121. Allowing Scenes and Dialogue to Do The Work featuring Becky Ellis

Becky Ellis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in the shadow of a father’s war trauma, what happens when soldiers come home, the power of secrets, the divided self and why memoirists need to be clear about their psychology, strategies for creating palpable worlds, avoiding judgment in our pages, making scenes and dialogue do the work of exposition, how memoir changes lives, creating tension, letting readers into our interior worlds, and her memoir Little Avalanches.

Also in this episode:

-telling the story we need to read

-setting character stakes

-trusting the reader

Books mentioned in this episode:

Story by Robert McKee 

Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

This Boys Life by Tobias Wolf 

The Liars Club by Mary Karr

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Authors: Tim O’Brien, Rebecca Makkai, Maggie O’Farrell 

Becky Ellis is a Timberwolf Pup. The daughter of a highly decorated World War II combat sergeant, she is a veteran of a war fought at home. She earned a BA in English Literature at UC Berkeley and has over twenty years of experience in the publishing industry. She teaches writing in Portland, Oregon, where she lives, plays, and has raised three daughters. Little Avalanches is her debut memoir. 

Connect with Becky: 

Website: https://beckyellis.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beckyellisauthor/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/becky.ellis.9081/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/becky-ellis-4084149/

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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers