How Do We Get Our Stories Out of Ourselves

I'd like to tell you about my friend and colleague Maureen Shepard, founder of Health Ascent. A practicing homeopath, she's also developing a line of unique plant essences and is in the process of beginning to write a book about how to partner with nature. Over the course of several months, we've had a series of casual conversations about what kinds of stories should go into such a book. Last week, one discussion seemed particularly valuable. With Maureen's permission, I now share the essence of our exchange with you.

About a month ago, Maureen took a two-week trip to Peru. She came home inspired by traveling through different regions of the country and doing ceremonies with indigenous shamans. Her adventures culminated on the banks of Lake Titicaca, where there was a particularly momentous occasion in which she felt called forth and recognized as an elder. As she recounted the events that took place, her enthusiasm and her descriptions moved me. But now that she's home, time has passed, and the holidays are upon her, her memories and the meaning are harder to articulate. One of the assignments she's given herself is to get the details of the trip down on paper.

How do we get our stories out of ourselves? What is going to communicate the felt essence of something we've experienced to our readers? What techniques can writers employ in the creative process to recall meaningful details, and what more can be done that might impact readers?

First, it's important to understand what happens when people read. The brain thinks in pictures (not in words), so what's happening is that the words of a book evoke pictures for readers. These pictures are images of their own creation, which are drawn from memories of their own past and fantasies. The picture-making process is largely associative. So when we write, the more specific we can be about what the five physical senses perceive, the more easily we can trigger the reader.

So tip one is to include visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory information. For Maureen, this might be details on the sights of the lakefront, the expressions on the faces of the shamans, the words of an invocation spoken in ceremony, the call of a condor, the warmth of the sun on her face or the flutter of the breeze blowing through her hair, the roughness of the path beneath her feet as she was hiking a trail up a mountain, the scent of a field of flowers, or the sensational flavor of Ricky's warm apple strudel in Pisac.

Second, it's important to give readers a framework within which to comprehend our story. Just because we say, "Lake Titicaca," doesn't mean people know the same things we know about it. There is definitely room to bring in factual content that we may only access ourselves by doing a spot of research on geography, history, sociology, anthropology, and so on. In Maureen's case, there are elements, such as the spiritual significance of the site to indigenous ceremonialists, features of the natural landscape, and her beliefs about ancient civilizations being connected to the landscape, which would enrich her readers' understanding of why this event was meaningful to her.

Third, in addition to sensory input, we can stir readers' imaginations and bring them along with us by revealing the stream of consciousness of the central figure. For example, "When our hands clasped, my cold hand began to warm up and I thought, 'How great it is to be here together.' "

Finally, to facilitate writing an essay or an anecdote, we can ask ourselves a series of questions. Examples: What did it look like? How did I feel? What was I thinking? Did I learn a lesson? Was there a turning point? What's the most relevant piece of information I'd like to impart? What does the reader need to know about this in order for it to make sense? Taking a journalistic approach to documenting our own memories can lead us to recall more about them. This is the who, what, where, why, when, and how of anything that we're describing.

It's acceptable to either write the questions we use to access content right into the story (Why did I feel that way? Well, because of . . . ), or to leave them out of the final draft. The most important thing is to get our details out on the page where we can work with them.

All of these techniques are employed in service to the process of writing. We then have enough material to manipulate and restructure the story for dramatic effect and logical flow. In the end only snippets from the event may make it into the final draft. Cutting is easier than building up.

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