?

Not set up as a moral or a lesson—more we read and discover that not only have we been entertained, but our understanding has been enlarged, and we have made a discovery of some kind. (Lukens)

Explicit themes

Are stated openly and clearly, for example Wilbur says, “Friendship is one of the most satisfying things in the world.”

Implicit themes

Are underlying, or revealed through the readers’ perception, for example, White’s implicit theme is that friendship can be found in unexpected places.

           

Multiple Themes

Every story usually has a primary theme but there can be multiple themes alongside if appropriate. They too can be either explicit or implicit. For example, in Charlotte’s Web a secondary theme is death.

            Usually the secondary themes are linked to the primary themes such as good vs evil, especially in fantasy and sci-fi which have much more space to include multiple concepts.

As you are reading books in the genre and age category you are most interested in make a note of whether the themes you notice fall under universal themes, personal themes, or author themes. Each theme can be explored in many facets because each character and situation will be different.  So each story is fresh in spite of incorporating well-known themes.

Action Steps:

1. Choose from hope, love, faith, trust, beauty and do a cluster or mapping.

2. Then take your word and make a list poem: hope is…. Or I believe beauty… .

3. When you finish your list poem go down your list and see if you can turn each line into a metaphor.

For example: hope is ...a waterfall.

/ Hope is a waterfall like rushing wind.

                                                / Hope is an hourglass waterfall.

OR

4. Brainstorm possible one-line summaries like the opening that support some suggested themes below given by Story Sparkers (cannot find my source reference)

—trust, differences/individualism, competition, friendship, fear, bravery/heroism, conflict, sacrifice, loss, change, honor.

                                    Try doing a few for different age categories.

Share: What one-line summary or metaphor did you like the best?

Read deep, marcy

Connect With Maps

“Theme in literature is the idea that holds the story together, such as a comment about society, human nature, or the human condition. It is the main idea or central meaning of a piece of writing.” Rebecca J. Lukens

Although theme is an integral element, it is not always visible, or at least not on the surface. Yet without its natural thread weaving throughout, the story will remain unfinished and unfocused, regardless of the expertise of the writer. Something will emotionally remain undone.  

Think of the maps we follow faithfully down city routes, turn a corner and discover where a road should be is a very tall brick building. The road was there but has been cut off, perhaps decades earlier, and only after much trial and error do we find a way around and back to the squiggly lines the map says will get us to our destination. Only now we are completely frustrated and no longer trust the ink directions.

On the other hand the theme that quietly draws us through shadows and back alleys and into hidden compartments feels more like a treasure hunt and when we see theses lines shape into their pattern, our response is an ah-ha moment.

In the mystery series Midsomer Murders, it is not unusual for the investigators to have maps up on their boards to help mark out routes suspects may have taken within a time frame to commit the murder. Since Midsomer is a fictional county there are many rural hamlets, villages with paths and alleys, busy towns, and sometimes hidden underground tunnels. The guilty knew their lay of the land well and used it to their advantage. Often though the physical map and the psychological map were intertwined in the theme.

So also for the character Calli, in The Crystal Scepter, who after a shattering experience flees up a deserted coastline, but through the journey is restored to her true nature. Then when disaster comes again she is able to stand firm to her heart’s truth.

Journal Prompt:

            Look at possible physical maps in your story line. Which characters walk them? For each person, link the external map to their internal emotional arc and the overall theme.

Share: Did your choice add a deeper context to your story?

Build a Story World

Heresy With Impact Cont’d

As you’re reading, researching and building your novel’s story world, look for all the places where heresy is possible or where heresy once existed. Start small within your character’s personal world and then expand out as it emotionally impacts your main character and the story question. Attach your personal feelings from last week's exercise to your character’s situation. 

For a series, maybe book one could include the seed for a heresy to explode in book five. Or book three will settle once for all a heresy that existed before book one.

Chart out a cause and effect graph for both viewpoints, along with a potential timeline for the consequences. Then, if using it in a series, you will have a better sense of where different “effects” need to be placed.

Exercise:

Take your primary setting for your character and make a list of all the ‘forbiddens’ that could affect that particular site. Go crazy. Make silly ones as well as serious.

What if a café refused service if a person did not have a tattoo? What if a prestigious art museum allowed a children’s birthday party (complete with gooey cake) at the foot of a priceless masterpiece?

Share: Which particular incident in your list appalls your character? Which does she think is ridiculous?

Connect With Maps

After watching the movie John Carter, I read some background material on its sources and watched the extras on the DVD, as I was really curious about the world building aspects of the movie.

It seems the original creator of the story sequence, Edgar Rice Burroughs, became interested in the scientific discussion in the early 1900’s that the markings on the planet Mars represented dried up waterways and rivers. His imagination began to explore what the edge of that decline could have looked like. What or who could have lived on Mars before the water disappeared? He drew many maps for the world he named Barsoom based on that scientific premise. Some of them can be seen on Google.

It reminded me that many of our own civilizations began alongside major rivers. Until mankind learned to harness water, he had to live beside it. Even now, those who live near plentiful water supplies do not really understand the value of water to those who do not and their deprivation as a result.

Our own oceans have a circulation system that circles the world. One source refers to it as a conveyor belt. This complex unseen map system circulates heat and nutrients throughout its pathways. All countries would be affected if the system broke down. Air currents and migration paths are other unseen maps ready for exploration. Regardless of your genre, stop and take a look at nature’s maps in your character’s surroundings. What maps were drawn a century before? What might be drawn a century into the future?

Journal Prompt:

Choose one of your novel settings near water. Examine the value of the water to the inhabitants.  Is it for survival, enjoyment, tourism, trade or protection?

Share: What would happen to the nearest population if that particular water source dried up?

Build a Story World

Heresy With Impact

“Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma.” Wikipedia

 

For world building I think this definition can be extended to include any aspect of your world that is its backbone. What is being challenged? What will be the end result—for either victor? Where is the threat coming from?

The dogma includes science, history, customs, morals, politics, economics, geography and finances. It extends from micro changes, as in a character’s perspective, to macro changes, as in the destruction of a civilization. No wonder our worlds can be both exciting and intimidating to build.

And I’m using the term world here as our story world. The movie Phantom of the Opera is told almost completely within the opera house. We have only a few glimpses to the outside ‘real time’ and only where/how it impacts the internal story within the opera house.

Heresy is deeper than the conflict of values within the same beliefs. Almost every major early scientific discovery our world has known came at great cost. The sun is the center of the universe—not the earth. The world is round—not flat, both considered heretical claims of their time with serious consequences.  

Exercise:

           Choose a category that you have been curious about either vocationally or personally. Pick a decade or century and make a list of the issues that became a changing marker in the field.

Share: Which one is the most interesting to you?

Connect Maps

Summertime and the maps come out of drawers ready to plot vacation travel. We customize a route connecting the dots of destination and sightseeing. Everyone is anxious to get to our destination, however somewhere along the route we realize we don’t all have the same expectations for when we arrive. We agreed on the surface route, but not the underlying motives.

It’s not always the best scenario for travel relationships but it’s a terrific opportunity to build tension within theme in our novels. As we connect the emotional and goal dots between characters we add stress to plotting the story route.

In her excellent book, Wild Ink, Victoria Hanley differentiates between premise, message and theme. Premise is “often used to refer to the underpinnings of a particular world or milieu.” Theme is “a feature that runs through the novel.” The message “must hold true for that particular novel” and the subplot messages become mirror images that bring the reader back to the main point. Dot to dot connects the emotional route.

The movie Penelope has several excellent examples of sub-text communicating opposing message values in dialogue and in actions. In particular Penelope’s mother, Jessica, keeps telling her that she is not what she looks like, she is not her nose, rather someone waiting to come out. Jessica really thinks she believes it herself. However she also believes that the only way her daughter will be truly happy is to meet society’s expectations of good looks and a good name and only through this map configuration can Penelope’s curse be broken. 

Jessica truly lovely her daughter but she is so fixated on a one-route course that, even after the disfiguring curse is removed, she still suggests more ways for Penelope to improve opportunities by her looks.

Journal Prompt:

Write a brief conversation between your protagonist and someone he trusts completely where he realizes that this person has been undermining all his efforts because ‘it’s for his own good’.

Share: Which has the greater damage—the external situation or the emotional impact?