There is something I keep coming back to when I think about memoir. It is this: the places in our lives do not just contain our stories. They are part of the stories. They become the architecture of who we are, long after we have left them behind.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, reading about how memoirists use place, watching how the best ones do it. And what strikes me is something Susanna Barlow points out: memoir cannot create a setting. Memoir can only reveal the setting in a way that helps the reader understand its importance to the author.¹Barlow, S., 2021. Setting the Scene in Memoir. https://susannabarlow.com/2021/09/14/setting-the-scene-in-memoir/

The word “reveal” matters here. It suggests that the place is already there, already part of us, and our job is to surface it in a way that lets others see what it meant.

Setting is one of those words that can make us glaze over, one of those craft terms that sounds like something you learn in a classroom rather than something you feel in your body. But I think we are better off thinking about place instead. Location. The specific geography of a life.

When we write about where we come from, we are not just establishing scene. We are doing something more interesting: we are revealing how a particular environment worked its way into our nervous system, how it shaped the people we became.

Barlow writes that setting is not just where the story takes place but when. It is the city, the apartment, the ocean. It is also the decade, the season, the month. And more than that, it is everything that contributes to the environment. The weather. The light. The feel of the air. The textures underfoot. The ambient sound.²Barlow, S., 2021. Setting the Scene in Memoir. https://susannabarlow.com/2021/09/14/setting-the-scene-in-memoir/

I find this definition useful because it reminds us that we are not writing about backdrop. We are writing about the entire sensory world that formed us.

Think about a memoir you have read where the place stayed with you long after you finished. Maybe it was a narrow hallway in a house someone left when they were seventeen. Maybe it was a small apartment with thin walls that taught someone about intimacy and secrecy. Maybe it was the wide-open spaces of somewhere that created a feeling of being lost.

M.B. Dallocchio writes about the intersection of travel writing and memoir, and she makes a point that stuck with me. Places are not just settings, she says. They are living entities that reflect our stories back to us.³Dallocchio, M.B., 2024. The Cartography of the Self: Where Memoir Meets Travel Writing. https://www.mbdallocchio.com/blog/the-cartography-of-the-self-where-memoir-meets-travel-writing

What does this mean for the writer? It means we have to get specific. Not just “the house” but “the hallway that turned slightly to the left.” Not just “the town” but “the particular way the afternoon light fell through curtains in a house you left when you were seventeen.”

Barlow suggests we use setting to create mood, to help carry the weight of the story. And I think this is true, but I also think we can go further. We can let our place reflect our inner landscape. We can show how the wide-open spaces created a feeling of being lost, how the ocean someone visited every summer became a place they return to in memory when they need to feel held.

The places in our memoirs are not where the story happened. They are part of the story. They are the container, and the container shapes what it holds.

When you sit down to write about a place that mattered, start with the senses. What did you hear? What did the air feel like? What was under your feet? Let those details accumulate, and let them carry meaning. The reader does not need a perfect description of a room. They need to understand why that room shaped you.

Think about a narrow hallway. The one you walked through for years. Think about how it turned, how the light fell across the floor in a particular way. The hallway tells us something about how you move through the world. It tells us about the way you turn, about the light you seek.

That is what place does in memoir. It tells the reader who you are by showing them where you have been. Not just the geography, but the feeling of it.

Let your place reflect your inner landscape. The two are not separate. They never were.

This brings me to another thought I have been sitting with. When we write about place in memoir, we are doing something more than describing. We are offering the reader a way into our experience. We are saying: here is how I saw the world when I was seventeen, standing at a sink with greenish light coming through curtains. Here is how it felt to live in a body in that particular space.

The sensory details matter because they are not just decoration. They are the evidence. They are what lets the reader step inside the memory with you, to feel what it felt like to be there.

And this is why place matters so much in memoir. Because memory is not abstract. It is located. It has coordinates. It lives in the particular texture of carpet under bare feet, in the sound of a screen door that never closed properly, in the smell of a kitchen where something was always cooking.

Barlow writes about using telling details. The specific trees, the architecture, the textures, the sounds, the smells. She writes about awakening all the senses, not just the visual ones.⁴Barlow, S., 2021. Setting the Scene in Memoir. https://susannabarlow.com/2021/09/14/setting-the-scene-in-memoir/

I think about this when I read memoir that stays with me. The places that stick are not the ones described in detail from a distance. They are the ones that feel like I could reach out and touch them. The ones where I can almost smell the air.

That is what we are aiming for. Not a photograph of a place, but the felt sense of having been there.

So when you write about the places in your life, go deeper than the visual. What did you hear in that apartment? What was the quality of the light? Was there a particular sound that was always there in the background, the one you stopped noticing until you left?

These are the details that make place come alive in memoir. These are the details that let your reader step inside your world and understand why it shaped you.

• 1
  Barlow, S., 2021. Setting the Scene in Memoir. https://susannabarlow.com/2021/09/14/setting-the-scene-in-memoir/
• 2
  Barlow, S., 2021. Setting the Scene in Memoir. https://susannabarlow.com/2021/09/14/setting-the-scene-in-memoir/
• 3
  Dallocchio, M.B., 2024. The Cartography of the Self: Where Memoir Meets Travel Writing. https://www.mbdallocchio.com/blog/the-cartography-of-the-self-where-memoir-meets-travel-writing
• 4
  Barlow, S., 2021. Setting the Scene in Memoir. https://susannabarlow.com/2021/09/14/setting-the-scene-in-memoir/