The house was hideous.

After reading this sentence, what do you picture?

Snapshots

What are they?Snapshots in writing are when

the writer writes in such detail about one image (person, place, etc.) that the reader has a clear picture of the image in his or her own mind.

For example, say you want your readers to imagine this picture when reading your memoir or story. You would need to recreate this picture with words and in so much detail that the reader could imagine this photo without actually seeing it.

How to create snapshotsSensory Details

What do you see? Include colors, textures, sizes, shapesWhat do you hear? Include volume, feeling sound gives, what the sound reminds you of, etc. What can you feel? Concrete/Abstract, Mentally/PhysicallyWhat can you smell? Include feelings attached to a smell or what the smell reminds you of. Sometimes smells remind us of certain sounds or certain places and so on.What can you taste? Can be literally or figuratively…How do you react to the taste, how long does that taste linger in your mouth…

Don't include details that create unnecessary distractions from the story or memoir Create details that capture the overall mood you hope to create for the reader. For example, describing a scene nostalgically wouldn’t help to convey a tone of bitterness…

How to create snapshots

Figurative Language

Similes

Metaphors

Hyperboles

Alliteration

Personification

Analogies

Again, make sure the figurative language you use fits the mood and tone of your writing.

Examples

Read the following examples on the next few slides. Note specific sensory details and uses of figurative language that the authors included.

“Our part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam, is usually crawling with coal miners heading out to the morning shift at this hour. Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since stopped trying to scrub dust out of their broken nails, the lines of their sunken faces. But today the black cinder streets are empty. Shutters on the squat gray houses are closed” (4).The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins

“Mom stood fifteen feet away. She had tied rags around her shoulders to keep out the spring chill and was picking through the trash while her dog, a black and white terrier mix, played at her feet. Mom’s gestures were all familiar- the way she tilted her head and thrust out her lower lip when studying items of potential value that she’d hoisted out of the Dumpster, the way her eyes widened with childish glee when she found something she liked. Her long hair was streaked with gray, tangled and matted, and her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, but still she reminded me of the mom she’d been when I was a kid, swan-diving off cliffs and painting in the desert and reading Shakespeare aloud. Her cheekbones were still high and strong, but the skin was parched and ruddy from all those winters and summers exposed to the elements. To the people walking by, she probably looked like any of the thousands of homeless people in New York City” (3).The Glass Castle Jeanette Walls

“Inside the building is a busy, clinical atmosphere of a suburban doctor’s office. A receptionist answers one call while placing another on hold. Two people sit reading out-of-date magazines, a chair between them. A large artificial ficus tree looms in the corner near the window, its leaves layered in dust. “May I help?” says the receptionist, a twenty-something woman with short mousy hair and no chin. She is all bubble eyes, nose and teeth, flowing into neck…” (38).

Dry: A Memoir Augusten Burroughs

“My quarters are larger than our entire house back home. They are plush, like the train car, but also have so many automatic gadgets that I’m sure I won’t have time to press all the buttons. The shower alone has a panel with more than a hundred options you can choose regulating water temperature, pressure, soaps, shampoos, scents, oils, and massaging sponges. When you step out on a mat, heaters come on that blow-dry your body. Instead of struggling with the knots in my wet hair, I merely …” (75).

The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins

Example

I rubbed my exhausted eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating . Could a place like this really exist? A mash up between the desert and a lily pond all features of each injected with a heavy dose of steroids. Before me sat an entire village of gnome sized cactus igloos. They sat on immense lily patties that probably covered a quarter of an acre or more. On each patty sat a lustrous lime green igloo. It may have been the sunset creating the glow, but they definitely looked extraterrestrial to me. Perfectly lined rows of thistles covered the igloos rising out of the bottom and disappearing into the flat top side which seemed to be covered with orange shrubbery. The igloo nearest me had a cut out for a small rounded door and two small side windows. Each sat so close to the next that it would be easy to hop from patty to the next; I would probably have to abandon my boat for there was no room to navigate it through this village…

Example

I once heard that our bedrooms define part of who we are. Well, I for can vouch for that. My room is a mess and so is my life. Let me make this metaphor a little more clear.

Crammed into an itsy bitsy office cubicle sized space lies my room. In it stand three oak dressers whose drawers are in a constant state of openness. Disheveled clothes hang from them as if they are trying to escape their chambers. Dressers knobs are no longer for pulling drawers open (since they are never shut) but are for hanging spaghetti straps. From my bunk beds hangs more clothes, a variety of stuffed animals, book bags and purses. ..

Tips/Ideas

Find or take your own photos of places, people, things, etc. to have a basis from which you can create your own snapshot for your memoir or short story

Assignment

On a separate sheet of paper create three snapshots to insert into your draft. Number each of them. Place the number in your draft in the place you would like them inserted when you write a new draft.

“ From October to April the walls of Limerick glistened with the damp. Clothes never dried: tweed and woolen coats housed living things, sometimes sprouted mysterious vegetations. In pubs, steam rose from damp bodies and garments inhaled with cigarette and pipe smoke laced with stale fumes of spilled stout and whiskey and tinged with odor of [pee] wafting in from the outdoor jakes. . .” (12).

Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt