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The Problem With Writing Dialogue In Memoir
In “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion reflects on a lunch with her father when she may or may not have ordered cracked crab, even though she now…
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Joshua Doležal
Answering The "So What" Question With The XY Formula
In my end-of-year post I resolved to finish a new memoir by the end of 2025.
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Joshua Doležal
15
Why Everyone Should Keep An Authority List
I'm just Josh.
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Joshua Doležal
18
Discussion: Seeing Our Mothers As Characters
Earlier this week, I shared some thoughts about transforming real people — especially parents — into characters in memoir.
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Joshua Doležal
5
Seeing Our Mothers As Characters
In his memoir Nobody’s Son, Mark Slouka recalls an afternoon when he caught a glimpse of his mother with her lover, a man he only ever names as “F.”
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Joshua Doležal
5
How Folk Ballads Help You Write Better Stories
If you watch streaming TV, you’ve likely internalized its formula for plot, how the opening scene introduces a murder or illness that the heroes spend…
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Joshua Doležal
28
Blush At Yourself Before Anyone Else Can
Danielle Ofri taught me how to turn myself into a jerk in nonfiction.
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Joshua Doležal
14
The Treachery of Narrators in Memoir
Tobias Wolff begins This Boy’s Life with an epigraph from Oscar Wilde: "The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has…
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Joshua Doležal
19
How To Edit Audio In 8 Simple Steps
Did you know that 505 million people will listen to podcasts in 2024?
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Joshua Doležal
28
The Best Metaphors Are Epiphanies
I’ve been attending a Quaker meeting since last August, a gathering that observes an hour of silence.
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Joshua Doležal
8
You Know Literary Fraud When You See It
Thoughts on ethical invention in memoir
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Joshua Doležal
21
Awaken Your Memoir By Making It Strange
Defamiliarization will transform your scenes from prosaic sketches into haunting images that live on in your reader’s memory long after they have left…
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Joshua Doležal
9
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