Amber Lea Starfire – From Memories to Memoirs
Turn Your Memories into Compelling Memoirs
I believe that everyone’s lives, however “ordinary,” are filled with experiences that speak to universal human experience and are therefore interesting to other people. Learn how to record your memories as engaging stories and create a legacy of memoir during this fun, ten-week, moderated self-study course.
From Memories to Memoirs is based on Bill Roorbach’s book Writing Life Stories: How To Make Memories Into Memoirs, Ideas Into Essays And Life Into Literature and is designed to help students convert memories into compelling narrative prose.
Using a variety of memory-triggering and writing exercises, we will explore the stories that our memories have to tell and learn writing techniques to help tell them most effectively.
In this class you will:
Define and discuss the nature of memoir and story.
Learn techniques to trigger memories and challenge their limits.
Explore and discuss the nature of memory.
Discover how different types of research can enhance memories and the experience of writing about them.
Write scenes that incorporate elements of creative writing while remaining true to the remembered facts.
Understand the differences between scene, summary, and exposition, and when to use them.
Learn how to develop true-to-life characters on the page.
Complete a 1,500-2,000 word memoir or narrative essay.
Note: Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach is a required text for this class.
Your Instructor
Amber Lea Starfire
Amber Lea Starfire is an author, editor, teacher and writing coach whose passion is helping others tell their stories, make meaning of life, and access inner wisdom and creativity through the act of writing. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from San Francisco University and an MA in education from Stanford University. Recent memoirs include Accidental Jesus Freak: One Woman’s Journey from Fundamentalism to Freedom and Not the Mother I Remember: A Memoir. Her Journaling for Transformation series includes Week by Week: A Year’s Worth of Journaling Prompts & Meditations, Journaling the Chakras, and Journaling Through Relationships. Amber is also editor of several anthologies, including the award-winning, Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s.
Course Curriculum
Introduction & Overview
Introduction and course Goals
Introduce Yourself
General Guidelines for Responding to Others’ Writing
Introduction and Overview: Downloadable PDF
Week 1: Defining Memoir
What is Memoir?
Writing Prompts
Discussion
Exercise One: Mapmaking from pages 28-29
Exercise Two: Map Story on page 32.
Optional & Recommended
Week 1 – PDF Download
Week 2: Making Scenes
Introduction to Scene
Reading About Scene
Discussion Questions
Dead Frog Exercise
Write: Cracking Open Your Scene
Optional & Recommended
Week 2 PDF Download
Week 3: Writing the Senses
Writing the Senses
Discussion
Reading the Senses
Writing the Senses Exercise
Remembering the Senses
A Scene List
Burning Moments
Week 3: Downloadable PDF
Week 4: Real Life Characters
Portraying Characters
Characteristics
Writing Your Character
Optional and Recommended
Week 4: Downloadable PDF
Week 5: Dialogue and Drama
Characterization Through Conflict and Drama
Pre-Writing
Characterization Through Dialogue
Writing Dialogue
Don’t Skip This Exercise!
Dialogue With Action and Description
Characterization Through Description
Week 5: Downloadable PDF
Week 6: Emotion and Voice
Emotion and Voice
Emotion and Voice Continued
Back to the Letter
Get Pissed on Paper
Selecting Your Final Project
Week 6: Downloadable PDF
Week 7: Fact Finding
A New Adventure
Types of Research
The Half-Hour Year
Face-to-Face Research
Week 7: Downloadable PDF
Week 8: Employing Metaphor
Introduction to Metaphor
Metaphor, the Source of All Meaning
Adding Figurative Language and Symbols
Week 8: Downloadable PDF
Week 9: Saying it Right
Saying it Right
On Being Clear
Prose in Motion
Rhythm, Density, Texture & Precision
Week 9: Downloadable PDF
Week 10: Structure
Introduction to Finding Your Structure
Finding Your Form
The Basic Structure of Nonfiction
Ways to Structure Memoir
Structuring the Personal Essay
Week 10: Downloadable PDF
Wrapping Up and What’s Next
The Final Steps (0:42)
Course Evaluation
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