I am perpetually working on my narrator’s arc in my family memoir, Matilda’s Silence: The Search For My Armenian Family’s Story. The narrator’s arc is how the narrator changes throughout the story. The narrator’s arc is important but I’ve focused more on finding information on my Armenian family than what that information means to me, the narrator. Andrea Gabriel’s recent blog gave me some new insight into that arc. She writes about the difference between what a character wants—the known external goal, and what a character needs—the unknown (to the character) internal shift. Andrea is referring to fiction but this applies to memoir also. 

When the author sets out to write a memoir, they might not know what the narrator needs. That need may be discovered over the course of the writing, which will shift the narrator’s arc and then in revision that thread will have to be developed and shaped throughout the book. 

Yes, there’s a difference between the author, the person sitting at the keyboard writing the story, and the narrator on the page who tells the story. Here’s a simplified explanation of a complicated and nuanced subject. The whole person of the author can’t be the narrator. In my case, I will not be including my yoga practice or my thoughts on Jane Austen’s novels or my avid bird watching in my family memoir. Those parts of me are not needed here. My narrator is curated for this particular story. On the page is the granddaughter, at various ages, interacting with her grandmother and wanting to know but never told the family story. There is the narrator now, sixty years old, reflecting on those past experiences and the information she is now discovering about her family.

In my family memoir, my narrator starts out wanting to know how her paternal family survived the Armenian Genocide, what their life was like in Turkey, how they came to be in the United States. Her investigative journey on the page uncovers facts through online and family documents, photographs, old letters brown and brittle, the labyrinth of DNA. For the narrator, knowing is the ultimate goal. But then the acquired facts don’t bring the narrator the level satisfaction she thought they would. 

It has taken me, the author, over five years of working on this project to realize why the narrator has this need to know. What does the knowing, besides the facts themselves, provide for her? The knowing, while holding its own importance, is standing in for, even obscuring, what the narrator needs. Now that I think I know what the narrator needs, I have to decide how to show that on the page, how to go back to the beginning, the harder path, as Andrea points out in her blog, to weave in the newly discovered need.

And I’m not sharing the need here because I’m still mulling it over. And it’s possible this need might shift as I incorporate it into the story, as it shapes the narrator’s arc. You’ll have to wait for the book. Thank you for your patience.

I recommend you read Andrea’s short blog which starts by showing this want/need principle at work, and then expands it, beyond my slight explanation, with many examples.

The want/need conundrum applies to real life as well. We all know what we think we want. But what do we need? What do we need that we are unaware of and how do we bring ourselves to a state of awareness? Writing is one way. It doesn’t have to be a book-length work. Journaling, free-writing, writing a letter to yourself are all ways to explore what you want and discover what you need from this one precious life of yours.

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Another Craft Book: Last month I wrote about Revision and Craft Books. In response, Katie Duane, a fellow MFA alum from the Rainier Writing Workshop, recommended Word Painting: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively by former RWW faculty Rebecca McClanahan. (Rebecca was my thesis-year mentor!) I reviewed the table of contents and turned to chapter nine, “Plot and Pace: How Description Shapes the Narrative Line.” This chapter offered up exactly what I need for where I’m at in the revision of my family memoir.  

“If during a passage of summary your narrative slows, one way to quicken the pace is to insert a concrete and sensory description.” She goes on to stress the importance of using active verbs. “For instance, ‘Her hair was black and curly’ can become ‘Her black hair curled in ringlets around her cheeks.’”

Other topics covered: the challenges of flashbacks, tension in nonnarrative works, the scattering of details to unify the plot, withholding details to create tension, and using description to suggest psychological motion. All this in just one chapter! Illustrative examples throughout the chapter and exercises at the end make this a rich and practical addition to my growing pile of craft books.

I’m grateful for the chain of events that brought this book to my attention. I am thankful for the writers and readers who suggest helpful resources that support the journey of writing a book, cairns to guide the way. 

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Thank you for reading! Writing is a solitary endeavor and your presence here brightens my day!