Use of Memory in Fiction

Last June, USA Today and Amazon best-selling and multi-award-nominated author Connie Berry shared the following essay with her newsletter readers. I immediately wanted to share her thoughts about using memory in a mystery’s plot. (I waited until now because, as you’ll see, Connie talks about June being a nostalgic month, but I find the holiday season to be nostalgic too, with friends and family coming together, remembering times gone by. So as we approach the holiday season, it seems the perfect time to share Connie’s thoughts about memory.) Thank you, Connie, for graciously allowing me to reprint this essay. 

--Barb Goffman 

 

Use of Memory in Fiction

by Connie Berry 

June is a nostalgic month for most people, bringing memories of family gatherings and vacations, high school and college reunions, weddings and anniversaries, and holidays like Fathers’ Day, Flag Day, and Juneteenth.

Last week I had a long phone conversation with my best friend from college. Patty and I haven’t seen each other in more than twenty years—and then only briefly—but she and I were very close during those formative years between 18 and 21.

We knew each other’s high school crushes, and we made up code words no one else understood. We laughed at the same silly jokes, and we pondered some of life’s most important questions.

Once, she stayed up all night with me, typing while I frantically wrote the English paper I had learned about the day before it was due (I'd cut a lot of classes).

We spent almost a year in Europe together, attending classes in Germany and England and driving all over Europe between terms in her little baby blue Karmann Ghia. She taught me to drive a stick shift, and I introduced her to my relatives in Norway.

Long before there was such a thing as the internet, smartphones, or streaming music, we bought a small record player and several albums. We wore those albums out--literally.

It’s fun looking back. It’s also interesting because, as we were sharing our memories (many decades later), we realized that the things we recollected weren’t always the same.

For example, she reminded me of driving in the hills above Monaco. A crazy driver overtook us on a blind curve. If a car had been coming from the opposite direction, we all would have been killed. My response (as she remembered it) was to say, “I refuse to die in Monaco!” I don’t remember that at all.

Then I reminded her that we met an elderly woman in our Monte Carlo pensione who claimed to be of Russian nobility. We thought she was making it up until she escorted us into the inner, private rooms at the famous casino. The attendants bowed to her, and she pointed out other Russian ex-pats— “That’s Count So-and-So.” My friend has no memory of that elderly woman.

Time flies, and memories differ. Writers can use that fact to create complexity and obscure clues in a murder investigation. Police will tell you that eyewitness accounts of a crime differ, even immediately after an event. After years have passed, people may have completely different accounts of something they both witnessed.

Is one of them lying, or is it simply a matter of human psychology? What is it that cements a memory in one person’s mind but not another’s?

Right now, I’m playing with this concept in my WIP. Human brains don’t retain perfect recordings. Instead, they selectively encode information based on individual factors such as emotions, interests, past experiences, and biases.

So how does someone seeking the truth sort through these differences? My protagonist is trying to figure that out. So am I.

Do you have a memory that no one else shares—even those present at the time? I’d love to hear about it!

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Connie Berry, unashamed Anglophile and self-confessed history nerd, is the author of the USA Today and Amazon best-selling and multi-award-nominated Kate Hamilton Mysteries, set in the UK and featuring an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes. Like her protagonist, Connie was raised by antiques dealers who instilled in her a passion for history, fine art, and travel. Connie is a member of the Crime Writers Association (UK), the Authors’ Guild, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Buckeye Crime Writers, Grand Canyon Writers, and Guppies, of which she is the immediate past president. Her fourth book, The Shadow of Memory, was nominated for the Lilian Jackson Braun Award, and her fifth, A Collection of Lies, was nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel. Her latest novel, A Grave Deception, will be released in early December 2025. Connie lives in Ohio and northern Wisconsin with her husband and adorable Shih Tzu, Emmie. You can sign up for her very entertaining monthly newsletter at www.connieberry.com.