The Archetype of Meaning
Going Deep with Theme, Reflection, and Takeaways
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(This is post #6 in the series based on Deep Memoir by Jennifer Selig.)
An interesting thing happens when one begins writing a memoir. At first, everything that comes to mind is included. But there is no structure, no narrative. It is not yet a story, but a list of this happened, then this happened. This is boring, even to the writer. I keep reading a memoir to find the meaning a memoirist made of her life events. This changed me; here’s how and why.
In Deep Memoir, Jennifer Selig suggests starting with a big, broad universal question. In his memoir, Gregory Orr asks “How do we find meaning in the face of death?” Memoirists are cautioned not to worry if the essential question sounds trite or has been done before. Each memoir is both specific and universal. It answers a universal question, but with the specifics of the memoirist’s life, something unique.
Selig describes a useful distinction between a memoir’s topic and its theme. The themes are the meanings made from the topical subject matter. Some books use the words interchangeably, but Selig makes a distinction, and she uses a helpful metaphor.
“The topic is a necklace, the pearls are the individual stories you’ll share on that topic, and the string is the theme that holds the stories together, the memoir’s throughline.”
I imagine the throughline for my memoir as Ariadne’s red thread, pulling me through the story.
Selig also makes a distinction between reflection and takeaways. “Reflections are about the author, how the author makes meaning of their experience, but takeaways are for the reader.”
Much of this chapter is devoted to helping the memoirist not be bashful about spotlighting the themes in takeaways, ensuring that the reader gets the lessons the protagonist earned through her actions and mistakes. Strategies she suggests include quoting others, either in epigraphs or in the body of the text, putting the takeaway in dialogue, or putting the takeaway at the end of a chapter to “stick the dismount.”
In revision, as I look at each chapter to ensure each one starts and ends strongly, this craft book chapter has been helpful. I’ve talked before about the iterative nature of writing and revising memoir. Each pass I make through my manuscript, each question I get from a puzzled critique partner brings fresh insights.
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Thanks for reading,
Deborah
Love this metaphor: "“The topic is a necklace, the pearls are the individual stories you’ll share on that topic, and the string is the theme that holds the stories together, the memoir’s throughline.”
What insightful comments about the construct on a memoir!