Avi

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Memories

memories

One of the key tools a writer has is mem­o­ry. In par­tic­u­lar, it’s not unusu­al for those who write for young peo­ple to have engag­ing — and mean­ing­ful — mem­o­ries of their own child­hood. Such mem­o­ries are often put to invalu­able use not just in terms of sto­ry, but also in the details that pro­vide authen­tic­i­ty to a youth nar­ra­tive. When recalled, time, place, and objects can pro­vide real­is­tic grit to a fic­tion­al life. Such mem­o­ries can cap­ture not just places, but peo­ple, their rela­tion­ships, and experiences.

More recent­ly, in my recent­ly pub­lished Lost in the Empire City, ear­ly mem­o­ries are embedded.

Lost in the Empire City Avi

In the book much is made of the nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry coal deliv­ery shoots that were part of so many brown­stone hous­es that still exist in NYC, includ­ing the one where I was raised. The mem­o­ry is so strong that it was rel­a­tive­ly easy for me to use it in the book.

Anoth­er:

Dur­ing the post-war 1940’s my par­ents sum­mered on an island — Shel­ter Island — in the mid­dle of Pecon­ic Bay, New York. It took a fer­ry to reach it. These fer­ries, with their load of fif­teen or so cars, would, upon arrival at the island, smash into their piers of tar-black­ened wood­en pil­ings. Excit­ing for a kid. I remem­bered those moments so well I was able to use the same expe­ri­ence for my pro­tag­o­nist, San­to, when he arrived by fer­ry in NYC, from Ellis Island in 1911.

And the house he comes to live in is much like my own child­hood NYC home, which was built in 1835.

Thus, mem­o­ries of 1835, and the 1940’s touch my 2024 sto­ry set in 1911. Try string­ing all those beads together!

But the author’s mem­o­ry is also at play in a giv­en book, so as to give depth, real­i­ty, and con­stan­cy to char­ac­ters and plot lines. If a char­ac­ter walks with a limp on page one, she’ll need to have it on page two-thir­ty-six. Like­wise, the char­ac­ter giv­en to easy laugh­ter ear­ly on must have a rea­son not to have it (or to have it) at the end of the book. 

At the same time, read­ers look for change and growth in a char­ac­ter, but that pos­si­bil­i­ty has to be built in. The point is: char­ac­ters have memories.

And cru­cial­ly, so do readers.

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