Tiny True Stories: How Micro Memoirs Make Us Better Writers

1 month ago 1

By Bethany Jarmul

How many words do you need to make an impact on a reader—to make them feel something, think about something in a new way, to change how they see the world? Would you need 50,000 words? How about 10,000? 1,000? What if I only gave you 300?

I started writing at a young age, filling my diaries with little stories from my life and with attempts at poetry scribbled in smudged blue ink. But the first time I encountered flash nonfiction (up to 1,000 words) and micro memoir, I was 19 years old, an undergraduate taking a creative nonfiction course. My professor introduced us to Brevity and assigned three essays. But I couldn’t stop after just three. I kept clicking and reading and clicking and reading. I was enthralled by the precise lyrical language and depth of vulnerability these essays portrayed. As I read the bios of the writers, many of whom had published memoirs or poetry collections, I thought—I want that to be me one day. I want to be that type of writer.

Thirteen years later, after studying and writing memoir and poetry, it was through mastering the art of the micro memoir that I finally realized my dream of publishing a piece in Brevity.

What if studying micro memoirs could unlock something for you too—whether or not you’re writing in that form?

Here are three things we learn through studying and writing micro memoirs, that raise the level of our craft and apply to everything we write:

The freedom of constraints. I love this quote from Marissa Mayer: “People often think…unbridled, unguided effort leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you’ll find that some of the most inspiring art forms — haikus, sonatas, religious paintings — are fraught with constraints.” Something amazing and counter-intuitive happens when we give our writing a narrow focus, such as responding to a specific prompt, using particular words, or writing within a strict word limit. Instead of feeling limited or imprisoned, it can unlock creativity and allow for creative play and experimentation.

At a reading, I once heard Terrance Hayes say, “However good you are [as a poet], you’re better with a form.”

The power of a sentence. Unlike poems, which use poetic lines, micro memoirs use sentences as their primary unit of meaning. With so few sentences to work with, each sentence has to do double, triple, even quadruple duty. It’s not enough to just set the scene or just introduce a character, the sentence needs to also advance the theme, employ sensory details, and/or move the plot.

“One morning, as we ate sandwiches—mine had apples on it—a hawk appeared outside the hospital cafeteria window.”

In this sentence from Heather Kindree Thomas’ recent Brevity essay, we get setting (hospital cafeteria), time of day (morning), narrative action (eating sandwiches), a concrete detail (mine had apples on it), a clue as to how many people are involved (we), and an introduction to the main topic of the essay (the hawk). We may even be able to guess, based on this one sentence, the deeper theme of the essay (mortality and the unpredictable nature of life).

Dinty W. Moore calls this layering, and points out that this way of writing mimics how we experience life. When you walk into a room, you take in the sights, smells, sounds, setting, and people all at once. When someone is speaking to you, you’re also aware (whether consciously or subconsciously) of their raised eyebrows and the Doritos cheese smell on their breath and that it’s raining outside the window. By harnessing the power of a sentence through layering, we can make our writing feel more real, more alive to the reader.

The magic of sound. If a memoir and a poem had a baby it would be a micro memoir. This baby would inherit all the best genes from both parents: it would be emotional and sensual and musical like one of its parents, powerful and concise and vulnerable like the other.

Every word, every syllable makes sound. The fewer the words, the more every word matters. The more every sound matters. As a prose writer, you can and should borrow the sound tools of a poet. That means trying alliteration and repetition, focusing on rhythm and auditory resonance. It means reading your piece out loud. Again and again. It means editing until the sounds of the piece further its meaning.

The task of writing a successful micro memoir sounds impossible—write a true story in 300 words or less that leaves a lasting impact on the reader. Yet, through zooming in and studying this tiny form, you can learn skills that will sharpen your writing on a sentence level and make everything you write more purposeful and effective.
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Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer, poet, and writing coach. She’s the author of a poetry collection, Lightning Is a Mother and a memoir, Take Me Home. Her work has been published in 100+ literary magazines including Rattle, Brevity, and Chestnut Review, selected for Best Spiritual Literature and Best Small Fictions, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net.

Join Bethany’s webinar, Micro Memoirs: Writing Tiny True Stories, for CRAFT TALKS October 15^th at 3PM Eastern ($25), to dive deep into six key considerations for micro memoirs, examples of effective micros and how to write your own powerful micros, prompts (as optional homework) to get you started. Find out more/register now.