4. Make the Story Your Own

This is not the task of the memory, but of the imagination and the feelings. Read and reread the story. Do not memorize it. Visualize it. Picture it mentally. Fall in love with it. See the images. Feel the emotions of the characters. Breathe the atmosphere. Absorb its spirit, scene, setting, plot, people, and parts. Make it your own creation, living anew in your own soul. Then lay the book aside, and at leisure reproduce it, part by part, in your own thought or words, making sure that you have well in mind the story’s four parts: (1) Beginning; (2) progress of events; (3) climax; (4) end.