Writing about time and place in your memoir

Who are you, where are you, & what time is it?

Memoir readers want to know immediately who you are, where you are, and what time it is.

It helps them to easily join you in your story. All the basic questions have been addressed and are out of the way before the action begins.

How do you orient your reader in time and place?

Here are three examples from published memoirs to help you, along with my comments on why they work:

Educated — a memoir, by Tara Westover

“I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn. The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt.”

While Westover hasn’t written exactly what time it is, we might assume it’s daytime, and we want to read more to find out why is she there in such bad weather, and what will happen next?

Picking Cotton: Our memoir of Injustice and Redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino & Ronald Cotton

“I used to walk three miles to campus and back every day from my apartment in Burlington.”

We know this writer is referring to a time when he/she was young (going to college) and the place is…