When you write about the past, consider adding a photograph to go with your story.

It could be a photograph of your childhood home, your school, your neighbourhood, an old market, a playground or a place where something important happened.

It could also be an ordinary household object.

An old radio. A kerosene lamp. A charcoal iron. A potty. A mosquito net. A telephone with a rotary dial. A typewriter.

These ordinary things can tell us a lot about how people lived in the past.

A picture also helps your reader visualise your story. You may remember exactly what a kampong house looked like, but a younger reader who grew up in an HDB flat may have difficulty imagining it. A photograph immediately gives the reader a window into your world.

Pictures can help the writer too.

Look carefully at an old photograph before you start writing. Don't just look at the person in the centre.

Look at the background.

What furniture can you see? What were people wearing? What was on the table? What kind of windows did the house have? Was there a calendar hanging on the wall? What was outside the house?

One small detail may trigger another memory.

If you don't have your own photograph, don't give up.

You may be able to find an old photograph of the place or object online. If you cannot find a suitable photograph, you can create an illustration based on what you remember or use a reference photograph to help recreate the scene.

I like watercolor illustrations for memoirs because they don't pretend to be exact photographic records. They can suggest the feeling of a memory while still showing readers what an old place or object looked like.

However, be careful about accuracy. If you are illustrating something historical, especially a real building, street, household object or landmark, find reference photographs whenever possible. Memory can be imperfect, and an invented detail can accidentally turn into false history.

Also make it clear when an image is an illustration rather than an original photograph from that time.

Your memoir is made of words, but sometimes a picture can preserve something that takes many paragraphs to describe.

Try this today: Choose one story from your childhood and find one picture that belongs with it.

Then look at the picture again.

You may discover another story hiding inside it.