Step 1.
Revisit a memory.

Choose a place you’ve enjoyed. Have you experienced fun and fireworks in Orlando, or seen urban splendors of New York City? Would you prefer mellow memories of Tinseltown or the monumental experiences of Washington, D.C.?

If “none of the above” is true, remember the first time your drove a car, or a five-star day when you won an award or aced a job interview.

Step 2.
Make it fiction.

Novelists must also be liars. Recast one minute of memory. Bring in a person — good or evil — who wasn’t actually there. For extra credit, make room for a hailstorm or a snarling doberman in your fantasy.

Before you touch that keyboard or lift that pencil, stop, look, and listen. For more extra credit, use other senses as well. Then pause to experience emotions. Propelled by those, you are ready to write.

Step 3.
Put in on the back of a postcard.

A postcard can contain one beat. A single event. That amount of story equates to one panel in a graphic novel or one camera shot in a movie. The front of the postcard is your snapshot memory of the event. The back is the beat that you write. Can you make the reader see it move? Will they see it in three dimensions?

Step 4.
Have a character write a postcard.

Now give a Point Of View (POV) character a turn at this. Don’t worry about the color of that character’s eyes. You can’t see them unless you look at a mirror… and that’s such an authorly device. Just immerse yourself in the POV. Be able to answer questions like these: