You’re ready to write your memoir. You have a clear vision of what you want to say and you can’t wait for friends and family to read it.
You’re all set to share your unique perspective on your soaring career as a woman who served in the navy; your experience pastoring at-risk youth in a Central American border town; or your funny anecdotes helping birth hundreds of babies as a doula.
You even have a working title, an outline and chapter summaries.
Then, you freeze as doubt creeps in.
Are you certain that your target readers will pick up your book based on your story’s premise alone?
Is your unique angle what they’re really curious about?
Is your story compelling enough to stand out in a sea of books about similar topics?
Will your memoir hook readers from the first page to the last?
Be Honest
A memoir is a reconstruction of the past and includes your perspective alone, so it’s crucial you tell readers, as best as you can, what happened, how you viewed things then, how you view things now, and what you learned.
This means what you end up writing might challenge some, and that’s fine because readers will appreciate your honesty above all. However bold, witty, vile or brutal, the more honest you can be, the more relatable and realistic your story will read. Even if your topic has already been covered by other authors (chances are it has), no one else has your unique story, experiences and perspective. So, go ahead and spill your guts.
The more honest you are about your experiences without exercising malice, the more you’ll create a story your readers can believe and not feel they’re being swayed one way or another (more on this point later). This means:
- Don’t try to shock or offend readers with derogatory or offensive language.
- Warn friends or family members who make cameos throughout the book to avoid falling out or worse–being disinherited.
- Don’t invent events that didn’t happen.
“But, what if I don’t remember it all?”
No worries, you won’t. Because your memory isn’t intact, you’re not expected to remember every relevant conversation as it happened word-for-word. You should, however, describe them the best you can.
Try not to whine
Do you hang around chronic complainers? Me either. They suck your energy and offer nothing in return.
Be careful not to use your memoir to lament or expose those who’ve done you wrong. Used inappropriately, your need for revenge can deepen wounds that should’ve been healed off the page, and your motive becomes glaringly transparent. Yes, you want to be heard and felt, but no reader will sit through never-ending diatribes where there’s no positive light in sight.
So, go easy on the gripes and leave your grievances at the door and focus instead on telling the story for the story’s sake. Isn’t this what you’re itching to do anyway?
You have the right to tell your story; just remember that doing so comes with great responsibility. Resist the urge to use your memoir to perpetuate or resuscitate old grudges that have yet to be resolved.
A word or two on pain
“What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it.” – Starhawk
First things first. Despite your best efforts to keep them at bay there’s one thing writing your memoir will likely do: dredge up hurtful events, conversations or memories that you’ve worked hard to suppress or have overcome.
Here’s the thing. Readers expect painful situations to surface, and if you’re honest about depicting them, they’ll stick with you for the long haul. But take this too far and they’ll feel they’ve slid next to you at the therapist’s office, holding your hand. Your job isn’t to make them side with you and take up your burdens; as previously mentioned, you should’ve loosened that yoke separately from your memoir. Rather, your job is to take readers through those painful, yet necessary elements without crying for sympathy.
So, go ahead and share your sadness, bitterness, sarcasm and rage. A memoir can, to an extent, become an emotional outlet. Just be aware that readers may perceive unresolved pain as an appeal to their pity.
Second, and this may sound contradictory, but if you feel a pull away from including a painful event, chances are, it’s exactly the kind of element you should weave in. Robert Frost once said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” While you can’t take readers along with you to therapy, you should still take them through any difficult material as long as it’s pertinent to the story.
Third, be careful to not tell them how they should feel. Readers pay the price of admission by giving their time and money to read your book. Give them some credit and trust them to decide how they will feel for themselves.
Use story elements
Some writers struggle to weave in those elements that will enrich their prose and help the reader visualize the people, places and events that go to the heart of the story. Instead, they end up data-dumping, which creates a dull, static read.
Use your senses: You’ve heard the saying, “Show, don’t tell.” This classic writing rule also applies to your memoir because yours is the only point of view featured throughout the book. Therefore, use descriptive language that will turn the reader into a witness to every scene and conversation. Check out this book on how to do just that.
Devise a plot: Some of the best story openings don’t happen in the beginning, but in the middle. The Glass Castle opens with a description of the protagonist riding in a cab in New York City and looking out the window only to find her mother digging through a dumpster. Who wouldn’t want to read more?
The same applies to your memoir. Why start with a laundry list account of your morning routine as a schoolboy when you can pull readers in with the cafeteria food fight that got you suspended? Some memoirists even change the order of events if it helps build the tension. If you decide to use this tactic, just stick to factual events and don’t make things up.
Create vivid characters: Use specific attributes such as habits, stature, physical traits and speech patterns to transform an otherwise flat character into a living, breathing humanoid.
Check your facts
This one is obvious, but I’ll say it quickly anyway: If you’re writing about your summer backpacking across France, you should know that Paris is north of Toulouse, that the country borders Spain, and that there’s no such thing as double macaroons (despite what big box-office movies might tell you).
If, however, your manuscript says your uncle Harvey got married before you started high school, but your mother gently corrects you after you’ve published, don’t worry. Readers are only concerned with factual, historical details.
Deliver on your promises
What are your hopes for your memoir? Will it be something to share only with family and close friends, a stab at getting a book deal, or a therapeutic exercise in self-expression?
What about your readers? What do you hope to impart that will change their lives?
Whatever your objective(s), make sure you follow through with everything you promised in your introduction and jacket copy, or you’ll risk losing a reader’s attention long before they reach the end. They’ll eventually lose respect and trust if they feel you didn’t deliver what you set out to.
This means by the time your reader is on the last page, you should have:
- Offered a new perspective on or insights into your core topic
- Reflected and shared lessons gleaned from your experience
If the elements listed above don’t show up in your first draft, take some time to deconstruct it chapter by chapter and test it to see what doesn’t work. Remember: A reader invests hours reading your words. Don’t disappoint them by not doing exactly as you promised.
How well you stay on track greatly depends on how you use your writing time. Once you’ve completed your first draft, focus on refining your writing. Lastly, prune it down to those events that directly relate to your theme and nothing more.
If you want to write a memoir, ask around for book recommendations and start familiarizing yourself with this format. Here’s my shortlist:
- The Liars’ Club: A Memoir, Mary Karr
- Growing Up, Russell Baker
- Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama
- A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah