Writing Personal Stories: the Takeaway
Writing a personal story can be a daunting task. Writers often know the story they want to tell but don’t know where to begin. When you only have X amount of words to get your point across, how do you sort through which parts to put into a piece and which ones to leave out? How do you create a framework to best tell the story? There is one guiding principle I tell writers to think about—the takeaway.
Ask yourself every time, what’s in it for the reader? Because if there is no takeaway, why are they going to keep reading? If nothing happens, you are sharing a recap/an anecdote but not a story. A story needs an arc. Something needs to shift. The main character (you) should not be the same person at the end as you were at the beginning.
Essentially, what you are doing when you write a personal story for a reader is taking a lesson from your life and using a story to show the reader how you learned it. What you need to ask as you begin your writing is …
• How did this experience change me?
• How did this experience shape me into who I am now?
• How did this experience force me to grow?
The answer to those questions will often be the best way for writers to gain direction on what to put in their story (and what to leave out).
This transformation can be:
Physical - weak now scaling mountains
Emotional - depressed now happy
Behavioral - meat eater now vegan
Situational - terrible marriage now divorced and happy
Attitude - hated broccoli now loves them
And don’t forget you can have several different stories about one life event but in memoir and personal essay the question is, what is the one I’m writing about right now? Knowing the answer to that will help keep you on track.
Some questions to ask:
• Is this about you versus yourself? An internal struggle?
• Is this about your relationship with another person?
• Is this about you versus the world?
Defining what the story is about will help you select the details and the moments you want to include. Think of the details as the stepping stones that get you from one side of the stream to another (the change). How do you get the reader to understand your journey? How do you get them to see how you went from side A to side B?
Now, let’s talk about some important elements that will help us tell the story:
1. Scenes: show parts of the story that are compelling and critical to the arc. They are what bring your story to life. Scenes are where we “show” the reader instead of “tell.” They are what makes the reader feel what you felt. Allow the event to unfold the way it happened to you.
I was nervous when I saw him.
VS.
I take a breath and open the door. He is standing in the corner. I want to feel nothing. I want to see him and prove to myself that he doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. But I feel it all. Seeing him hits me like a spoonful of sugar. My pulse pounds. My posture suddenly feels awkward, as if my body doesn’t know what to do. I tug at my shirt. How, after all this time, does he have this power over me?
2. Details: The truth is the overall story is one that many will have—love, loss, struggling through adversity—but the details make it yours. They are what give it the texture, make it unique, and bring it to life.
Details can be texture: the ripped jeans, the Oscar Meyer bacon, the instant mash potatoes, the real mashed potatoes dripping with gravy, the TV dinner, the canned cranberries, the homemade cranberry sauce, the song playing, the cushy carpet, the dust on the table, the real Christmas tree with the rich smell of pine, the fake tree with the sparse tinsel, the tacky wallpaper, the tattered work boots, the Louboutin heels … These are what turns scenes from black-and-white to color. They make the story real, tangible.
3. Summaries/Transitions: move us through the timeline and connect us to the next step. (Two weeks later I was outside the house …)
4. Interiority/Reflections: sharing your feelings and insights about what you learned, how you decided to change, or what you have accepted.
As the storyteller, you are in charge of how you use those four elements to tell the story. Using the takeaway to narrow your focus will help you pinpoint how to tell the story the best way. Happy writing!
