Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

Preface
 Acknowledgments
 1. The Occasion of the Telling: "It Begins Here because It's about This"
 A Place to Stand
 Is It an Autobiography, or Is It a Memoir?
 It's about the Storyteller
 Reliability and the Narrator
 Telling the Truth in Memoir
 The Occasion of the Telling and Organizing the Memoir
 She Died, so I Remember
 And Then, in an Instant, Everything Changed
 Now and Then, Then and Now
 Consequence and the Occasion of the Telling
 2. The Two Yous: Finding a Place to Stand
 The Remembering Self
 The Experiencing Self
 The Dance of the Two Yous
 The Power of Testifying. Taking Yourself by the HandNegotiating Duality
 Sensory Cues as Keys to Memory
 Using Language and Imagery to Move between the Two Yous
 The Nature of Memory
 3. Building a Narrative: Laying Down the Bones
 Beginning Your Story
 Catalysts and Conflicts
 Mapping the Tension
 Examples of Structures
 Chronological Structure
 Circular Structure
 Associative Structure
 Collage Structure
 Parallel Structure
 Locational Structure
 Choosing a Structure
 You and Your Audience
 Creating the World of Your Story
 4. Arranging the Scenes: Giving Them Muscle
 Dramatic Structure
 Ordering the Scene. CatalystConflict
 Rising Action
 Reversals
 Climax
 Denouement
 Particularizing the Moment
 Internal Action
 External Action
 The Emblematic Scene
 Putting It All Together
 5. Painting the Picture: Language and Setting
 The Magic of Imagery
 Using Figurative Language
 Language and Sense of Place
 Setting as Metaphor
 Place as Time Period
 Language as Action
 Controlling Time
 Dialogue
 Silence
 The Secrets of Subtext
 6. Your Story, Your Voice: Make It Your Own
 The First-Person Voice
 Between Experience and Remembering
 Beyond First Person
 Your Two Voices
 You, the Narrator. You, the CharacterVoices of the Masters
 "She Opened Herself Up a Worm Farm"
 "The Fortuneteller Was Not Guilty"
 "Reveal[ing] Those Demons That Obsess Him"
 The Shadowy Personage Who Commits the Actual Writing
 "The Capsules of Safety, and Freedom"
 Claiming Your Voice
 You Are the Camera
 Using What You Don't Know
 7. Honoring the Memoir Process: Taking the Next Steps
 Re-visioning Your Manuscript
 Read It Aloud
 Put It Away
 Take It Out
 An Editorial Checklist
 The Occasion of the Telling
 The Two Yous
 Building a Narrative
 Arranging the Scenes
 Painting the Picture. Your Story, Your VoiceHonoring the Memoir Process
 Other People, Other Rooms
 Claiming Responsibility for Your Story
 The Ethics of Guilt
 What's Next?
 Bringing Your Story into Public Space
 Your Story, Your Book
 Spotlight Exercises by Chapter
 Glossary
 Bibliography
 Other Suggested Memoirs.