Triggering Words: A Mini-Memoir Exercise

Writing Narrative Nonfiction: Triggering Words – A Mini-Memoir Exercise

by Lisa Dale Norton
April 2009

"That’s the trick of memoir—finding one word brimming with emotion."
—NORTON

I found a note the other day I wrote months ago about words and how one perfect word can evoke a world of story. That’s the trick of memoir—finding one word brimming with emotion and then chasing the story right out of it. When a reader brushes up against that story, his life bridges over from yours, beckons a parallel time and a place, and he thinks you’ve spoken the language of his soul.

What stories rise for you with these words? Adventure, ballgame, beach, bicycle, birthday, boyfriend, broken, burn, camp, car accident, dancing, doctor, explosion, failure, fall, favorite shop, fire, first impression, flood, flying, guilt, girlfriend, haircut, hero, hiding place, holiday meal, hurricane, job, lie, locked out, lost, math, mountain, party, pet, picnic, plane crash, political election, rain, reading relative, sailing, school, sister, snowstorm, spring, success, summer, swimming, teacher, travel, tree, trouble, vacation, war, weeping, winter.

Make your own list. Write each word on a scrap of paper and toss it into an elegant bowl you keep on your desk, or tucked into your writing corner. Draw one word each day and write a story. It needn’t be long, a paragraph, a page—whatever your heart leads you to say. At the end of the week you’ll have a mini-memoir.