Creative Prompts: Book Memory & Sense of Place
The beauty of personal narrative is that once students learn the overall objective—to show instead of tell, to invite readers into scene, to paint a picture with descriptive details, to shape a story from a moment (or series of moments) in their life—once these narrative writing qualities have been established, the creative prompts become endless. What I often like to do is match the prompt thematically with what we are discussing within a literary text or a course, which allows the literature to become a springboard into their own story.
Often the most difficult step of the process for students is selecting the right moment to shape into a story. This is why freewriting & guided brainstorming can sometimes be necessary to help students along this process of story selection, as they are drawing from the memories and moments within their own lives.
One thing I always emphasize: Ordinary moments are the stuff of great stories! Yes, we might have some extraordinary moments as well, and that can be wonderful, but simple, everyday moments can provide material for the most meaningful narratives. Here are a few “rules of thumb” about story selection:
Select a moment that you remember well enough to write in detail.
Don’t become obsessed with “how it actually happened.” While you want to be truthful (don’t make things up), it’s okay to make small adjustments in order to shape it into a smooth narrative arc (maybe merging two days together or cutting a minor character out of the story, for example).
Most importantly: select a moment from your life that you want to relive, because that’s what you do when plunging back into the memory. Do you want to revisit the moment because it’s special, meaningful, beautiful, foundational? Or do you want to revisit a hard, difficult memory because you know you’re ready to process it? Writing can be incredibly therapeutic! I often tell students that you know you’re ready to write about hard things when you can go back to the memory without feeling the raw, painful emotions—while the emotions might certainly still be present, they have softened, thus allowing you to experience them (and the memory) safely.
Book Memory Narrative
“The writer of a great book gives us, the readers, a new tank of oxygen, allowing us to dive again and again into life. Great good comes from reading great books.” - Nina Sankovitch
Prompt: Write a story in which you explore your experiences as a reader.
Your answer to the prompt might look at a particular work you had an experience with. It might look at a particular genre (such as fantasy or science fiction). It might take place in an instant or might span a given time period. It might deal directly with reading (as Simic’s “Reading Philosophy at Night” does). It might weave in reading experience alongside another life experience. It might delve into the philosophical or spiritual background behind your reactions to a text. It might delve into your physical interactions (did you throw the book across the room?). It might look at a text you love, maybe one you hate. These are suggestions—feel free to run with them, shape them. Whatever you do, let us into your head as a reader. (This prompt was originally part of my Honors “Great Books” course.)
My Example: This piece offered a fun challenge, as I attempted to combine the prompts from all three classes I was teaching at the time, but the main inspiration was this “book memory” prompt. (The second inspiration was the prompt I’ll share next.) It also allowed me to reflect on the moment I truly became “a reader” & to find a picture of my beautiful childhood home.
Meeting Anne (with an “e”)
When I spread my childhood along a timeline, one year stands out among the rest. My father’s dreams of being a country doctor led him to open his first practice among the towering firework stands and age-old traditions of a small town by the Tennessee river, not far from Chattanooga. It didn’t really take much to create a magical childhood in those days—just freedom to explore with a gang of neighborhood friends and a loving home to return to each evening. That year, we rode our bikes until sunset with abandon, raced down mountain trails on horseback, met up at the local skating rink most weekends, and discovered old coins buried under the crawlspace of my house. Looking back, it was the stuff of movies.
Then, almost without warning, my parents decided to move again, this time to another small town back in our native Texas. It all happened too quickly to be sad. Before I knew it, I stood in front of a mirror, inspecting myself on the first day of sixth grade. Short, tom-boyish hair framing my freckled face and naturally thick brows, I sported my favorite tee-shirt and jeans, honestly thinking I looked awesome. But it only took a few days at my new school to see myself differently, my vision warped by the fresh information freely offered by my peers. Within a couple months, I started growing out my hair and had tweezed each eyebrow into a thin arch. Reluctantly, I gave away my 10-speed bike, my treasured possession, after a classmate pulled me aside to explain that “only the poor kids—you know, the thugs—ride bikes.” This new word, thug, failed to register as I tried to categorize it in my mind, but based on the way people pronounced it, and how rough it felt on the tongue, I knew it was a word I didn’t want describing me.
Our new house, which was actually quite old, loomed large over Main Street, a remnant of another era with its three stories, wrap-around porch, and grand columns. My interior-designer mother had seen the renovation as a creative challenge and stripped each wall down to its “good bones” in order to rebuild it to perfection. Legends of Santa Anna’s army and a lucky man who drew a life-saving white bean from a pot whispered throughout the stairwells of the hundred-year-old mansion.
It resided a couple blocks from a picturesque downtown with a local library perched in the center of a brick square. Out of boredom, I often traipsed to this library, no longer owning a bike, and lugged home a few checked out books and movies on VHS. In this way I discovered Greek mythology and Nancy Drew mysteries, often reading two or three books in a week and needing to return to the library to replenish my supply. In each story, each fantasy, each mystery, I found escape and renewed adventure.
Then one day, almost accidentally, I met Anne of Green Gables. With this book, this character, the magic seemed to spill off the pages and into my real life once again. Everything she encountered became beautiful, and in loving it she renamed it: the “Avenue” transforming into “White Way of Delight” and “Barry’s Pond” into “The Lake of Shining Waters.” What if I too could find such beauty in the ordinary world?
Like me, she was eleven and struggling for friendship and connection in a new place. Like me, she wore the wrong clothes and had awkward freckles and talked too much and got herself into trouble with her big imagination and even bigger emotions. Like me, she loved words and stories, and when I look back, I believe she taught me their expansive quality, that they can fill in the gaps and hollow spaces of a life.
One afternoon stands distinctly in my mind. As I climbed onto our balcony to avoid the acrid fumes of freshly painted walls, I unlocked my diary with its tiny key and scribbled these words, “I have a secret to tell. My best friend isn’t real. But in my mind, she is. How can I love a character in a book so much?!” Like Anne’s own imaginary window friend, she was a reflection of myself, and in admitting our kindredness, I felt my face flush with shame.
But I also felt hope. If Anne could start afresh in Avonlea and find her “bosom friend,” then why couldn’t I do the same in this place? Sitting on that balcony, overlooking Main Street, I vowed in my diary that, while my mother might have left the “e” off my name (a detail that has plagued my life with misspellings), I too would look for beauty in the ordinary and find adventure and friendship once again.
Sense of Place Narrative
“As soon as we step down from the general view to the close and particular … place can be seen, in her own way, to have a great deal to do with that goodness, if not to be responsible for it. How so?
First, with the goodness—validity—in the raw material of writing. Second, with the goodness in the writing itself—the achieved world of appearance … Third, with the goodness—the worth—in the writer himself: place is where he has his roots, place is where he stands; in his experience out of which he writes, it provides the base of reference; in his work, the point of view.” - Eudora Welty
Prompt: Write a story in which your “sense of place” significantly informs the narrative.
Your response to the prompt might consider a natural space, a place that holds sentimental value, a place of heritage/culture, or even a place that is part of your family history—but the place should be significant to the story, not simply the setting, and it provides insight in your your unique “sense of place,” your roots, your point of view.
Literary Examples we might read beforehand:
“A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, and “Mint Snowball” by Naomi Shihab Nye. (This prompt was originally part of my Senior “Southern Literature” course).
Student Example: This piece was written by a senior during the fall semester, and if you read carefully, you can sense his awareness of another “season” coming to an end in his life. I love his use of personal and specific details as he creates the scene of this place that means so much to him. Once the reader gets to the end, they realize that the main conflict is not whether he will successfully shoot a deer, but saying goodbye to the peace & solitude he finds on the deer stand.
A Long Season’s Last Hunt
The wind cut through my soaking wet clothes like a knife, piercing my soul with the kind of cold that can only make you want to go inside and never come back out. The tall oak tree my platform hung from creaked in the wind. I did not care though, the woods are my happy place. My heaven on earth. The wet leaves moved about twenty yards in front of me. My heart jumped, and I lifted my bow from my lap. I felt my heart rate increasing and my breathing becoming deeper in hopes that this would be the moment I sat in trees and blinds all season for. Just a raccoon. I cussed in my head and picked my book back up. What else would I do with no cell signal and no deer to watch? 4:15: about one hour until it was too dark to see and I would have to begin the long walk out of the stand of hardwoods and through the rain-saturated gumbo mud of the soybean field—harvested months ago—to the truck. I always made sure to focus on my surroundings when it got to this time; the deer always move the most around dark. Sitting still in the woods and listening makes every moving leaf and breeze seem to speak to you.
In one of my favorite places, doing one of my favorite things, and still ready to leave. 5:00. The sun slid behind the tree tops just a few minutes ago, leaving just enough light to see through the maze of oak trees and underbrush and about fifteen minutes of shooting light left. I strained my eyes to see a single deer, but all I saw was a family of raccoons. Too dark to see now. I grabbed my bag and quickly threw in my things in a haphazard manner, hoisted my bow onto my shoulder, and began my climb down the ladder to the precious ground. I do not have a fear of heights, but there is just something about climbing down a small ladder with a backpack and a bow in my hand that makes me nervous. The leather heel of my right cowboy boot clanged against the last rung of the ladder, as I stretched my left foot down to the leaves scattered on the ground. I turned towards the edge of the thicket and began my walk. I walked about fifty yards through the woods and then crossed a ditch, almost slipping backwards in the process. I got to the field and began slogging across it. I had maybe 300 yards to the truck, but the slippery mud that I dug into with each and every step made it seem like 3000. Wet, cold, and hungry: I was ready to drive back to our hunting camp, take a warm shower, eat some chili, and slide between the blankets of my bed for a long night’s sleep. I threw my stuff in the back seat, jumped in the driver seat, put it in gear, and reversed all the way down the long turnrow at the end of the field.
The seventeen minute drive back to camp has never felt so long. Every time I moved in my seat, I could feel and hear my wet clothes squishing against the leather. I knew I would have to clean all of the mud and water from my truck the next morning, but I didn’t care. I turned right at the Casscoe, Arkansas post office, where the mailwoman delivers in a blue Jeep, and drove past the house that was burned down for insurance money. Passing double-wides and single-wides, I finally hit the gravel of Davie Acres Road, and as I pulled into the parking lot and right up to the front porch of the wooden cabin, my second home, I could not have had a bigger smile on my face.
By the end of the five month season, hunting did not have the same novelty to it. I was ready to be with my friends on the weekends and sleep-in on Saturdays. About two weeks after this, hunting season ended. Without it, life is not the same, and before long, I start counting down the days to September 24th when I can go sit through a rainstorm and cold wind in a treestand again. As I approach the dawn of a new hunting season, signaled both by my calendar and the new crispness in the air, I aim to not only kill a deer, but also to soak up every moment I steal from the busyness of my daily life to spend outdoors. Looking back, I would not trade anything for all of the time I have spent with myself and a good book in the woods.
Narrative Writing Techniques
The great thing about personal narrative is the objective stays the same, while the prompt changes. Each piece of writing should create a strong, authentic voice & should:
Show the action of the story, instead of “telling” it, using the following narrative writing techniques:
Presents a specific conflict that can be shaped into a story.
Uses robust, active verbs, and avoids “to be” linking verbs (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been).
Provides vivid detail, attempting to create a “movie in the reader’s mind.” The goal is to create a mental image and a mood/feeling that invites the reader into your experience.
Taps into all of the senses, not just visual. Consider sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the scene that you are creating.
Uses dialogue and/or inner dialogue to develop the characters in your scene (including yourself as the protagonist).
Instead of crafting every sentence “I + verb,” consider making different elements of yourself—your eyes, your hands, your heart, etc—the subject of the sentence.
Use a variety of sentence structures and lengths to create a natural, rhythmic flow of language, avoiding a clunky/repetitive effect. (Reading your draft aloud while revising will help with this.)
Consider the overall mood of the story, paying attention to word choice, carefully selecting words that create the desired mood of your piece.
