In “How to Write a Memoir” William Zinsser gives very detailed and important advice to writers interested in writing a memoir. He gives the specific advice of “Be yourself,” “Speak Freely,” and “Think Small” (Zinsser, 2, 4, 6). These tips advise writers to not only think about what they want to say in their story but also how they want to tell their story. Many memoir authors choose to follow this advice and write their story using these points, but many do not. In the memoir “A Summer Life”, Gary Soto follows Zinsser’s writing advice through his use of writing from the point of view of a young child, speaking freely about his early life events, and writing about his life in small structure chapters.
William Zinsser states that he believes
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Gary Soto follows this advice extraordinarily. In the chapter “The Pie” he talks about a time as a young boy stealing a pie, and feeling a bit guilty afterwards. “…sneaked the pie behind my coffee lid Frisbee…” (Soto, 55). Stealing is a quite the touchy subjects, but Soto was not afraid to write about this event because he followed Zinsser’s advice and spoke freely. He did not fuss over the idea that his family and friends might be disappointed in him and instead focused on getting the memory out as he remembered, keeping all the important details in and explaining his emotions while this occurred thoroughly and with depth. He wrote it truthfully and honestly the way he remembered …show more content…
Zinsser says “Tackle your life in easily manageable chunks .” (Zinsser, 34). In a chapter titled “The Hand Break” Soto tells the story of when he made a handbrake to help him stop and start while running down the street. “… function was to help me stop when I came racing to the end of the street.” (Soto, 13). Even though this was not a huge event in his life that created a catastrophic outcome, this is an important memory to him, which is why he shared it. This is Soto striking a “universal truth” (Zinsser, 30) which Zinsser says will help the reader relate to the memoir. Gary Soto told a story of being a young boy inventing something that he thought fun and unique, which almost everyone who still has memories locked away in their brain of being a child can relate
My reflective thoughts on Donald Murray's "All writing is Autobiography", are easily aligned with this work as it continuously offered textual examples to the reader from fiction and non-fictional viewpoints, as to the fundamental notion that all writing is autobiography. Murray without a doubt creates an argument about the affect a person's experience shape the outcome of any work a writer may produce, in which I agree. For example, Donald Murray's poem "Black Ice" is written with an autobiographical voice, although most details did not take place-- he admits, but the poem continued to bring forth an organic rhythm of story telling without any hints of small truths while Murray injects the extra influencing details. Murray
The author starts with the description of his childhood experience and continues to focus on his feelings and events from personal life during the article. For example, he describes his thoughts about his grandmother’s cooking or explains what he felt when he understood
Many people would walk into their local grocery store and immediately see some food that they really want, but some may not be able to afford it. With that being said, some may stand there and contemplate stealing it, while others may just walk away. Throughout Gary Soto’s autobiographical narrative, he reflects on his actions using both, diction and imagery. Through diction, he exposes the journey of light and dark times and tells the stealing story with the religious symbolism of Adam and Eve. In imagery, he thoroughly explains the feelings throughout himself and physical appearances of the pie.
There are many similar and different qualities between ‘Popular’ and ‘Zinsser’s Advice On How To Write A Memoir’. In my opinion they are both very good stories, but here are some things I noticed about them.
William Zinsser is the person that wrote “How To Write A Memoir ”. William Zinsser gave us some advice to write a memoir. These specific advices are “Be Yourself”,” Speak Freely”, and “Think Small”. In Bad Boy, Walter Dean Myer memoir uses Zinsser advice but not in a exact way Zinsser wrote his memoir. Zinsser give us suggestions such as “Be Yourself” , ”It Your Story”, and “Think Small”.
Zinsser gave great advice to memoir writers. Soul Surfer a memoir about a girl who lost her arm to a shark. She does and doesn’t follow Zinsser’s advice, “Be yourself, speak freely, tell your story,” (Zinsser 2, 4, 6)
In Zinsser’s “How to Write a Memoir” he gives you three pieces of advice, be yourself, speak freely, and think small. I’m going to be comparing these three pieces of advice to my memoir I’ve read ”Guts”. I will be writing at least 5 paragraphs minimum for my essay. Now that I told you what I’m going to be doing, lets get right to it!
A good story is always structured with details that are easy to follow while intriguing readers with reality and emotions. Edwidge Danticat’s memoir has proven her ability to use descriptions that allows the text and the readers to connect. Through her writing, she is able to get the reader involved in her situation, so that it is as if they are experiencing it too. Adding on, Danticat cleverly writes each type of description in a way that makes them distinct from each other. This connects the two which adds to her message. Descriptions bring life to her story and stresses the real events that happened to her and her family which displays her message effectively. That being said, without objective and subjective descriptions, any piece
In “How to Write a Memoir, the text says,”Be yourself and the readers will follow you anywhere” (27). This advice from Zinsser shows that if you be yourself while writing a memoir, you can connect with the readers because they will understand your memoir more. In addition, William follows this advice because he only writes from a child's perspective in his memoir. In Bad Boy Walter talks about when he started his junior year at Stuyvesant,” I was fifteen, starting my junior year at Stuyvesant, and I was lost.” This displays that he is writing from a childlike perspective because he talks about how he didn’t know where he was going when he was at school and kids don’t usually are scared and lost when they start a new
Zinsser tells writers to think small because a memoir is supposed to be about what you want it to be, or what is important to you. According to the text, ““James stopped the bus, and the guys bolted toward the exit. I was sitting in the back of the bus, feet up and over the back of the seat in front of me” (87). This shows how in this moment he talks about how he is sitting and how his friends bolted to the front of the bus to leave. Another reason that supports the evidence is that during this moment he could’ve talked about anything like what was going on or what he was thinking, but no he decided to talk about how he was sitting and how his friends bolted off the
Following Zinsser's advice can be very helpful when you are writing a memoir. Gary Soto, the author of A Summer Life, writes a memoir about his childhood adventures. William Zinsser is the author of “How to Write a Memoir” in which he gives authors advice on writing memoirs. A Summer Life supports Zinnser’s advice for writing a memoir in “How to Write a Memoir” in various ways. Soto follows Zinsser’s advice to “speak freely” when writing.
In Zinsser’s “How to write a Memoir” it gives very specific advice for a memoir writers. He gives great suggestions such as “Be yourself, “Tell your own story,” and think small” (2,4,6). These suggestions encourage writers to think about how they would want to tell their story as much as they want to say. Some of his memoirs seem to follow his guidelines and some of the books don’t. In her memoir popular. Maya Van Wagenen supports Zinsser’s writing ideas throughout her use of a child’s point of view, an honest storytelling, and a structure of small memoires.
The story of my history as a writer is a very long one. My writing has come full circle. I have changed very much throughout the years, both as I grew older and as I discovered more aspects of my own personality. The growth that I see when I look back is incredible, and it all seems to revolve around my emotions. I have always been a very emotional girl who feels things keenly. All of my truly memorable writing, looking back, has come from experiences that struck a chord with my developing self. This assignment has opened my eyes, despite my initial difficulty in writing it. When I was asked to write down my earliest memory of writing, at first I drew a blank. All of a sudden, it became very clear to me, probably because it had some
The direction of this essay is showing a life change through a flashback. The main purpose of this essay is to describe a trip the author took to Iowa and reflect on the lesson she learned there. This Memoir could benefit from extra detail. The addition of extra detail makes the essay more entertaining and effective. The Memoir short essay is one of the first assignments completed for this course, and the skills gained since that date are being used to improve the essay. The author will focus on the skills gained in grammar and organization to revise this essay. Along with those major changes, the author needs to ensure that the Memoir is written in present tense and active
I was in high school the first time I had to write a narrative. I was a freshman. This was Ms. Bradley’s first time teaching at Union Christian Academy. On her first day, she gave us our syllabus and said, “I do not accept late work, especially on writing assignments.” We, literally, sat there stunned. My freshman class had it very easy during eighth grade year. We were not expecting this. As I looked through the syllabus, I saw that our first assignment was due in a week and it was a narrative. At this time, I did not even know what a narrative was. Ms. Bradley explained that a narrative was an account or story of events. It could be either true or false. Our narrative had to be true. It had to be a true account of something that happened to us over the summer. She wanted to gauge how are writing skills were. Our narrative had to be at least two to two and a half pages long. I chose to write my first ever narrative on my trip to Fort Worth, Texas. Once again, I was plagued with writer’s block. I had the story in my head, but everything I