Details: Keys to unlock your Personal Story's
power
Your Unique Signature
To unlock the power of your personal story, you need to use the key of details. As you go back to "stand in the moment", details are the treasure you bring back that make your story lively and dramatic. Details distinguish yours from anyone else’s; your choice of remembered details is your unique signature.
Details tell by showing. In aggregate, they lend descriptive power and weave depth and richness into the fabric of your narration. They are the building blocks of any good narrative memoir. Details are the writer’s best friends. Often, a detail can illuminate a whole world. One scientist likens the process to a hologram, any piece of which carries all the information to complete the hologram.
<> Two boys in postwar Germany subsist on food meant for zoo animals.
<> A feast of peanut butter turns to glue in a child’s mouth as she discovers something awful about her mother.
<> A mother carefully creating Shirley Temple ringlets with sugar water in her daughter’s hair signifies all the lavish care denied a little sister the mother considers "ugly".
<> A nine-year-old girl is embarrassed by a sexy, black nightgown she watches her mother pack for a reunion with her father, who has been away at war—only to hear her father demanded a divorce when they met.
<> A housewife speeds along on some "nameless errand" and we feel her everyday life’s futility.
<> A child’s fear of getting caught in a possibly dangerous prank is epitomized by the towering, black, polished boots of a gruff Glasgow policeman.
<> A little girl wants to shave her downy legs and her mother tells her only that once you start, it’s hard to stop—sage but underplayed maternal advice for all time.
Using detail to light up an effect is the difference between showing and telling. It enlivens memory, lodging like a splinter in a reader’s mind. These were not consciously crafted clues. They surfaced simply in the process of remembering. They show how the subconscious will bring submerged materials—subtext--to light if we play along.
They are more than merely metaphor or simile, more than figure of speech; they help illuminate or encapsulate a story’s deeper themes and orchestrate its depth feelings and moods. Sometimes they appear unbidden from the true center of our experience.
Don’t worry about meaning at first. Just log true details. Often, they come clear only later. The detail of the sexy nightgown, for example, picks up its power only in retrospect--when we realize that the mother’s expectant notions of an intimate reunion are dashed by the cruel divorce surprise.
Likewise, the detail of the carefully fashioned ringlets resonates sympathy and sadness because it is the neglected sister who describes the scene without rancor or judgment. The policeman’s "towering" black boots show rather than tell the fallen child’s point of view.
If in the pursuit of memory you seem to run short on details, consult your five senses . You hear, see, feel, smell and taste a wealth of detailed information and much of it stays in the memory banks. To access it, just pick one sense and follow its trail; you will surely find more than enough color and feeling to start your personal story moving. If you get stuck, pick another sense, follow that trail and make notes.
Static Tingle
The sound of a barking dog, the static tingle of stroked fur, the ozone smell of an overhead trolley cable, the sight of an eagle plummeting after prey—any of these triggers starts the process. At first, direction and logic aren’t key; only keeping memory flowing matters.