Turning a Memoir into a Novel

Imagine a can of Coca-Cola sitting in the middle of a table. Around the table you gather all the members of your immediate family and a few friends. There are age differences in those people, and gender differences, too. Some of the people sit at the table. Some of the people stand. One person kneels on the floor.

Everyone has a different look at the can of Coca-Cola. Everyone has a different perspective. Everyone has a different opinion. None of the perspectives are particularly right or wrong - just different looks at the same thing.

For 40 years, I tried to write my book - Brookwood Road - as a first-person Memoir, telling the stories of my childhood, growing up with my brothers on our family hog farm in north Georgia. Every time I sat down to write the book, I got frustrated and gave up.

Why?

Because, I could hear the choir of voices.
"That's not how that happened."
"You left out this part."
"You fabricated all of that."

The voices represented the perspectives of lots of other people looking at the same place, time, events and lives. We were all seeing the same thing - just a lot of different perspectives. And, my perspective was especially complicated because it was through the lens of a boy between the ages of 7-14. Here I was, an adult, reaching back 40 years in time to stories I remembered as a child, which might have been a far different perspective than many others looking at the those same events.

I asked myself, 'How do I clear away all of that fog and clatter to get the book written?'
I will take away all of the other perspectives. I'll write my Memoir as a Novel and admit up front - "Some of these stories are true, some of these stories are based in truth, and some of these stories should have been true."

Writing the book as a Novel shifted it from first-person story telling to third-person story telling. Writing in third person helped me move everyone away from the table and push back from the table myself. It suddenly became very easy to write the book, substituting the Wilcox family in place of the Vaughan family. Now, I could take a simple 400-word story, and expand it to 2,500 words. I removed all of the barriers and all of the rules. Now, I could keep a central nugget of truth, but paint a big and bold picture around that nugget of truth. I could make the book conversational, knowing the conversations were certainly fabricated. (Let's face it, I didn't record my life on tape). I could invent some new characters, or take a handful of characters and merge them into one character. (Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?) I could include family history, but not have to worry about 100 percent accuracy. It was liberating and a lot of fun.

On top of it all, I could escape the "first person" writing style that reminds me of watching someone's home movies. I hate watching another person's home movies. And, I get bored with writing or reading, "I did this" or "I said that."

So, that's why I wrote it as a Novel.
Now, you may be wondering what's true and what's not true. Questions? Let me hear them at sharketing411@gmail.com.

Blessings,