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Writers Write Is All About Writing
What Is Memory? & How To Use Memory In Writing

What Is Memory? & How To Use Memory In Writing

In this post we look at what memory is and how to use memory in writing.

What Is Memory?

Memory is a wonderful thing. Many parts of your brain work together to collect, encode, store, and retrieve sensory, short-term, and long-term recall of events, people, and experiences you’ve had throughout your life. Sometimes, especially with trauma, those memories can be buried deep within your mind. Your brain is trying to protect you from those memories. At other times, a memory is such a beautiful one that even the lightest perfume, like vanilla, can trigger feel-good emotions within you.

Memories

All your memories will fall into either the ‘these are a few of my favourite things’ column. Others will be in the ‘do not open this box’ column. But all of them are useful to a writer. They are an almost inexhaustible resource. Don’t be afraid to use them. In fact, using them is almost a requirement when creating a good story.

You will have memories of:

  1. People you loved – parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles, siblings, cousins, friends, boyfriends, spouses, children.
  2. People with whom you were friends or enemies.
  3. People you met once.
  4. People you interact with everyday but don’t know personally – your local coffee shop barista, for example.
  5. People you see everyday but don’t really interact with – the security guard outside the building you pass on the way to work.
  6. Interiors – offices, malls, shops, doctor’s surgeries, hospitals, vet’s waiting rooms, cars, ships, trains, places of worship, pubs, restaurants etc.
  7. Locations – cities, game parks, lumber yards, garden shops, drive-in movie theatres, ice-rinks, the beach, theatres, public swimming pools and their change rooms, university campuses, school yards, etc.
  8. Views – out of windows, from the edge of a cliff, out of an airplane, from the beach across the desert, across a field, in a forest. Don’t forget, views are never one way. Standing on a beach looking out over the sea is one view, but so is turning around and looking back at the fishing village, port, town, forest, desert, other people on the beach.
  9. Animals – pets is an obvious one, but there are also zoo animals, animals you saw in the wild, creatures you see every day; the frog that lives under the broken pot in the garden, the neighbour’s cat, the crow that sits on your gatepost every morning, the hadadas digging for worms on the lawn etc.
  10. Homes – the one(s) you grew up in, your grandparents’, your friends’, the boarding school you might have gone to etc.
  11. Food and Drink – home cooked, at restaurants, take-aways, etc.
  12. Clothing – school uniforms, military uniforms, wool, cotton, synthetics, wedding dresses, Lycra swimsuits that didn’t fit properly, socks that kept falling down, etc.
  13. Events – first day at junior or senior school or university, on your first job, being fired, made redundant, first date, breaking up, coming-of-age events, engagements, weddings, births, deaths, funerals, the look of delight or disappointment on a parent’s face, finding an old love letter your grandad wrote – big all small our lives are filled with events that can be translated into our writing.

Every memory is a mine of information.

  1. Physicality – what does the person, place, mode of transport look like?
  2. Senses – what did it/they smell like, sound like, taste like, behave.
  3. Surrounds – was the weather trying to kill you, or did it taste like champagne.
  4. At the time emotions – how did you feel at the time you experienced the event?
  5. Looking back emotions – our feelings about our memories change. How do they make you feel now.
  6. Music – a song can unleash a significant memory.

How To Use Memory In Writing

Yes, I hear you say, but I’m writing a space adventure not a memoir! Maybe, but the memory of not being picked up from school because your parents forgot you could easily be used to describe the feeling that an astronaut may feel if their spouse isn’t there to welcome them home after a mission. Of the feeling their child feels when they can’t be there for the kid’s sports day because they’re on a mission to Mars. You don’t have to describe the feeling you felt being forgotten at school, but you can use that confused sadness and anger to inform your protagonist’s emotion.

Every memory can feed your writing, whether you’re writing a period romance, a contemporary thriller, a comedy, or a dystopian story. While it may be your memory, it can be the thing that your character is experiencing. Rummage through your memory for something similar that you’ve experienced that can help you develop believable reactions, emotions, and experiences for your characters. The plot of your book is a series of steps from A to Z. The story is the experiences, encounters, and emotions your characters go through. Use your memories to give those life.

Memories may also be unreliable. This is great for causing conflict in fiction writing.

Literary Quotes On Memory

  1. Memory is a rascal. –John Dufresne
  2. I’ve always been fascinated by the operation of memory – the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence. –Penelope Lively
  3. Memory is the space in which a thing happens for a second time. –Paul Auster
  4. There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold. –Gillian Flynn
  5. We only store in memory images of value. To write about one’s life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical. –Patricia Hampl
  6. Memory is slippery. It bends to our understanding of the world, twists to accommodate our prejudices. It is unreliable. Witnesses seldom remember the same things. They identify the wrong people. They give us the details of events that never happened. Memory is slippery, but my memories suddenly feel slipperier. –Holly Black
  7. The past informs the present. Memory makes the map we carry, no matter how hard we try to erase it. –Cara Black
  8. The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before. –John Green
  9. I’ve come to think that’s what heaven is – a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on. – Christina Baker Kline
  10. I believe that all fiction is personal and all writing is at some level personal. As you may know, my motto is: ‘All memory is fiction’. It could just as easily be: ‘All fiction is memory’. Unpacked, these two statements defy the ease of logic, but offer some really important truths about narrative art, at the very least, and about memory. So I would say that all art is personal. –Kwame Dawes
  11. In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can. –David Leavitt
  12. We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory. –Louise Glück
  13. Memory is the grid of meaning we impose on the random and bewildering flux of the world. Memory is the line we pay out behind us as we travel through time—it is the clue, like Ariadne’s, which means we do not lose our way. Memory is the lasso with which we capture the past and haul it from chaos towards us in nicely ordered sequences, like those of baroque keyboard music. –Angela Carter
  14. Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt. –Mary Karr

The Last Word

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Elaine Dodge

by Elaine Dodge. Author of The Harcourts of Canada series and The Device Hunter, Elaine trained as a graphic designer, then worked in design, advertising, and broadcast television. She now creates content, mostly in written form, including ghost writing business books, for clients across the globe, but would much rather be drafting her books and short stories.

More Posts From Elaine

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  6. Should You Use A Pen Name For Every Genre That You Write?
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  9. 5 Reasons To Say Yes To Your Book
  10. What Is Developmental Editing And When Do You Need It?

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Posted on: 8th September 2025
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1 thought on “What Is Memory? & How To Use Memory In Writing”

  1. Raymond Quattlebaum

    Memory is such a powerful tool in writing—it’s not just a source of content, but a way to connect emotionally and authentically with readers. When a writer draws on sensory-rich moments—like the scent of rain or the weight of a childhood toy—it brings scenes to life with vivid detail and emotional resonance. Memory also helps structure narrative; our minds naturally arrange recollections into story arcs, with turning points, patterns, and meaning. Good memory-based writing blends factual recall, imagination, and emotional truth—creating narratives that not only describe life, but feel deeply human.

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