how to start writing a memoir essay

Write a Great Memoir: How to Start (and Actually Finish) Your First Draft

by Joe Bunting | 1 comment

When I first started writing my memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , about a real-life adventure I experienced with my wife and ten-month-old son, I thought it was going to be easy.

After all, by that point in my career, I had already written four books, two of which became bestsellers. I’ve got this, I thought. Simple.

It wasn’t. By the time Crowdsourcing Paris was published and became a #1 New Release on Amazon, it was more than five years later. During that time, I made just about every mistake, but I also learned a process that will reliably help anyone to start and finish writing a great memoir.

My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , as a #1 New Release on Amazon!

In this guide, I want to talk about how you can start writing your memoir, how you can actually finish it, and how you can make sure it’s good .

If you read this article from start to finish, it will save you hundreds of hours and result in a much better finished memoir.

Hot tip : Throughout this guide, I will be referencing my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris as an example. To get the most out of this guide and the memoir writing process in general, get a copy of the book to use as an example. Order your copy here »

But Wait! What Is a Memoir? (Memoir Definition)

How do you know if you're writing a memoir? Here's a quick memoir definition:

A memoir is a book length account or autobiography about a real life situation or event. It usually includes a pivotal experience in your life journey.

A key point to make is that memoir is a  true story . You don't have to get every piece of dialogue perfect, but you do have to try to tell the personal story or experience as best as you remember.

If you're looking to fictionalize your real life account you're writing a novel, not a memoir (and specifically a roman à clef novel ).

For more on the difference between a novel and a memoir, check out this coaching video:

How to Get Started With Your Memoir: 10 Steps Before You Start Writing

This guide is broken into sections: what to do before you start writing and how to write your first draft.

When most people decide to write a memoir, they just start writing. They write about the first life experience they can think of.

That’s sort of what I did too. I just started writing about my trip to Paris, beginning with how I first decided to go as a way to become a “real writer.” It turned out to be the biggest mistake I made.

If you want to finish your memoir, and even more, write a good memoir, just starting with the first memory you can think of will make things much harder for you.

Instead, get started with a memoir plan.

What’s a memoir plan? There are ten elements. Let’s break it down.

Get the memoir plan in a downloadable worksheet. Click to download your memoir plan »

1. Write Your Memoir Premise in One Sentence

The first part of a memoir plan is your premise. A premise is a one-sentence summary of your book idea.

You might be wondering, how can I summarize my entire life in a single sentence?

The answer is, you can’t. Memoir isn’t a full autobiography. It’s not meant to be a historical account of your entire life story. Instead, it should share one specific situation and what you learned from that situation.

Every memoir premise should contain three things:

• A Character. For your memoir, that character will always be you . For the purposes of your premise, though, it’s a good idea to practice thinking of yourself as the main character of your story. So describe yourself in third person and use one descriptive adjective, e.g. a cautious writer.
• A Situation. Memoirs are about a specific event, situation, or experience. For example, Marion Roach Smith’s bestselling memoir was about the discovery that her mother had Alzheimer’s, which at the time was a fairly unknown illness. My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , begins on the first day of my trip to Paris and ends on the day I left. You can’t write about everything, at least in this book. But you can write about one thing well, and save all the other ideas for the next book.
• A Lesson. What life lesson did you learn from this situation? How did your life change inexorably after going through this situation? Again, here you can’t write about everything you’ve ever learned. Choose ONE life lesson or emotional truth and focus on it.

Want to see how a premise actually looks? Here’s an example from my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris :

When a Cautious Writer is forced by his audience to do uncomfortable adventures in Paris he learns the best stories come when you get out of your comfort zone.

One thing to note: a premise is not a book description. My book description, which you can see here , is totally different from the premise. It’s more suspenseful and also less detailed in some ways. That’s because the purpose of a premise isn’t to sell books.

What is the premise of your memoir? Share it in the comments below!

2. Set a Deadline to Finish Your First Draft

Or if you’ve already finished a draft, set a deadline to finish your next draft.

This is crucial to do now , before you do anything else. Why? Because there are parts of the memoir plan that you can spend months, even years on. But while planning is helpful, it can easily become a distraction if you don’t get to the writing part of the process.

That’s why you want to put a time limit on your planning by setting a deadline.

How long should the deadline be?

Stephen King says you should write a first draft in no longer than a season. So ninety days.

In my 100 Day Book program, we’ve helped hundreds of memoir writers finish their book in just 100 days. To me, that’s a good amount of time to finish a first draft.

However, I wouldn’t take any longer than 100 days. Writing a book requires a level of focus that’s difficult to achieve over a long period of time. If you set your deadline for longer than 100 days, you might never finish.

Also set weekly milestones.

In addition to your final deadline, I recommend breaking up the writing process into weekly milestones.

If you’re going to write a 65,000-word memoir over 100 days, let’s say, then divide 65,000 by the number of weeks (about 14) to get your weekly word count goal: about 4,600 words per week.

That will give you a sense of how much progress you’re making each week, so you won’t be in a huge rush to finish right at the end of your deadline. After all, no one can pull an all-nighter and finish a book! Create a writing habit that will enable you to actually finish your book.

Keep track of your word count deadlines.

By the way, this is one reason I love Scrivener , my favorite book writing software , because it allows you to set a target deadline and word count. Then Scrivener automatically calculates how much you need to write every day to reach your deadline.

It’s a great way to keep track of your deadline and how much more you have to write. Check out my review of Scrivener to learn more.

3. Create Consequences to Make Quitting Hard

I’ve learned from experience that a deadline alone isn’t enough. You also have to give your deadline teeth .

Writing a book is hard. To make sure that you show up to the page and do the work you need to finish, you need to make it harder to not write.

How? By creating consequences.

I learned this from a friend of mine, writer and book marketing expert Tim Grahl .

“If you really want to finish your book,” he told me, “write a check for $1,000 to a charity you hate. Then give that check to a friend with instructions to send it if you don’t hit your deadline.”

“I don’t need to do that,” I told him. “I’m a pro. I have discipline.” But a month later, after I still hadn’t made any progress on my memoir, I finally decided to take his advice.

This was during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. So I wrote a $1,000 check to the presidential candidate that I most disliked (who shall remain nameless!), and gave it to a friend with instructions to send the check if I didn’t hit my final deadline.

I also created smaller consequences for the weekly deadlines, which I highly recommend. Here’s how it works:

Consequence #1 : Small consequence, preferably related to a guilty pleasure that might keep you from writing. For example, giving up a game on your phone or watching TV until you finish your book.

Consequence #2 : Giving up a guilty pleasure. For example, giving up ice cream, soda, or alcohol until you finish your book.

Consequence #3 : Send the $1,000 check to the charity you hate.

Each of these would happen if I missed three weekly deadlines. If I missed the final deadline, then just the $1,000 check would get sent.

After I put in each of these consequences, I was the most focused and productive I’ve ever been in my life. I finished my book in just nine weeks and never missed a deadline.

If you actually want to finish your memoir, give this process a try. I think you’ll be surprised by how well it works for you.

4. Decide What Kind of Story You’re Telling

Now that you’ve set your deadline, start thinking about what kind of book you’re writing. What is your story really about?

“Memoir is about something you know after something you’ve been through,” says Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project .

I think there are seven types of stories that most memoirs are about.

• Coming of Age. A story about a young person finding their place in the world. A great example is 7 Story Mountain  by Thomas Merton.
• Education. An education story , according to Kim Kessler and Story Grid, is about a naive character who, through the course of the story, comes to a bigger understanding of the world that gives meaning to their existing life. My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , is a great example of an education memoir.
• Love. A love story is about a romantic relationship, either the story of a breakup or of two characters coming together. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a great example of a love story memoir, as it tells the story of her divorce and then re-discovering herself and love as she travels the world.
• Adventure/Action. All adventure stories are about life and death situations. Also, most travel memoirs are adventure stories. Wild by Cheryl Strayed is a great example, and Crowdsourcing Paris is also an adventure story. (You can apply the principles from our How to Write Adventure guide here , too!)
• Performance. Performance memoirs are about a big competition or a competitive pursuit. Julie and Julia , Julie Powell’s memoir about cooking her way through Julia Child’s recipes, is a good example of a performance memoir. Outlaw Platoon , about the longest-serving Ranger platoon in Afghanistan, is another great performance story.
• Thriller. Memoirs about abuse or even an illness could fall into the crime, horror, or thriller arena. (Our full guide on How to Write a Thriller is here .)
• Society. What is wrong with society? And how can you rebel against the status quo? Society stories are very common as memoirs. I would also argue that most humor memoirs are society stories, since they talk about one person’s funny, transgressive view on society. Anything by David Sedaris, for example, is a society memoir.

For more on all of these genres, check out Story Grid’s article How to Use Story Grid to Write a Memoir .

Three Stories

Note that I included my memoir in two categories. That’s because most books, including memoirs, are actually a combination of three stories. You have:

• An external story. For example, Crowdsourcing Paris is an adventure story.
• An internal story . As I said, Crowdsourcing Paris is an education story.
• A subplot . Usually the subplot is another external story, in my case, a love story.

What three stories are you telling in your memoir?

5. Visualize Your Intention

One of the things that I’ve learned as I’ve coached hundreds of writers to finish their books is that if you visualize the following you are much more likely to follow through and accomplish your writing goals:

• Where you're going to write
• When you're going to write
• How much you're going to write

Here I want you to actively visualize yourself at your favorite writing spot accomplishing the word count goal that you set in step two.

For example, when I was writing Crowdsourcing Paris , I would imagine myself sitting at this one café that was eight doors down from my office. I liked it because it had a little bit of a French feel. Then I would imagine myself there from eight in the morning until about ten.

Finally, I would actively visualize myself watching the word count tracker go from 999 to 1,000 words, which was my goal every day. Just that process of imagining my intention was so helpful.

What is your intention? Where, when, and how much will you write? Imagine yourself actually sitting there in the place you’re going to write your memoir.

6. Who Will Be On Your Team?

No one can write a book alone. I learned this the hard way, and the result was that it took me five years to finish my memoir.

For every other book that I had written, I had other people holding me accountable. Without my team, I know that I would never have written those books. But when I tried to write my memoir, I thought, I can do this on my own. I don’t need accountability, encouragement, and support. I’ve got this.

To figure out who you need to help you finish your memoir, create three different lists of people:

• Other writers. These are people who you can process, with who know the process of writing a book. Some will be a little bit ahead of you, so that when you get stuck, they can encourage you and say, “I’ve been there. You’re going to get through it. Keep working.”
• Readers. Or if you don’t have readers, friends and family. These will be the people who give you feedback on your finished book before it’s published, e.g. beta readers.
• Professional editors. But you also need professional feedback. I recommend listing two different editors here, a content editor to give feedback on the book as a whole (for example, I recommend a Write Practice Certified Coach), and a proofreader or line editor to help polish the final draft. (Having professional editing software is smart too. We like ProWritingAid. Check out our ProWritingAid review .)

Just remember: it takes a team to finish a book. Don’t try to do it on your own.

And if you don’t have relationships with other writers who can be on your team, check out The Write Practice Pro. This is the community I post my writing in to get feedback. Many of my best writing friends came directly from this community. You can learn more about The Write Practice Pro here .

7. What Other Books Will Inspire You?

“Books are made from books,” said Cormac McCarthy. Great writers learn how to write great books by reading other great books, and so should you.

I recommend finding three to five other memoirs that can inspire you during the writing process.

I recommend two criteria for the books you choose:

• Commercially successful. If you want your book to be commercially successful, choose other books that have done well in the marketplace.
• Similar story type. Try to find books that are the same story type that you learned in step four.

For my memoir, I had four main sources of inspiration.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain; A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway; and Midnight in Paris , the film by Woody Allen.

I referred back to these sources all the time. For example, when I was stuck on the climactic scene in the memoir, I watched one scene in A Midnight in Paris twenty times until I could quote the dialogue. I still didn’t come up with the solution until the next day, but understanding how other writers solved the problems I was facing helped me figure out my own solutions for my story.

8. Who Is Your Reader Avatar?

Who is your book going to be for? Or who is the one person you’ll think of when you write your book? When the writing gets hard and you want to quit, who will be most disappointed if you never finish your book?

I learned this idea from J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote his novel The Hobbit for his three boys as a bedtime story. Every day he would work on his pages, and every night he would go home and read them to his sons. And this gave him an amazing way to get feedback. He knew whether they laughed at one part or got bored at another.

This helped him make his story better, but I also imagine it gave him a tremendous amount of motivation.

This Can Be You, Sort Of

I don’t think your reader avatar should be you. When it comes to your own writing, you are the least objective person.

There’s one caveat: you can be your own reader avatar IF you’re writing to a version of yourself at a different time. For example, I have friends who have imagined they were writing to a younger version of themselves.

Who will you write your memoir for?

9. Publishing and Marketing

How will you publish your book? Will you go the traditional route or will you self-publish? Who is your target market (check your reader avatar for help)? What will you do to promote and market your book? Do you have an author website ?

It might be strange to start planning for the publishing and marketing of your book before you ever start writing it, but what I’ve discovered is that when you think through the entire writing process, from the initial idea all the way through the publishing and marketing process, you are much more likely to finish your book.

In fact, in my 100 Day Book program, I found that people who finished this planning process were 52 percent more likely to finish their book.

Spend some time thinking about your publishing and marketing plans. Just thinking about it will help you when you start writing.

Start Building Your Audience Before You Need It

In the current publishing climate, most memoir agents and publishers want you to have some kind of relationship with an audience before they will consider your book.

Start building an audience before you need it. The first step to building an audience, and the first step to publishing in general, is building an author website. If you don’t have a website yet, you can find our full author website guide here .

(Building a website doesn’t have to be intimidating or time-consuming if you have the right guide.)

10. Outline Your Memoir

The final step of the planning process is your memoir outline . This could be the subject of a whole article itself. Here, I’ve learned so much from Story Grid, but if you don’t have time to read the book and listen to over 100 podcast episodes, here’s a quick and dirty process for you.

But First, for the Pantsers

There are two types of writers: the plotters and the pansters . Plotters like to outline. Pantsers think outlining crushes their creative freedom and hate it.

If you identify with the pantsers, that’s okay. Don’t worry too much about this step. I would still recommend writing something in this section of your memoir plan, even if you only know a few moments that will happen in the book, even recording a series of events might help as you plan.

And for you plotters, outline to your heart’s content, as long as you’ve already set your deadline!

Outlining Tips

When you’re ready to start outlining, here are a few tips:

• Begin by writing down all the big moments in your life that line up with your premise. Your premise is the foundation of your story. Anything outside of that premise should be cut.
• S eparate your life events into three acts. One of the most common story structures in writing is the three-act story structure. Act 1 should contain about 25 percent of your story, Act 2 about 50 percent of your story, and Act 3 about 25 percent.
• Act 1 should begin as late into the story as possible. In Crowdsourcing Paris , like most travel memoirs, I began the story the day I arrived in Paris.
• Use flashbacks, but carefully. Since I began Crowdsourcing Paris so late into the action, I used flashbacks to provide some details about what happened to lead up to the trip. Flashbacks can be overused, though, so only include full scenes and don’t info dump with flashbacks.
• Start big. The first scene in your book should be a good representation of what your book is about. So if you’re writing an adventure story (see Step 4), then you should have a life or death moment as the first scene. If you’re writing a love story, you should have a moment of love or love lost.
• End Act 1 with a decision. It is you, and specifically your decisions , that drive the action of your memoir. So what important decision did you make that will drive us into Act 2?
• Start Act 2 with your subplot. In Step 4, I said most books are made up of three stories. Your subplot is an important part of your book, and in most great stories, your subplot begins in Act 2.
• Act 2 begins with a period of “fun and games.” Save the Cat , one of my favorite books for writers, says that after the tension you built with the big decision in Act 1, the first few scenes in Act 2 should be fun and feel good, with things going relatively well for the protagonist.
• Center your second act on the “all is lost” moment. Great stories are about a character who comes to the end of him or herself. The all is lost moment is my favorite to write, because it’s where the character (in this case you ) has the most opportunity to grow. What is YOUR “all is lost” moment?
• Act 3 contains your final climactic moment. For Crowdsourcing Paris , this was the moment when I thought I was going to die. In a love story memoir, it might be when you finally work things out and commit to your partner.
• Act 3 is also where you show the big lesson of the memoir. Emphasis on show. Back in Step 1, you identified the lesson of your memoir. Act 3 is when you finally demonstrate what you’ve learned throughout the memoir in one major event.
• A tip for the final scene: end your memoir with the subplot. This gives a sense of completion to your story and works as a great final moment.

Use the tips above to create a rough outline of your memoir. Keep in mind, when you start writing, things might completely change. That’s okay! The point with your plan isn’t to be perfect. It’s to think through your story from beginning to end so that you’ll be prepared when you get to that point in the writing process.

Want to make this process as easy as possible? Get the memoir plan in a downloadable worksheet. Click to download your memoir plan »

That’s the end of the planning stage of this guide. Now let’s talk about how to write your first draft.

How to Write the First Draft of Your Memoir

If you’ve followed the steps above to create a memoir plan, you’ve done the important work. Writing a memoir, like writing any book, is hard. But it will actually be harder to not be successful if you’ve followed all the steps in the memoir plan.

But once you’ve created the “perfect” plan, it’s time to do the dirty work of writing a first draft.

In part two of our guide, you’ll learn how to write and finish a first draft.

1. Forget Perfection and Write Badly.

First drafts are messy. In fact, Anne Lamott calls them “shitty first drafts” because they are almost always terrible.

Even though I know that, though, any time I’m working on a new writing project, I still get it into my head that my first draft should be a masterpiece.

It usually takes me staring at a blank screen for a few hours before I admit defeat and just start writing.

If you’re reading this, don’t do that! Instead, start by writing badly.

Besides, when you’ve done the hard planning work, what you write will probably be a lot better than you think.

2. Willpower Doesn’t Work. Neither Does Inspiration. Instead, Use the “3 Minute Timer Trick.”

My biggest mistake when I began Crowdsourcing Paris was to think I had the willpower I needed as a professional writer and author of four books to finish the book on my own. Even worse, I thought I would be so inspired that the book would basically write itself.

I didn’t. It took not making much progress on my book for more than a year to realize I needed help.

The best thing you can do to help you focus on the writing process for your second draft is what we talked about in Step 4: Creating a Consequence.

But if you still need help, try my “3 Minute Timer Trick.” Here’s how it works:

• Set a timer for three minutes. Why three minutes? Because for me, I’m so distractible I can’t focus for more than three minutes. I think anyone can focus for three minutes though, even me.
• Write as fast as you can. Don’t think, just write!
• When the timer ends, write down your total word count in a separate document (see image below). Then subtract from the previous word count to calculate how many words you wrote during that session.
• Also write down any distractions during those three minutes. Did the phone ring? Did you have a tough urge to scroll through Facebook or play a game on your phone? Write it down.
• Then, repeat the process by starting the timer again. Can you beat your word count?

This process is surprisingly helpful, especially when you don’t feel like writing. After all, you might not have it in you to write for an hour, but anyone can write for three minutes.

And the amazing thing is that once you’ve started, you might find it much easier to keep going.

Other Tools for Writers

By the way, if you’re looking for the tools I use and other pro writers I know use, check out our Best Tools for Creative Writers guide here .

3. Make Your Weekly Deadlines.

You can’t finish your book in an all-nighter. That being said, you can finish a chapter of your book in an all-nighter.

That’s why it’s so important to have the weekly deadlines we talked about in Part 1, Step 2 of this guide.

By breaking up the writing process into a series of weekly deadlines, you give yourself an achievable framework to finish your book. And with the consequences you set in Step 3 of your memoir plan, you give your deadlines the teeth they need to hold you accountable.

And as I mentioned above, Scrivener is especially helpful for keeping track of deadlines (among other things). If you haven’t yet, check out my review of Scrivener here .

4. Keep Your Team Updated.

Having a hard time? It’s normal. Talk to your team about it.

It seems like when you’re writing a book, everything in the universe conspires against you. You get into a car accident, you get sick, you get into a massive fight with your spouse or family member, you get assigned a new project at your day job.

Writing a book would be hard enough on its own, but when you have the rest of your life to deal with, it can become almost impossible.

Without your team, which we talked about in Step 6 of your book plan, it would be.

For me, I would never have been able to finish one book, let alone the twelve that I’ve now finished, without the support, encouragement, and accountability of the other writers whom I call friends, the readers who believe in me, and most of all, my wife.

Remember: No book is finished alone. When things get hard, talk about it with your team.

And if you need a team, consider joining mine. The Write Practice Pro is a supportive encouraging community of writers and editors. It’s where I get feedback on my writing, and you can get it here too. Learn more about the community here.

5. Finally, Trust the Process.

When I walk writers through the first draft writing process, inevitably, around day sixty, they start to lose faith.

• They think their book is the all-time worst book ever written.
• They get a new idea they want to work on instead.
• They decide the dream to write a book and become a writer was foolish.
• They want to quit.

A few do quit at this point.

But the ones who keep going discover that in just a few weeks they’ve figured out most of the problems in their book, they’re on their last pages, and they’re almost finished.

It happens every time, even to me.

If you take nothing else from this post, please hear this: keep going. Never quit. If you follow this process from start to finish, you’re going to make it, and it’s going to be awesome.

I’m so excited for you.

How to Finish Your Memoir

More than half of this guide is about the planning process. That’s because if you start well, you’ll finish well.

If you create the right plan, then all that’s left is doing the hard, messy work of writing.

Without the right plan, it’s SO easy to get lost along the way.

That’s why I hope you’ll download my Memoir Plan Worksheet. Getting lost in the writing process is inevitable. This plan will become your map when it happens. Click to download the Memoir Plan Worksheet.

More than anything, though, I hope you’ll never quit. It took me five years to write Crowdsourcing Paris , but during that time I matured and grew so much as a writer and a person, all because I didn’t quit.

Even if it takes you five years, the life lessons you’ll learn as you write your book will be worth it.

And if you’re interested in a real-life adventure story set in Paris, I’d be honored if you’d read Crowdsourcing Paris . I think you’ll love it.

Good luck and happy writing.

More Writing Resources:

• How to Write a Memoir Outline: 7 Essential Steps For Your Memoir Outline
• 7 Steps to a Powerful Memoir
• The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith
• Crowdsourcing Paris by J.H. Bunting

Are you going to commit to writing a memoir (and never quitting, no matter what)? Let me know in the comments .

Summarize your memoir idea in the form of a one-sentence premise. Make sure it contains all three elements:

• A character
• A situation

Take fifteen minutes to craft your premise. When you’re finished, share your memoir premise in the Pro Practice Workshop for feedback. And if you share, please be sure to give feedback to three other writers. Not a member? Join us .

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

Work with Joe Bunting?

WSJ Bestselling author, founder of The Write Practice, and book coach with 14+ years experience. Joe Bunting specializes in working with Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, How To, Literary Fiction, Memoir, Mystery, Nonfiction, Science Fiction, and Self Help books. Sound like a good fit for you?

One of my book chapters has been accepted for publication, but I lack confidence in the accuracy of what I have written. I have completed the chapter, but I would appreciate your assistance in improving its quality.

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How to Begin Your Memoir: A Guide to Personal Storytelling

Last Updated: January 9, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was reviewed by Gerald Posner and by wikiHow staff writer, Finn Kobler . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 2,450 times.

A memoir is arguably the most personal type of story you can tell. It provides an intimate snapshot of your life and offers readers a unique insight into your past. So how do you start writing one? In this article, we’ll offer you comprehensive advice on how to make the opening of your memoir pop. Keep reading to keep your audience engaged from the very first page.

Things You Should Know

• Begin your memoir with a dramatic opening sequence that captures your reader’s attention and introduces the conflict of the story they’ll be reading about.
• Use humor and vivid imagery to build a relationship with your reader and make them feel immersed in your story from the first paragraph.
• A memoir tells the story of one specific period in your life, not your entire life story. Clarify what this specific event is within the first chapter.

Begin your memoir with a dramatic, personal moment.

• For example, Ron Kovic’s famous memoir Born on the Fourth of July begins with: “The blood is still rolling off my flak jacket from the hole in my shoulder.” He soon jumps back in time to explain how he got into this situation, but the reader is now invested because they know this intense moment will be coming soon.

Use humor to earn your audience’s trust.

• Irony - saying one thing and meaning the opposite (“There were storm clouds everywhere, thunder echoing at deafening volume, and unrelenting rain. It was a great day for a picnic.”)
• Incongruity - making an unexpected, illogical choice to surprise and delight the reader (“I opened the wine bottle to let it breathe, but it started hyperventilating.”)
• Self-deprecation - making fun of yourself to humanize yourself to the reader (“I looked at myself in the mirror and my reflection screamed in terror.”)
• Understatement - describing a dramatic situation in an intentionally nonchalant way to ease the tension (“The day my grandfather died was mildly unpleasant.”)
• Hyperbole - exaggerating something to emphasize a situation’s silliness or absurdity (“My little brother took the last Snicker’s bar so we have to put him down.”)

Set up a character arc in the first few pages.

• For example, in Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love , she begins the first chapter as a timid housewife who’s disillusioned in life and love. By setting her up this way, it’s all the more meaningful when she learns to find happiness, joy, and romance.

Establish a personal relationship with your reader.

• For example, you might say “I’ve never told anyone this. Here goes: I have a shrine to lizards in my bedroom. or “I’m writing you because I feel lost. If you feel lost too, keep reading.”

Use vivid imagery to put your reader in your shoes.

• For example, instead of “I heard footsteps and felt a tingle of joy because I knew my dad was home,” you might write “THUNK-THUNK! Footsteps echoed through the wood of our old 1930’s home. A tingle of joy pulsed through each vertebra in my spine. Dad was home!”

Write honestly and without a filter.

• For example, if you’re writing about yourself in high school, you probably wouldn’t describe your friends as “kindly, warmhearted souls who made worries disappear like tears in rain” (even if it sounds poetic). It’s okay to use terms like “chiller” or “dude” if that’s how you talk.
• One thing that causes most memoirists to censor themselves is fear of how the people in their life might react to seeing themselves in a story. If you need to, use a pseudonym and change their names to respect privacy. But don’t let that change how you tell your story!

Clarify what event your memoir is about early on.

• For example, if your memoir is about your experience in the military, you might want to open your book with a moment from your experiences overseas. If it’s your whacky journey to stand-up comedy, you might want to describe your first open mic.

Convey a tone and mood that matches the stories of your memoir.

• For an inspirational memoir , select stories about triumph and overcoming adversity: living through a natural disaster, finding faith and spirituality after feeling lost, or reconciling an estranged relationship after one of you made a mistake.
• For a comedic memoir , select stories about silly, awkward, and uncomfortable situations that lots of people may relate to: an outrageous family reunion, the awkwardness of middle school, or public humiliation.
• For a travel memoir , select stories in unique settings where it almost feels like the location itself is a character: a trip to Fiji where you can feel the sand between your toes, hiking in Yosemite under the lush green trees, the brassy jazz that echoes out of New Orleans.
• For a confessional memoir , select cathartic stories about taboos or secrets you haven’t told anyone before: struggles with addiction, behind-the-scenes details about your industry, family traumas you kept hidden.

Highlight potential themes in your first chapter.

• For example, if your memoir takes place at a picnic and the theme is teamwork, you could write about the friends at this lunch you felt you could confide in, the beehive you saw where all the bees worked as a community, or the beauty of the interlocking squares on the blanket.
• Use word choice to convey the theme too. For example, if your theme is teamwork, you might use adjectives like “harmony,” “synergy,” and “congeniality” to describe positive experiences and “loneliness,” “isolation,” or solitude to describe negative ones.

Avoid getting lost in irrelevant details.

• Think of a memoir like a story you’d tell to someone face-to-face. If someone asks “What was 8th grade like for you?” you probably wouldn’t go on a tangent about your dog, unless that dog played a key role in your 8th-grade year.

Write your memoir’s opening last.

Recognize that your memoir’s opening won’t be perfect at first.

• Once you’ve finished your first draft, avoid working on your memoir for 2-4 weeks. Give yourself space to replenish your creative juices for the rewrite.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://www.mtnbrook.k12.al.us/cms/lib/AL01901445/Centricity/Domain/676/Narrative%20Hook.pdf
• ↑ https://examples.yourdictionary.com/common-types-of-humor-used-in-literature.html
• ↑ https://www.tlu.ee/~rajaleid/montaazh/Hero%27s%20Journey%20Arch.pdf
• ↑ https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/01/bad-memoir-writing-rules-for-doing-it-well.html
• ↑ https://www.austincc.edu/andreac/imagery
• ↑ http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/451S12/kowit-honesty.htm
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/resources/writing_instructors/creative_nonfiction_in_writing_courses/the_personal_memoir.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/writing_style/diction/tone_mood_audience.html
• ↑ https://www.delmar.edu/offices/swc/_resources/Literature/theme.pdf
• ↑ http://content.principia.edu/teaching-excellence/write-the-introduction-last/
• ↑ https://sites.temple.edu/izzyshabazzcwblog/2021/03/09/shitty-first-drafts-by-a-lamott/

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Last updated on Apr 14, 2023

How to Write a Memoir: Turn Your Personal Story Into a Successful Book

Writing a memoir can be a meaningful way to reflect on your life's journey and share your unique perspective with people around you. But creating a powerful (and marketable) book from your life's memories — one that can be enjoyed by readers across the world — is no easy task. 

In this article, we'll explore the essential ingredients that make up an impactful and commercially viable memoir and provide you with tips to craft your own.

Here’s how to write a memoir in 6 steps: 

1. Figure out who you’re writing for

2. narrow down your memoir’s focus, 3. distill the story into a logline , 4. choose the key moments to share, 5. don’t skimp on the details and dialogue, 6. portray yourself honestly.

Before you take on the challenge of writing a memoir, make sure you have a clear goal and direction by defining the following:

• What story you’re telling (if you’re telling “the story of your life,” then you may be looking at an autobiography , not a memoir),
• What the purpose of your memoir is,
• Which audience you’re writing it for.

Some authors write a memoir as a way to pass on some wisdom, to process certain parts of their lives, or just as a legacy piece for friends and family to look back on shared memories. Others have stronger literary ambitions, hoping to get a publishing deal through a literary agent , or self-publishing it to reach a wide audience. 

Whatever your motivation, we’d recommend approaching it as though you were to publish it. You’ll end up with a book that’s more polished, impactful, and accessible 一 even if it’ll only ever reach your Aunt Jasmine.

🔍 How do you know whether your book idea is marketable? Acclaimed ghostwriter Katy Weitz suggests researching memoir examples from several subcategories to determine whether there’s a readership for a story like yours.

Know your target reader

If you’re not sure where to start it doesn’t hurt to figure out your target audience 一 the age group, gender, and interests of the people you’re writing it for. A memoir targeted at business execs is a very different proposition from one written to appeal to Irish-American baseball fans. 

If you want a little help in asking the right questions to define your audience, download our author market research checklist below. 

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Market Research Checklist

Find your ultimate target audience with our checklist.

Now that you know who you’re writing for, you need to clearly define which (yummy) slice of your life you want to share with them. 

When writing a memoir, there's always the temptation to cover broad periods of your life, from that time in first grade when Mrs. Taylor laughed at your painting, to your third divorce, and everything in between. But remember, this is not a biography. You should try to choose specific experiences or aspects of your life that form a red thread or a central theme. The narrower the focus, the better your memoir will resonate with others. 

For example, a memoir could be about the time you hiked the Appalachian Trail, became a Jiu-Jitsu master, or volunteered in a refugee camp. Naturally, anecdotes from other parts of your life may intertwine with your main narrative, but there needs to be a focused center to your book.

Not only will a narrower slice of life help you concentrate your efforts, it will also make it easier to shift the focus from your personal story to specific, relatable things you experienced , making it easier for readers to care and take something away from the book.

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A broader theme readers can relate to

Unless you’re a celebrity, you can’t expect people to just want to read your memoir 一 you have to give them a reason to carve time out of their busy schedule and sit with your book. People are drawn to stories that they can relate to or that teach them something about themselves and the world. 

So, before you get to writing, identify the broader themes behind your personal experiences and center the book around them. For example, a story about hiking the Appalachian Trail could be a story about spiritual growth. A book about learning Jiu-Jitsu may be about building confidence and overcoming fear. A memoir about working with refugees could be about cultivating empathy and overcoming structural inequality. 

These are themes that people from different ages, gender, and cultures can relate to. They will make your memoir much more universal. Figure out what readers can learn from your experiences, whether that’s something about resilience, trauma, parenting, self-discovery, or other, and center your book around that .    

💡 Listen to 3-time memoir author Paul Bradley Carr explain the importance of nailing your memoir’s focus from the get-go in this advice-packed Reedsy Live.

At this point, you’re probably fired up and stretching your fingers to start writing. But there are a few more steps to take to ensure you’re set up for success. 

Memory lane isn’t a straight path — it’s a winding road with many off-ramps and distractions. So before you start drafting, make a note of where you’re going by encapsulating your memoir in a sentence or two. Ask yourself: if I were to pitch it to a stranger on an elevator, how would I summarize it? The purpose of this exercise is to help you weave the main themes into a clear narrative arc, which is essential to turn your life into a captivating story. 

Here are some example loglines from famous memoirs for inspiration: 

Take some time with your logline and whittle your story down to its purest form. If it helps, start by writing what you think the back cover blurb will be. Then boil it down further and further, until you can finally pitch it in just a few sentences.

The logline is the North Star that will guide you as you start to collect the moments of your life to include in the book. 

Now that you have a direction and some central themes, it’s time to pick the best tales from your buffet of life experiences. It’s natural to look back at your life chronologically and select memories in a linear fashion, but really, what’s important is to pick the most meaningful moments, whether big or small, that propel your memoir forward.

For example, Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime is a collection of stories about growing up as a mixed-raced child in Apartheid South Africa. The book shares how Noah questioned his mother’s religious beliefs, spoke multiple languages to bridge cultural differences, made and sold CDs to escape poverty, and more. Each story is a different window into his world and how it shaped him, but all of them build on the book’s central themes of faith, identity, and resilience.

Look for moments of high emotion

When you’re mining your memory for stories, look for those with moments of high emotion and meaning. Whether it was a funny, sad, or embarrassing memory, the ones that shaped who you are and how you see the world tend to be the most emotionally charged.

To discern the gems from mediocre stories, consider working with a professional editor and take advantage of their editorial wisdom. 

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Now close your eyes, and dig deep into your memories to repaint your stories on the blank page as colorfully (and accurately) as possible. 

To make your memoir deeply engaging, experiment with different storytelling techniques and use sensory details, actions, and dialogue, as opposed to explicitly stating what you did or how you felt. This falls into the classic writing advice of ‘ Show, don’t tell .’

When revisiting your memories, be thorough in your research and try to collect as many details as possible: 

• Read back your journal entries (if you kept one) to see how you felt in the moment.
• Get your hands on photos or videos from that period in your life (either digital or analog.)
• Interview your family members, friends, and other people relevant to your story.
• Revisit locations and settings from the past that you plan on writing about.
• Look up anything that can be verified or fact-checked (e.g. dates, social media posts, or world news.)

Once you've collected the raw material, organize these memories in a way that makes sense for you. Being systematic in your research will pay serious dividends when you actually start working on your manuscript.

You’re allowed some creative license with dialogue

One thing that is particularly important to get right is dialogue. Obviously, you don't have to write dialogue exactly as it happened — our memories are fallible after all. However, you do need to accurately capture the essence of what was said (and how). As long as you’re faithful to what happened (or at least honest about how you experienced it) you can take some liberties with the precise wording. 

To write believable dialogue, take inspiration from your favorite writers, or take our free course below for tips. 

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😱 Inevitably, when you write about other people there’s always a risk of portraying them in a way they don’t appreciate. As general advice, tell them you’re writing this story, or prepare to lose some relationships. And if you’re really pushing some boundaries, discuss it with your lawyer! 

Next, it’s time to look inwards and flesh out a compelling and relatable protagonist: you!  

The best memoirs read like novels, which means they hinge on the protagonist’s voice and personality 一 their quirks, values, and goals, and how they rise to life’s challenges. Just as in a novel, your memoir needs a relatable protagonist that undergoes some change.

It takes a good dose of courage to portray yourself as a multidimensional character 一 one with both strengths and weaknesses, one who sometimes wins and sometimes loses. 

Do background work on yourself

To infuse a dose of humanity to your own character, you’ll have to do the background work as if you were a character in a novel. Take note of everything from your physical appearance, cultural background, psychological traits, and more. This exercise will help you bring to surface details about your personality that you’d otherwise look over, and depict a much more well-rounded protagonist. To facilitate the process, use our free character development template which will guide you with specific prompts and questions.  

Reedsy’s Character Development Template

A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

Define your character’s arc

Additionally, it's helpful to define your own character's arc 一 how you’ve matured through the life experiences highlighted in the memoir. There are specific steps you can follow to define your personal hero's journey , but among other questions, you’ll have to answer: 

• What inciting incident set you on a journey?
• What were the obstacles you encountered?
• Which mentors helped you along the way?
• What were the lessons you needed to learn?
• How have you changed as a result?

These questions will help you strengthen your memoir’s narrative, hooking the readers in like the best novels do. 

To give an example, Cheryl Strayed's journey in Wild begins after the death of her beloved mother and other family problems, which lead her on a path of self-destruction, culminating in a divorce and addiction to heroin. Having reached the bottom, she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail for three months in order to find herself. The path is filled with challenges 一 from her hiking inexperience, to losing her boots, to fellow hikers warning her that it's not safe to go on alone. Through resilience (and some help) she is able to overcome her physical and emotional challenges, find forgiveness and rediscover her inner strength. 

Take inspiration from Wild and other memoirs, and deconstruct how your own experiences might fit into these all-important story elements. 

You now have all the ingredients: a specific memoir topic that touches on universal themes (as summarized by your logline), a selection of vivid and relevant memories, and a multidimensional character with an interesting story arc. It’s time to put it all together by outlining the structure of your memoir, which is exactly what we’ll cover in our next post.

15 responses

CourtneySymons says:

11/01/2018 – 15:26

This was exactly the article I needed today! I've just begun a new career path as a ghostwriter and am finding it difficult to find learning resources (conferences, courses, books, networks of ghostwriters, etc.). If any readers have advice on where I should be looking or who I should be talking to, I would be forever grateful! Thanks so much!

M. Thomas Maxwell says:

11/01/2018 – 15:28

I had no intention of writing a book but encouraged by my grandson I embarked on a story telling venture that led to Grandfather's Journal, www.captaintommaxwell.com. It truly is a series of life stories shared with my grandson. Published by Westbow press in 2015 I used many Reedsy tips and am very pleased with the results.I have since encouraged others to consider doing the same. It took over a year and was a pleasant experience.

Don Karp says:

11/01/2018 – 16:06

As a self-published memoir writer, I read this with appreciation. I do not agree with all that's said here. For example, "2. Do Your Research." Of course certain events--those experienced publicly by a large number of people--need to be accurate. But even the word, "memoir," says it's about memory, not accuracy. This is one of the major differences from an autobiography which does require research. I looked up the dictionary definition and got confirmation on this. Perhaps you need to re-examine this and get it right?

↪️ Reedsy replied:

11/01/2018 – 17:00

I would agree that memoirs are indeed based on memory — and in some way that's why historians are often forced to question the reliability of memoirs as a primary source. I would say, however, that modern readers to expect memoirs to be as factually-correct as possible. Editors at publishers will go to great pains to ensure that — or face a public backlash. If you say anything in a memoir that can be disproved by a basic google search will seriously compromise your relationship with a reader. The other benefit with research is that it can do a lot to jog your memories. Unreliable recollections can often be set straight once you remind yourself of certain facts. Thanks for commenting!

↪️ Don Karp replied:

11/01/2018 – 17:28

Thanks for your response. This brings up two points for me. First, what is more powerful, a memory of an experience or the actual experience? Different people interpret the same experience differently. Second, what do you propose to do with the dictionary definition of "memoir?" Since the word is based on memory and not research, perhaps you can suggest some alternate word form?

↪️ The Red Lounge For Writers replied:

05/12/2018 – 08:14

I think looking at the idea of the 'voice of innocence' and the 'voice of experience' could really help with this distinction between fact and memory. As writers of memoir, we are expected to write what we remember. We can do this using the voice of innocence, and use the voice of experience to write about the factual context.

Stu Mountjoy says:

11/01/2018 – 21:48

A group I used to attend, on a Friday, started people off with the basic exercise of writing a story about one thing that happened to you, and I did one about a race at school. I am always impressed by the first page I read of Alan Alder's bio (actor in M*A*S*H TV series) - "Hi I'm Alan Alder, and when I was six, my mother tried to kill my father." - wow.

31/01/2018 – 10:15

Alda's a great writer — "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself" is such a fantastic name for a memoir too.

Robbie Cheadle says:

31/01/2018 – 04:48

A very useful and interesting post on writing a memoir.

31/01/2018 – 10:14

I'm glad you like it Robbie :)

The Red Lounge For Writers says:

05/12/2018 – 08:10

All great advice. Memoir is probably my favourite genre to read, and some of my favourite books are memoirs. I'm of the opinion that everyone has a story to tell; it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it really well.

James Soil says:

15/07/2019 – 13:16

Thank you very much I just finished my Memoir titled Addicted it will be out this summer after reading this article I feel much better about it I pretty much did what the article says.

Izaura Nicolette says:

04/08/2019 – 04:50

Self-published Author, Izaura Nicolette. 'Within The Mountains: A Mormon Reform School Experience.' Published January, 2019. Seeking legit Publishing House or Agent. I still have not received any royalties due to publishers being fraudulent. I want to speak publicly about my memoir. Hundreds to thousands can back me up. This is a true story. I hold too close to my heart. Hoping to heal by sharing this experience, and opening door for many others.

Magzley says:

08/08/2019 – 02:14

Can I *breathe* life into my story instead?

Cassandra Janzen says:

20/12/2019 – 04:35

Very helpful, thank you!

Comments are currently closed.

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How to Start Writing a Memoir: 14 Tips for Starting Your Memoir

by Nate Methot | Jun 17, 2022 | Creative Writing

If you’re thinking about writing a memoir, you should be prepared to do a lot of self-reflection. Memoir writing is much more challenging than journaling or simply writing down your life’s story in chronological sequence. Having recently published a memoir and debut book of my own― A Life Derailed: My Journey with ALS ―there are a lot of practical steps to memoir writing that I learned in the process. For one thing, memoir writing requires that you ask yourself a lot of questions, and learn how to honestly answer them (we’ll get to that). 

In this article, we’ll explore some of the essential questions you should ask yourself as you dive into the rewarding journey of writing your memoir. I’ll also share some practical tips you can leverage to help improve your writing process. You don’t need to have all the answers to these questions from the start, but they will certainly get your writing juices flowing!

1) Why should you write a memoir?

This may seem like a rudimentary question to ask yourself upon making the decision to write a memoir, but it’s a crucial one. Memoir writing can be an arduous and emotionally draining project, and you’ll need to incorporate overarching themes throughout the story to help your readers connect the dots between the scenes of your life. You can’t effectively create overarching themes without fully cross-examining yourself about why you want to write your memoir in the first place. 

Why do you think readers will be interested in your story? What do you want to say? Not every memoir has to be heavy and dramatic, but themes are a must. Your memoir shouldn’t be a bunch of random stories your friends find entertaining; they need to fit together in some way.

The first sentence of the Preface of my book is, “I never thought I’d write a book.” But, of course, I never thought I’d be diagnosed with ALS at the age of 27. I’ve had a unique experience and perspective that provided the basis for my memoir. So ask yourself: What do I have to say?

2) Should you read memoirs to draw inspiration?

You absolutely should! Reading comparative memoir titles―whether bestsellers or obscure indies―can be tremendously helpful by offering guidance on how you might structure your story. You will undoubtedly absorb elements of memoir craft without even knowing. 

As you read memoirs for inspiration, keep this checklist in mind:

• Read each memoir as a writer and creator. Understand that each tiny aspect of the story happened by a series of intentional decisions. 
• Read the preface and keep it in mind: this is the author telling you about their process. 
• Take note of scenes that impact you most. As you write your story, refer back to your notes. If you get writer’s block anywhere throughout the memoir writing process, refer back to your notes for a possible solution.

Both before and during the writing process of my book, I read a number of memoirs. I took note of the details, the front and back covers, chapter breakdowns, and grammatical choices. I meticulously observed the author’s voice, themes, and style throughout each. From Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime and Andre Agassi’s Open , to Dr. J.D. Remy’s Ballad of a Sober Man and Christina Crosby’s A Body, Undone , I gained useful craft techniques from each.

3) Where should your memoir begin, and where should it end up?

A memoir is not an autobiography; it should begin with a story central to its theme. Think of the most important moment in your story and how it might grab the reader’s attention from the start. It may not make sense to be purely chronological in the telling, so keep your audience in mind. If it’s difficult to follow, you might lose some portion of the effect.

My memoir does not begin with that most obvious scene: “that Wednesday morning at the hospital.”―my diagnosis. Perhaps I should have. But I did find a way to grab attention from the start. Allow yourself to be creative with how you organize the scenes throughout your memoir. You may not know exactly where your memoir will end, but you’ll certainly find out as your story unfolds.

4) How can you get started with writing?

Focus on the trees and the forest will come. There is no wrong place to start writing―start with whatever you want. Inevitably, you will begin with something easy to write and as you move forward, you’ll come to more difficult topics or scenes. 

When I began making a record of some of my personal stories in my head, I had little picture of what the final product would be. I only considered each piece on its own. As my stories piled up, I listed ideas for more, slowly filling out the beginnings of an outline. I quickly found that my ideas beget ideas, and the more time I spent writing (and in my own head), the more work I marked for the future.

5) How can you stay organized while writing a memoir?

Taking notes and outlining are just a couple of the best practical things you can do to stay organized during memoir writing. As you dive deeper into your memories, you’ll most certainly recall scenes from your life that you forgot about, so it’s crucial that you take notes of those instances and add them to your outline before you forget. You can also use your outline to keep track of progress and see the big picture.

The outline I used for my memoir helped me to see an entire book in a numbered list on a few pages. I could easily see the order of each section, making it easy to add or remove something without losing sight of the bigger picture. 

6) Is the idea more important than the work?

Record your ideas before they’re gone! This could be just a few notes or a pass at the entire piece. Don’t make the all-too-easy mistake of thinking the idea is the only thing that matters. You have a long way to go. 

I often found myself feeling satisfied after merely recording an idea during the memoir writing process. The idea may feel like a revelation, however, writing it out might be much more of a grind than expected. You may also find that it doesn’t quite fit into the larger picture of your memoir. Keep in mind that your ideas are important, but the work you’ll undoubtedly put in is just as important.

7) Should each scene be perfect before moving to the next?

No first draft of your memoir is going to be perfect. Remember that you’re writing a first draft of each section only. It might not feel like only a first pass, but you likely will find out later how much work it still needs. Stay positive! Without exploring your ideas on the page, you’d have nothing. 

In the editing process, I often found out that I’d gotten my point across, but in an awkward and uninspired way. I might need to go back and rewrite that last sentence, for example. I learned that despite my frustrations at a glaring lack of eloquence, getting the gist of my thoughts down was indeed the first step, without which there could be no second.

8) Should you work on your memoir every day?

You don’t have to, but it certainly helps! I found habits are important. Just as writing begets writing, a day off quickly turns into three―or five. I kept the progress bar relatively low, but made sure to get something done every day. With little goals, I kept myself motivated rather than frustrated.

Track your progress; measure your accomplishments. Keep moving forward. If you’re like me, try not to feel satisfied after only a small amount of work; keep going. If you’re more of a grinder, feel free to finish as much as possible in a sitting. Keep your writing sessions to a set time, though, or you may experience memoir writing burnout!

9) What if your memoir doesn’t pan out how you expected?

Try to accept that not everything you write will come together as you’d imagined in your memoir. It’s impossible not to get frustrated over time wasted on things that end up in the trash, but you might also find that the unexpected ends up better than what you originally had in mind.

I wrote a number of finished pieces that aren’t in my book, and had ideas that were never fulfilled. Spending hours or days on a thought that seemed to carry such promise, only to never get there, can be a difficult pill to swallow. I had to remind myself not to dwell on these minor failures and move on to the next task at hand.

10) Can your memoir include your thoughts and feelings?

A memoir doesn’t have to only show the reader, it can speak to them directly as well. What makes a memoir compelling isn’t usually the retelling of events, but getting inside the head of the author. Don’t spend so much time setting the scene; tell the reader what you were thinking at the time.

The best advice I received from my editor was to put more of myself in the writing. Make the reader feel what you felt. It’s a powerful tool that will draw people in and make them feel close to you as the author.

11) What if every scene isn’t your favorite?

Get over it.

I wish I could say that I read through my memoir and every line and every page is my favorite. But that’s not―nor could it ever be―the case. That’s not the measuring stick I used for my work. What I can say about each piece I included―that is, the actual measuring stick―is that it provided something unique to the overall story. If I felt that wasn’t the case, I had to consider its removal.

Just accept that not every scene will be your favorite, but they will be necessary in making your memoir a cohesive whole.

12) How will you know what to include?

Stay on theme, eliminate redundancies, and leave out irrelevant stories (no matter how interesting you might think they are). Your memoir does not need to cover everything that happened from “Time A” to “Time B.” It should be telling a story, so stay in that lane.

Everything I wrote for my memoir was in some way connected to its subtitle, My Journey with ALS. There were a number of themes that came off of that, and I provided some background on myself and the people around me, but (I hope) there was nothing superfluous in my book.

This goes back to the overarching theme of your memoir. Make sure the scenes you include are tied into that theme.

13) Can you embellish a little in your memoir?

I tried to write in a matter-of-fact style when recounting memories in my memoir. If I’d exaggerated details, I’d have lost the most important aspect of my memoir: authenticity.

Though you may be proud of a particular story or detail, try to stay earnest in the telling. It may feel like a fine line, but boastful writing is just as sure to turn off the reader as it would induce eye rolls in person.

14) How authentic should you be?

Don’t force your writing to fit into a particular box or follow a particular pattern that feels forced. Regardless of all of the how-to articles and writing advice columns you may read, your memoir needs to be  you.  It should feel and sound like you from beginning to end. When your friends and family read it, they should have no doubt that it’s yours. What’s the point of writing a memoir if you neglect to pour your entire heart and soul into it?

I told my story the way that I wanted. I took in some craft and writing advice, of course, but I’ve said proudly (though, technically, incorrectly), that every word is my own. I wrote for myself, and held nothing back; I couldn’t do it any other way.

I hope you found these memoir writing tips helpful! If you would like to get a copy of  my new memoir and debut book, check out my official website .

Nate Methot has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration – Finance from the University of Vermont. He worked for five years at a securities broker/dealer before an ALS diagnosis forced him to give up full-time employment. Two years into his new, wholly foreign and unusual life, he began to record thoughts, stories, and frustrations on a blog called, appropriately, Whatever I Want to Say. In the summer of 2020, about ten years after his symptoms began, he started writing down his experiences in earnest. His resulting memoir, A Life Derailed: My Journey with ALS, was published in June, 2022. Visit his official website at natemethot.com .

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How to Start a Memoir: 10 Steps for Sharing Your Story 

POSTED ON Oct 6, 2023

Written by Nicole Ahlering

None of us get through life unscathed, but the good news is we can turn our biggest obstacles (and triumphs!) into a story that inspires others. If you’re ready to write your first memoir , we’re here to help. 

In this primer, we’ll go over exactly how to start a memoir. These are the steps that will get you to your complete first draft , so buckle up and let’s get started.

This guide to starting a memoir is broken down by:

Step 1: brainstorm your memoir’s topic.

Lots of important things have happened in your life, but you can’t write about them all in one book. Start by making a list of all the potential topics for your memoir. 

As you brainstorm memoir ideas , consider what themes in books or message you’d like to convey with your book. Do you want to provide hope and inspiration for others, tell a beautiful story of finding love, or something else? 

Remember that the topics you come up with should be emotionally significant, unique to you and meaningful to your readers. 

Related: The Six-Word Memoir: An Exercise on Short, Powerful Stories

Step 2: Select the topic you’re going to write about

Now comes the hard part: choosing which topic you’re going to write about! Start by eliminating any ideas you don’t love so you’re left only with the ones that inspire you. As you navigate this decision-making process, it's essential to be aware of memoir writing do's and don'ts .

Next, it’s time to apply a few screening questions. Of the topics you’ve selected, which ones are likely to make the most impact on your readers? Remove any that don’t satisfy that criteria. 

With your remaining list of topics, consider which one you’re most likely to finish a book about. Hint: its likely the topic you’re most passionate about, have the most information and resources to write, and feel you’re able to complete in a reasonable time. 

Step 3: Flesh out your topic 

Now that you’ve got your memoir’s topic selected, it’s time to add some context. This is a great time to make a mind map , which is a visual representation of connected ideas. 

To do it, start with your memoir’s topic in the center of the page. Then create branches radiating outward with all the memories, lessons and takeaways that will support your story. 

Take time to understand the connection between each of the elements on your mind map and make notes accordingly. This will help you tremendously as you begin to write your memoir. 

Step 4: Group your mind map into themes

Now that you’ve figured out which of your mindmap ideas are the most connected to one another, you can group them into themes. Examples might include coming of age, family ties, loss and grief or cultural identity. 

Each of these grouped themes will act as a chapter in your book. Yep, you’ve already figured out your chapters !

Step 5: Make a mini mindmap for each chapter

You’re not done with the mind maps quite yet. Now you’re going to make one for each chapter you’ve created. 

Just like before, put your chapter theme in the center of your page, then draw branches off of it identifying the interconnected ideas, events and topics that support it. 

Once you’ve done this, you have the outline for your memoir! Get it all on one page to guide you as you write. 

Step 6: Select a working title for your book

We know what you’re thinking: it’s already time to choose the title for your book? Sort of. You’ll want to choose a working title, which is a—possibly temporary—title that reflects the content of your book. 

Why do this now? It’s a great way to inspire you and help you hone in on the purpose of your memoir, similar to writing the thesis statement at the start of an essay. 

We have a title generator to help you with this process. All you need to do is tell us a little bit about the memoir you’re writing. 

Step 7: Create a writing routine 

You’re likely excited to write your memoir right now, and that’s great! But the reality is you’ll have lulls where you’re not so interested in writing. 

This is a totally normal part of writing your book, and not something to fear. Especially if you have a writing routine !

A good routine will give you the inertia you need to get through those low-motivation days, so you’ll always get one step closer to creating something you're proud of.

A writing routine is a very personal thing and can vary widely by the writer. But here are some general tips: 

• Set clear goals for how much you want to write every day. Try not to stop before you reach that goal.
• Choose the hours during which you will write and make sure you’re at your desk (or kitchen table, or wherever!) writing during that time. No excuses.
•  Create a space that feels comfortable and inspirational for you to write in. It should be free of distractions and stressors. 
• Include a warm-up ritual. Sometimes it’s hard to dive straight into writing a book, but it's easy to spend ten minutes scribbling down literally every thought that comes into your mind. This is a great way to get the juices flowing and is meant to be messy! Only you will see it. 
• Set up a rewards system for yourself. Don’t wait until you finish your memoir to celebrate. Take yourself out for a fancy coffee or something else enjoyable each time you finish a chapter. This keeps morale high!

Step 8: Find an accountability buddy

Even with a solid outline and writing routine in place, your devotion to your memoir may wax and wane through the writing process. This is where an accountability buddy comes in. 

Having someone to check in and share your progress with creates just the right amount of positive pressure to help you get the job done. 

When you find your buddy, talk about how often you’ll check in, how you’ll communicate and what your goals are. Don’t forget to be honest about your progress here; your buddy should be someone who encourages you when you’re falling behind, not judges you. 

Step 9: Start writing your memoir

The moment is finally here! It’s time to sit down and actually start writing your memoir. The first day can be intimidating, so follow these steps for a smooth liftoff: 

• Remind yourself of your intention for writing your memoir. Do you want to change the way a certain industry functions? Make a specific type of person feel less alone? Keep this in mind as you begin your journey. 
• Review your outline , so you know what you’re writing!
• Make sure you’ve established your goal word count for the day. (And don’t stop until you hit it.)
• Don’t worry about perfection, or anything close to it. The first draft of your memoir is about getting your thoughts on paper, not writing something that’s ready to publish. 

After you’ve finished writing for the day, take a moment to reflect on how the process went. Is there anything you’d like to change for next time? If so, make note of it. Also, make sure you know when you plan to sit down next to continue writing. 

After that, go celebrate! You’ve started your memoir. 

Step 10: Know how to get unstuck

Feeling periodically stuck while writing your memoir happens. If you find yourself overwhelmed, confused or otherwise blocked in your writing process , start by taking a small break. 

While too long of a break may derail your process, a few days away from your memoir can help clear your mind and let you see things from a new perspective. This is a good time to read (or re-read) other author’s books that inspire you. 

Make sure to take good care of yourself during this time. Move your body, eat well and do things you enjoy. 

When you come back to your book, you can try a few different approaches: 

• Skip to a different chapter than the one you were working on previously. 
• Explore various memoir writing prompts to boost your creativity.
• Change the environment you’re working in. 
• Use a different writing medium (like pen and paper instead of a computer). 

Remind yourself that in this stage of the process, judgment-free writing is key. Don’t worry about being perfect. Simply focus on getting words on the page. 

Final thoughts on how to start a memoir

Writing your first memoir isn’t always easy, but it is worth it! If you have a message you want to share with the world, we want to make sure that happens. At SelfPublishing.com, we’re standing by to help you write your memoir every step of the way, just schedule a book consultation to get started. 

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How to Write a Memoir Essay

October 12, 2023

What is a Memoir Essay?

A memoir essay is a form of autobiographical writing that focuses on a specific aspect of the author’s life. Unlike a traditional autobiography, which typically covers the author’s entire life, a memoir essay hones in on a particular event, time period, or theme. It is a deeply personal and reflective piece that allows the writer to delve into their memories, thoughts, and emotions surrounding their chosen subject.

In a memoir essay, the author aims to not only recount the events that took place but also provide insight into the impact and meaning of those experiences. It is a unique opportunity for self-discovery and exploration, while also offering readers a glimpse into the author’s world. The beauty of a memoir essay lies in its ability to weave together personal anecdotes, vivid descriptions, and introspective reflections to create a compelling narrative.

Writing a memoir essay can be both challenging and rewarding. It requires careful selection of memories, thoughtful introspection, and skillful storytelling. The process allows the writer to make sense of their past, gain a deeper understanding of themselves, and share their unique story with others.

Choosing a Topic for Your Memoir Essay

Selecting the right topic is crucial to write a good memoir essay. It sets the foundation for what you will explore and reveal in your personal narrative. When choosing a topic, it’s essential to reflect on your significant life experiences and consider what stories or themes hold the most meaning for you.

One approach is to think about moments or events that have had a profound impact on your life. Consider times of triumph or adversity, moments of exploration or self-discovery, relationships that have shaped you, or challenges you have overcome. These experiences can provide a rich foundation for your memoir essay.

Another option is to focus on a specific theme or aspect of your life. You might explore topics such as identity, family dynamics, cultural heritage, career milestones, or personal beliefs. By centering your essay around a theme, you can weave together various memories and reflections to create a cohesive narrative.

It’s also important to consider your target audience. Who do you want to connect with through your memoir essay? Understanding your audience’s interests and experiences can help you choose a topic that will resonate with them.

Ultimately, the topic should be one that excites you and allows for introspection and self-discovery. Choose a topic that ignites your passion and offers a story worth sharing.

Possible Memoir Essay Topics

• Childhood Memories
• Family Dynamics
• Life-altering Events
• Overcoming Societal Expectations
• Love and Loss
• Self-discovery and Transformation
• Lessons from Nature
• Journey from Darkness to Light
• Triumphing Over Adversities
• Life’s Defining Moments

Outlining the Structure of Your Memoir Essay

Writing a memoir essay allows you to share your personal experiences, reflections, and insights with others. However, before you start pouring your thoughts onto the page, it’s essential to outline the structure of your essay. This not only provides a clear roadmap for your writing but also helps you maintain a cohesive and engaging narrative.

First, consider the opening. Begin with a captivating introduction that hooks the reader and establishes the theme or central message of your memoir. This is your chance to grab their attention and set the tone for the rest of the essay.

Next, move on to the body paragraphs. Divide your essay into sections that chronologically or thematically explore different aspects of your life or experiences. Use vivid descriptions, anecdotes, and dialogue to bring your memories to life. It’s crucial to maintain a logical flow and transition smoothly between different ideas or events.

As you approach the conclusion, summarize the key points you’ve discussed and reflect on the significance of your experiences. What lessons have you learned? How have you grown or changed as a result? Wrap up your memoir essay by leaving the reader with a memorable takeaway or a thought-provoking question.

Remember, the structure of your memoir essay should support your storytelling and allow for a genuine and authentic exploration of your experiences. By outlining your essay’s structure, you’ll have a solid foundation to create a compelling and impactful memoir that resonates with your readers.

How to Write an Introduction for Your Memoir Essay

The introduction of your memoir essay sets the stage for your story and captivates your readers from the very beginning. It is your opportunity to grab their attention, establish the tone, and introduce the central theme of your memoir.

To create a compelling introduction, consider starting with a hook that intrigues your readers. This can be a surprising fact, a thought-provoking question, or a vivid description that immediately draws them in. Your goal is to make them curious and interested in what you have to say.

Next, provide a brief overview of what your memoir essay will explore. Give your readers a glimpse into the key experiences or aspects of your life that you will be sharing. However, avoid giving away too much detail. Leave room for anticipation and curiosity to keep them engaged.

Additionally, consider how you want to establish the tone of your memoir. Will it be reflective, humorous, or nostalgic? Choose your words and phrasing carefully to convey the right emotions and set the right atmosphere for your story.

Finally, end your introduction with a clear and concise thesis statement. This statement should express the central theme or message that your memoir will convey. It serves as a roadmap for your essay and guides your readers in understanding the purpose and significance of your memoir.

By crafting a strong and captivating introduction for your memoir essay, you will draw readers in and make them eager to dive into the rich and personal journey that awaits them.

Write the Main Body of Your Memoir Essay

When developing the main body of your memoir essay, it’s essential to structure your thoughts and experiences in a clear and engaging manner. Here are some tips to help you effectively organize and develop the main body of your essay:

• Chronological Structure: Consider organizing your memoir essay in chronological order, following the sequence of events as they occurred in your life. This allows for a natural flow and a clear timeline that helps readers understand your personal journey.
• Thematic Structure: Alternatively, you can focus on specific themes or lessons that emerged from your experiences. This approach allows for a more focused exploration of different aspects of your life, even if they did not occur in a linear order.
• Use Vivid Details: Use sensory details, descriptive language, and engaging storytelling techniques to bring your memories to life. Transport your readers to the settings, evoke emotions, and create a vivid picture of the events and people in your life.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Instead of simply stating facts, show your readers the experiences through engaging storytelling. Use dialogue, scenes, and anecdotes to make your memoir more dynamic and immersive.
• Reflections and Insights: Share your reflections on the events and experiences in your memoir. Offer deeper insights, lessons learned, and personal growth that came from these moments. Invite readers to reflect on their own lives and connect with your journey.

By organizing your main body in a logical and engaging manner, using vivid details, and offering thoughtful reflections, you can write a compelling memoir essay that captivates your readers and leaves a lasting impact.

Reflecting on Lessons Learned in Your Memoir Essay

One of the powerful aspects of a memoir essay is the opportunity to reflect on the lessons learned from your personal experiences. These reflections provide deeper insights and meaning to your story, leaving a lasting impact on your readers. Here are some tips for effectively reflecting on lessons learned in your memoir essay:

• Summarize Key Points: In the conclusion of your essay, summarize the key events and experiences you have shared throughout your memoir. Briefly remind readers of the significant moments that shaped your journey.
• Identify Core Themes: Reflect on the core themes and messages that emerged from your experiences. What did you learn about resilience, love, identity, or perseverance? Identify the overarching lessons that you want to convey.
• Offer Personal Insights: Share your personal insights and reflections on how these lessons have influenced your life. Were there specific turning points or moments of epiphany? How have these experiences shaped your beliefs, values, or actions?
• Connect to the Reader: Make your reflections relatable to your readers. Explore how the lessons you learned can resonate with their own lives and experiences. This allows them to connect with your story on a deeper level.
• Offer a Call to Action: Encourage readers to reflect on their own lives and consider how the lessons from your memoir can apply to their own journeys. Pose thought-provoking questions or suggest actions they can take to apply these insights.

By reflecting on the lessons learned in your memoir essay, you give your readers a chance to contemplate their own lives and find inspiration in your personal growth. These reflections add depth and impact to your storytelling, making your memoir essay truly memorable.

Crafting a Strong Conclusion for Your Memoir Essay

The conclusion of your memoir essay is your final opportunity to leave a lasting impression on your readers. It is where you tie together the threads of your story and offer a sense of closure and reflection. Here are some tips to help you craft a strong conclusion for your memoir essay:

• Summarize the Journey: Remind your readers of the key moments and experiences you shared throughout your essay. Briefly summarize the significant events and emotions that shaped your personal journey.
• Revisit the Central Theme: Reiterate the central theme or message of your memoir. Emphasize the lessons learned, personal growth, or insights gained from your experiences. This helps reinforce the purpose and impact of your story.
• Reflect on Transformation: Reflect on how you have transformed as a result of the events and experiences you shared. Share the growth, self-discovery, or newfound perspectives that have shaped your life.
• Leave a Lasting Impression: Use powerful and evocative language to leave a lasting impact on your readers. Craft a memorable phrase or thought that lingers in their minds even after they finish reading your essay.
• Offer a Call to Action or Reflection: Encourage your readers to take action or reflect on their own lives. Pose thought-provoking questions, suggest further exploration, or challenge them to apply the lessons from your memoir to their own experiences.

By crafting a strong conclusion, you ensure that your memoir essay resonates with your readers long after they have finished reading it. It leaves them with a sense of closure, inspiration, and a deeper understanding of the transformative power of personal storytelling.

Editing and Proofreading Your Memoir Essay

Editing and proofreading are crucial steps in the writing process that can greatly enhance the quality and impact of your memoir essay. Here are some tips to help you effectively edit and proofread your work:

• Take a Break: After completing your initial draft, take a break before starting the editing process. This allows you to approach your essay with fresh eyes and a clear mind.
• Review for Structure and Flow: Read through your essay to ensure it has a logical structure and flows smoothly. Check that your paragraphs and sections transition seamlessly, guiding readers through your story.
• Trim and Refine: Eliminate any unnecessary or repetitive information. Trim down long sentences and paragraphs to make your writing concise and impactful. Consider the pacing and ensure that each word contributes to the overall story.
• Check for Clarity and Consistency: Ensure that your ideas and thoughts are expressed clearly. Identify any confusing or vague passages and revise them to improve clarity. Check for consistency in tense, tone, and voice throughout your essay.
• Proofread for Errors: Carefully proofread your essay for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Pay attention to common mistakes such as subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, and punctuation marks. Consider using spell-checking tools or having someone else review your work for an objective perspective.
• Seek Feedback: Share your memoir essay with a trusted friend, family member, or writing partner. Their feedback can provide valuable insights and help you identify areas for improvement.

By dedicating time to edit and proofread your memoir essay, you ensure that it is polished, coherent, and error-free. These final touches enhance the reader’s experience and allow your story to shine.

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Crafting Your Legacy: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing a Captivating Memoir

• Advice for Writers , Writing Your Book

Learning How to Write an Engaging Memoir Takes Practice and Dedication

Memoirs have the unique power to capture the essence of a person’s life, preserving their experiences, insights, and emotions for generations to come. Writing a memoir is both a creative endeavor and a personal journey that requires careful planning, introspection, and a skilled approach. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or merely someone with a compelling story to tell, this guide will show you how to plan, craft, and write a captivating memoir that resonates with readers.

And once you have the first draft put together, you can submit your manuscript for consideration with the Atmosphere Press team!

Choosing Your Theme and Focus

Every life is a tapestry of experiences, emotions, and relationships, so the first step in how to write a cohesive memoir is to determining the central theme and focus. How will you write in a way that provides a throughline for your memoir from seemingly disconnected life events? Reflect on the pivotal moments, struggles, triumphs, and lessons that have shaped you as a person. Consider:

– Defining moments: Think about events that have left a lasting impact on your life, such as personal achievements, challenges, or turning points.

– Relationships: Identify key people who have played significant roles in your journey – mentors, family members, friends, or even adversaries.

– Overcoming adversity: Explore the obstacles you’ve encountered and how you’ve navigated through them, showcasing your resilience and growth.

– Lessons learned: Reflect on the wisdom you’ve gained from your experiences and how these insights can resonate with others.

Finding Your Voice

A compelling memoir is a window into the author’s world, and learning how to find your unique voice in which to write is crucial. Write authentically, capturing your thoughts and emotions honestly. Consider the tone of your narrative – will it be introspective, humorous, or contemplative? Allow your personality to shine through, making your readers feel like they’re getting to know you personally.

If you’d like to learn more about how to find your voice as an author, check out our blog post on the topic.

Structuring Your Memoir

The structure of your memoir is like the scaffolding that supports your narrative, providing a clear path for readers to follow while allowing your story to unfold in a meaningful way. Properly organizing your memoir before you write can greatly impact how readers engage with your experiences, emotions, and insights. Here, we’ll delve deeper into the various structural approaches you can take to ensure your memoir resonates with your audience.

1. Chronological Structure: From Beginning to Present

The chronological structure is perhaps the most common and straightforward approach to structuring a memoir. It takes readers on a journey through time, starting from your earliest memories and progressing toward the present day. This format offers a clear sense of progression, allowing readers to witness your growth, transformations, and the evolution of your experiences.

However, be cautious not to simply present a laundry list of events; weave your personal growth and insights into the narrative to keep readers engaged and emotionally invested.

2. Thematic Structure: Exploring Key Themes

In a thematic structure, your memoir is organized around central themes or motifs that have shaped your life. These themes could range from resilience and perseverance to love, loss, and personal identity. By organizing your memoir thematically, you have the flexibility to jump back and forth in time while exploring the deeper meanings behind your experiences.

This approach can be especially effective if you’ve had a varied life with distinct phases or if you want to highlight particular life lessons or transformative moments.

3. Hybrid Structure: Blending Chronology and Themes

A hybrid structure combines elements of both chronological and thematic approaches. This allows you to create a well-rounded narrative that captures the essence of your life while also diving deep into significant themes.

Begin with a chronological framework, moving through your life in a linear fashion. Along the way, introduce thematic sections that delve into specific lessons, relationships, or challenges, providing a multi-dimensional view of your journey.

4. Framed Structure: A Singular Event as the Entry Point

In a framed structure, you begin your memoir with a singular event or experience that serves as the entry point to your larger narrative. This event acts as a “frame” through which readers view your life story. As you recount the events that led to and followed this pivotal moment, readers gain a comprehensive understanding of your life’s trajectory and the impact of that defining event.

This structure creates a sense of suspense and intrigue, encouraging readers to explore how the initial event shaped your life.

5. Circular Structure: Returning to the Beginning

The circular structure is a thought-provoking approach where you start and end your memoir at the same point or with a similar reflection. By returning to the beginning, you create a sense of closure and symmetry, emphasizing how your journey has come full circle.

This can be especially effective for memoirs focused on personal growth, transformation, or the cyclical nature of life’s lessons.

Tips for Crafting an Effective Structure

– Outline: Before you start writing, create a rough outline of your memoir’s structure. This will serve as your roadmap, helping you maintain a clear direction as you write.

– Transitions: Smooth transitions are essential, especially in non-linear structures. Ensure that readers can easily follow shifts in time or theme by using clear transitions and signposts.

– Balance: Strive for balanced pacing throughout your memoir. Avoid spending too much time on certain periods or themes while neglecting others.

– Reflection: Incorporate moments of reflection throughout your memoir. This allows readers to connect with your insights and emotions, creating a deeper bond.

– Experiment: Don’t hesitate to experiment with different structural approaches. Sometimes, trying out multiple structures can help you discover the one that best serves your story.

As you prepare to write your memoir, remember that how to best structure your memoir depends on what aligns best with your story’s themes, your personal style, and the emotional journey you wish to take readers on. The chosen structure should complement the content and enhance the overall impact of your narrative.

Crafting Vivid Scenes

Transporting your readers into your world requires the creation of vivid scenes. Use descriptive language to paint a clear picture of the settings, people, and emotions you’re describing. Engage all the senses – sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch – to make your narrative more immersive.

Show, Don’t Tell

Instead of merely stating facts, show your experiences through actions, dialogue, and sensory details. This technique helps readers emotionally connect with your story and better understand your journey.

Honesty and Vulnerability

Honesty and vulnerability are the cornerstones of a compelling memoir. Embrace your imperfections and share your raw emotions, even if they are difficult to confront. This authenticity resonates deeply with readers, creating a powerful connection.

Seeking Feedback

Before finalizing your memoir, seek feedback from trusted friends, writing groups, or beta readers. Constructive criticism can help refine your narrative, highlight areas that need improvement, and provide a fresh perspective on your work.

Choosing the Right Memoir Publisher

After meticulously crafting your memoir, the next step is to publish it. Choosing the right memoir publisher is a crucial decision that can impact the reach and success of your book. Here are some factors to consider:

Reputation: Research the publisher’s reputation within the industry. Look for reviews, testimonials, and any awards they’ve received.

Fit: Ensure that the publisher aligns with the themes and values of your memoir. Some publishers specialize in specific genres or themes.

Editing and Design: A publisher that offers comprehensive editing and professional design services can enhance the quality of your book.

Distribution: Consider the publisher’s distribution network. A wider distribution reach can help your memoir reach a larger audience.

Royalties and Contracts: Understand the royalty rates and contract terms offered by the publisher. Make sure the terms are fair and favorable for you.

If you’re ready to explore memoir publishing options, you can visit Atmosphere Press’s guide to finding the right memoir publisher for more information.

Atmosphere Press Will Treat Your Memoir – and Life – Right

Writing a memoir is an opportunity to reflect on your life’s journey, share your experiences, and leave a lasting legacy. With careful consideration of your theme, voice, structure, and emotional authenticity, you can create a memoir that captivates readers and resonates with their own lives.

While there is a learning curve in understanding how to write a memoir, remember that the end result is a powerful testament to the uniqueness of your story. So, embark on this literary adventure with courage, creativity, and a willingness to embrace the vulnerability that comes with sharing your personal narrative.

Once your memoir is drafted into a complete manuscript, it’s important to work with a professional publishing team who will treat your work with the care and devotion it deserves. At Atmosphere Press, we’ve been the chosen memoir publishers for many incredible people, paving the way to publication for their incredible life stories. If you’d like to more about how to take the next step, reach out to our team for a publication consultation !

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Atmosphere Press is a selective hybrid publisher founded in 2015 on the principles of Honesty, Transparency, Professionalism, Kindness, and Making Your Book Awesome. Our books have won dozens of awards and sold tens of thousands of copies. If you’re interested in learning more, or seeking publication for your own work, please explore the links below. 

Atmosphere Press was founded in 2015 on the principles of Honesty, Transparency, Professionalism, Kindness, and Making Your Book Awesome.

We hold true to those principles today.

© Atmosphere Press, all rights reserved. 7107 Foxtree Cove, Austin, TX 78750

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Writing the Memoir (Moxley): Tips for Writing the Memoir

• Introduction

Tips for Writing the Memoir

• Annotated Memoirs
• Describing a Person
• Describing a Place
• Sample Topics and Essays

I.  How to Begin

A. You can start in medias res , in the middle of an anecdote, for example, that will build a character or an emotion; this "story" should not last more than one paragraph before your first-person "essay" voice needs to emerge in some direct message or reflection to your reader that then establishes your focus:  

   My mom woke me at the regular time that morning, but the strange tone of her voice told me that something was wrong. As I shook off the covers and rubbed my eyes, she quietly told me to get dressed and come into the kitchen, that she had some bad news to tell me. I began to brace myself for a shock-- I was sure that my dog had died. Soon my brothers and I were sitting on the couch together, fearing the worst, and my mother told us what was wrong. "Boys, your Aunt Rhonda is dead." (from “Aunt Rhonda”)

   Or you can start in the middle of an action , one that will set up an upcoming paragraph that will establish your focus:

I was unafraid of falling as I Ieapt from rock to rock along the quarry rim in an acid January wind; our hike had taken us along the track of a shallow, rocky stream—rather it had taken me down the middle of the stream, by whatever dry protrusions would support my seven-year-old frame.  I was proven; I was sure-footed.  I knew the place of each of my limbs and kept my balance. For the others, the footpath sufficed. My mother and father climbed with considerable effort; Greg Waugh, my godfather, led his wife Susan and sons, Daniel and Stuart, with an energy near my own.  He was tall, seeming one among the trees; the depth of the woods reflected his narrow form, but for a grey leather jacket and fading jeans, in a few thousand sapling pines and leafless oaks.  He spoke deliberately, with a rasp in his voice.  His force of being pulled the rest along.  (from “Foxwright”)

B. Start with some self-reflection that immediately establishes the focus of your essay and your voice:

Incidents, or rather accidents, as I have found, work their ways into our lives, pushing a childish, fantasy-infested state of life (we all have known) into a state of awareness much higher. Death is one concept which particularly seems to evoke what would be emotion in the disguise of confusion in the inexperienced child. The suicide of my cousin is a misfortune which, alongside the other deaths I confronted in my childhood, was thrown into the back of my mind, receiving no particular consideration in contrast to the immediate thoughts of my mind: baseball cards, birthdays, toothfairies, pogs, ice cream, and so on. Not until last night did I actually resurface the loss of my cousin Patrick. I asked myself why. Particular scenes emerged. An adoption, a seemingly parentless childhood, a divorce, but most notably, a hated father. (from “The Responsibility of the Living”)

C.   Begin with a general description of the time-frame of your memoir to create setting, atmosphere, and the mindset of the person you were at the time of this memory:  

The winter I was thirteen years old, I killed twelve squirrels, two rabbits, and a quail.  I considered this tally impressive because I wasn’t allowed into the woods with a gun until my father got home from work at 4:30, which left less than an hour of shooting light.  That was the year my father finally agreed to take me deer hunting.  He woke me the morning of Opening Day by calling my name the one time he said he would.  I pulled on a pair of long underwear, two pairs of jeans, and four or five pairs of socks.  I shoved my feet into a cheap pair of two-toned, zip-up boots my mother had bought at Pic-N-Pay.  Before I had been awake ten minutes, we were headed in my father’s Volkswagen for the steep, laurelled ridges of Green River Cove, the next county over, the magic country where deer lived. (from Tony Earley’s “Deer Season, 1974")

D.  Begin by getting in your reader’s face, focusing on your subject from the opening line (note the use of anecdote and dialogue to build this fast start):  

For the last three years Mamie had been in a nursing home in my hometown, right around the corner from my mother’s house.  All day long, over and over, she would cry “Momma, Papa” and talk with people four generations gone.  The last time I saw her, tiny and shriveled in her bed, completely blind and almost wholly deaf, she took my hand and said, “Is that the boy?  My boy always was a rascal.”  In her final lucid moment she whispered to my mother, “Put me in the ground next to Percy and close the gate behind you.  I want to go home.”  She was weeping when she died. (from Willie Morris’s “Weep No More, My Lady”)

II.  How to Proceed

  A.  Try to put distance between you and the event, even it happened last summer.  If possible, imagine a forty-year-old thinking back on the events in your essay. This technique will help you to establish your voice, one that is objective yet passionate, observant, and pleasantly self -derisive.

  B.   In one or two nights, write your memoir non-stop in what some call a “fast write,” without questioning your organization, style, or grammar.  Let the whole memory get out onto the page; let one thing lead to another (you’ll find buried memories waiting to be excavated).  At some point you will sense that you have enough written to stop and begin crafting the essay with your audience in mind.

  C.  Keep your audience in mind.  You are writing for a national audience, not people in west Nashville .  That means that you have to enjoy describing what Belle Meade Boulevard  suggests about social class, what Franklin  means to the white-flight South, what the Nashville  skyline looks like. If you insure your reader can see what you are picturing, the essay will achieve a universality because your readers can picture their own streets in yours.

   D.  After you have finished your non-stop “fast write,” determine your focus (or purpose).  Keep that focus in mind always.  If your essay is about the death of a pig, and your father is there for the death of this pig, don’t get off the track and turn the piece into a father-son essay, unless of course that’s what you want.

E.  After you’ve written some 4-5 pages of disorganized memory, begin to divide it up, determining a good place to start and whether you are going to have “parts” to the essay.  In most 4-5 page essays, there are no breaks in the writing; however, your paragraphing will signal certain transitions in time or thought or realization.

F.  By end of the first part (1-3 paragraphs), make sure your “voice” is distinct.  In the sample essays you should note how the writers create their voices to be wryly ironic, or comfortably self-mocking, or satirical, or detached-but-soon-to-become-sympathetic.  Creating “voice” is hard to teach; you have to read your own work aloud to make sure it sounds the way you want it to sound.

III.  Ways To Get the Most Out of the Memory and To Build Your Memoir

  Once you have set up the focus and are into the essay, there are a number of strategic “tricks,” or formulas, you can use to keep your essay immediate and urgent.

A.  Every place that you mention gets a sentence or two of description. Before any character in your essay can do anything, he or she has to be somewhere in which to do it.  Obviously, some places get more attention than others. Use physical details, concrete imagery, and figurative language. Avoid abstractions; think SDT ( Show, Don’t Tell ).  See Describing a Place for some help.

B.  Every character you mention needs to be described, some characters in more detail than others. A main character will require some specific detail.  Focus on the telling details of their physical description (size, shape, particular body parts, clothes, etcetera, anything that suggests what kind of person they are). "The clothes make the man" is a cliche that holds true in all writing. Again, think SDT.   See Describing a Person for some help.

C.  Let some characters talk. Set up a scene or two that showcases their characteristic phrasing.  A character's directly quoted words should do only one thing: create character. That's it.  Avoid long exchanges of dialogue unless you are using some local-color expressions to build a character or community.

D.  Build in flashbacks to create character, especially in an essay that is about a person, deceased or alive.

E.  One huge tip:  I ntersperse whole sentences of self-reflection or, when appropriate, social commentary .  Feel free to digress after an anecdote or in various places in your memoir to comment on your foibles, your family's quirks, your society, whatever. These moments create your voice, a voice that should be discriminating, incisive, wry, ironic, humorous, and plausible.

F.  Don’t fear being “personal” and somewhat confessional, showing the flaws in your own past self that, as the essay proceeds, usually leads to some realization that justifies your writing about this event, tragic or comic as it may be.  You, the writer, should be invoked by nearly every line. (In fiction, typically the writer is absent, and the story is all that matters.  In non-fiction, the writer is always present.)

G.  Humor is a key element to all essays, even darker ones.

H.  Remember always that you are the wise man in the essay, someone who is imparting some wisdom of existence to your audience. This wisdom could reveal itself in a memoir that playfully makes fun of your own naivete or in a serious piece about suicide.

IV.  About Style and Grammar

A.  Observe the rules of sentence structure unless you find a strategic place to use a rhetorical fragment.

B.   Write in conversational, not formal, English.  For example, feel free to end a sentence with a preposition:  “Going shirtless around the house was something my grandmother wouldn’t put up with.”   Or write “Like I said . . . ,” instead of the proper “As I said . . . .”

C.  Avoid such formal transitions as “however,” “thus,” “moreover,” and “therefore.”

D.  Use colloquial language wherever appropriate.

E.  Use the first person.

F.  Write in whatever tense is appropriate.

G.  Use contractions.  

H.  Use many paragraphs, even one-line paragraphs, for effect and delivery.

• << Previous: Introduction
• Next: Annotated Memoirs >>
• Last Updated: Jan 18, 2024 11:10 AM
• URL: https://libguides.montgomerybell.edu/memoir

How to Write a Memoir: Tips and Advice for Capturing Your Life Story

What is a memoir.

Memoirs are one of the most interesting and engaging forms of writing, and one that can bring history to life in a way that no other writing can.

A memoir is a type of autobiographical writing, where the author reflects on their life experiences, usually focusing on a specific period of time or event. Writing a memoir can be a wonderful way to preserve memories, share a story, and explore significant moments of our lives. It can also be a great way to document personal growth, explore family relationships, and reflect on our experiences.

Memoirs are different from biographies in that they are written by the individual themselves, and not by someone else. This makes memoirs more personal and intimate, as they are based on the author’s own experiences. In a memoir, the author may choose to share their thoughts, feelings, and insights about the events they are writing about.

Memoirs are often written in a narrative style, and can take on different forms such as a narrative nonfiction, essay, poem, or even a play. They can also be written in a variety of genres, including historical, literary, contemporary, and even personal. Memoirs can be written as short stories or as full-length books.

When writing a memoir, it is important to keep in mind that your story is unique to you, and it should be told in your own voice. You should also consider how you want to structure your memoir, and choose the form and genre that best fits your story.

When writing a memoir, it is important to focus on the details, as this will help to bring your story to life. You should also be mindful of what you choose to include and exclude from your memoir. It is important to be honest and open with your story, and to provide an accurate reflection of events.

No matter what form your memoir takes, it should be an honest and thoughtful reflection of your life. Writing a memoir can be emotionally and mentally draining, but it can also be a rewarding experience. The process of writing a memoir can help us to gain insight into our lives, and to better understand our experiences.

Writing a memoir can be a great way to preserve memories, share a story, and explore significant moments of our lives. It can also be a great way to document personal growth, explore family relationships, and reflect on our experiences. Whether you are writing a short story or a full-length book, a memoir can be a wonderful way to capture your life story and share it with others.

What’s the difference between a memoir and a biography?

Writing memoirs and biographies can be a great way to document the stories of our lives and the lives of others. However, there is a big difference between the two genres. It’s important to understand the distinction between a memoir and a biography to ensure you’re writing the right type of story.

At first glance, it can be difficult to tell the difference between a memoir and a biography. After all, both genres are about a person’s life story. However, there are important distinctions between the two.

A memoir is a personal story written by the person who experienced the events. It’s a narrative that focuses on a specific period or theme in the author’s life. It’s an opportunity to reflect and explore the emotions and thoughts associated with the experience. It’s a subjective story that often includes details of the author’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

On the other hand, a biography is an objective look at a person’s life written by someone else. It’s a factual account that focuses on the major events and accomplishments of the subject’s life. It’s usually written in third person and often includes interviews and research. The goal of a biography is to provide an accurate and comprehensive portrayal of the subject’s life.

Another key difference between the two is the audience. A memoir is intended to be read by the author’s family and friends. It’s a way to share their personal story with those closest to them. Biographies, however, are written for a much broader audience. They are intended to be read by anyone interested in learning more about the subject.

Finally, the length of each story is typically different. Memoirs are usually shorter than biographies, as they are focused on a specific period or theme. Biographies, on the other hand, can be much longer, as they typically cover the entire life of the subject.

In short, a memoir and a biography are both stories about a person’s life, but they are very different types of stories. A memoir is a personal story written by the person who experienced the events, while a biography is an objective look at a person’s life written by someone else. A memoir is intended to be read by the author’s family and friends, while biographies are written for a much broader audience. Finally, a memoir is usually shorter than a biography, as it typically focuses on a specific period or theme.

Understanding the difference between a memoir and a biography is essential for anyone looking to write a life story. It’s important to know which type of story you’re writing to ensure you’re telling the right type of story.

Why is it important to preserve stories in the first place?

Preserving memories and stories is an incredibly important component of family life. When we can look back and remember the stories of our loved ones, we are able to feel connected to them in a deeper way and understand how their experiences shaped our lives, our families, and our relationships. Memories and stories help us to recognize the impact of our loved ones in our lives and to keep them alive in our hearts.

The memories and stories we share are what make us unique. They are the keys to unlocking our family’s history and giving us a better understanding of our ancestors, our past, and our present. Our memories and stories can be used to teach future generations about our values and traditions, and to bridge the gap between the past and the present. Preserving these memories and stories is a way to honor our family’s legacy and keep it alive.

Preserving memories and stories can also be a way to build stronger relationships. When we share our memories and stories with our loved ones, we are able to connect with them in a more meaningful way. We are able to create a shared understanding of our family’s history and deepen the bond we have with each other. As we share our stories and memories, we are able to learn more about our loved ones and really get to know them in a more personal way.

Finally, preserving memories and stories can be a way to cope with loss. When a loved one passes away, it can be difficult to accept their absence. Sharing the memories and stories of our loved one can be a way to cope with the grief we feel and to remember them in a positive way. By looking back at the memories and stories we shared, we can remember the joy they brought to our lives and use that as a source of comfort.

Preserving memories and stories is an incredibly important part of family life. It allows us to connect with our loved ones in a deeper way, to learn more about our family’s history and traditions, and to cope with the pain of loss. When we are able to look back at the memories and stories we shared, we are able to honor our family’s legacy and keep our loved ones alive in our hearts.

Now that you know why it’s important to write a memoir, it’s time to learn how to write a good memoir.

Why Should You Write a Memoir?

Writing a memoir book is an incredibly rewarding experience. It allows you to document your life story, your struggles, and your successes in a way that no other form of writing can. A memoir is also a great way to share your story with others and to provide insight and perspective into your life.

The process of writing a memoir can be a therapeutic one. It gives you the opportunity to reflect on your life and to examine your experiences. Writing a memoir can help you to sort through your emotions, to understand yourself better, and to gain a better understanding of your life and how it has shaped you.

Writing a memoir can also be a way to connect with other people. As you share your story, you may find that other people can relate to your experiences. This can be incredibly comforting, as it can make you feel less alone. It can also be inspiring, as you may find that others have gone through similar experiences and have come out the other side.

Writing a memoir can also give you a sense of closure. By putting your story down on paper, you can process your emotions and gain a better understanding of yourself and your life. Writing a memoir can be an incredibly cathartic experience, as you can look back on the events that shaped you and the lessons you have learned.

Writing a memoir can also be a way to honor your life and the people who have shaped it. By writing your story, you can pay tribute to the people who have helped you and the experiences that have made you who you are. You can also use your memoir to inspire others and to share your experiences and wisdom.

Finally, writing a memoir can be an incredibly creative experience. You can use your writing to explore different topics and to express yourself in unique and meaningful ways. Writing a memoir can be a way to express yourself fully and to express your feelings and thoughts in a creative and powerful way.

As you can see, writing a memoir can be an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling experience. It can help you to process your emotions, to connect with others, to gain closure, to honor your life, and to express yourself creatively. Writing a memoir can be a way to tell your story and to share your experiences and wisdom with others.

How to Write A Memoir

Learning how to write a personal memoir can be a daunting task, but with the right advice and tips, it can be an enjoyable process. In this section, we’ll explore tips for writing memoirs, how to write a successful memoir, from selecting the most important events in your life to publishing your book and promoting it to your readers. We’ll take you through all the steps required to learn how to write a book about yourself.

Identifying Your Story: How to Select the Most Memorable Events in Your Life

Before you get started learning how to write your memoir, you must first identify what your story is about. It’s important to contemplate exactly what to write in a memoir. Consider the most significant moments in your life – the highs and lows, the people and places, and the thoughts and feelings that have shaped your personal narrative. Think about the moments that had an impact on you and the ones that you want to share with your readers. When you have a clear idea of what your story is about, you can start to shape it into a compelling narrative.

Getting Started: Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block and Learning How to Write A Personal Memoir

Once you have identified the key events in your life that you want to write about, it’s time to get started. But sometimes, the task of writing can seem overwhelming, and you may find yourself stuck in writer’s block. To get past this, try breaking down your memoir into smaller sections, such as individual chapters, and tackling them one at a time. You can also try free writing, where you write a stream-of-consciousness about your topic for a set period of time. Other tips for overcoming writer’s block include taking a break, doing something creative, reading a book, or talking to a friend. Follow these steps and you’ll be confident in how to write a book about yourself.

Crafting Your Narrative: Tips for Creating a Compelling Story – How to Write A Memoir Essay

Once you have started writing, you need to create a narrative that will engage your readers and keep them interested in your story. To do this, make sure you include vivid descriptions of the places and people in your life, as well as your thoughts and feelings. Aim for an honest and authentic tone that will draw readers in and make them feel connected to your story.

Editing and Revising Your Memoir: How to Make Sure Your Story is Authentic and Engaging

No matter how good your first draft is, when you’re learning how to write a memoir it’s important to edit and revise your memoir before you publish it. Editing will help you refine your story and make sure it is as compelling and engaging as possible. As you go through the editing process, make sure you check the facts, remove any unnecessary details, and rework any awkward passages. You should also read it aloud to make sure it flows naturally and read it from a reader’s perspective to make sure it is as enjoyable as possible.

Publishing Your Memoir: How to Self-Publish and Find a Traditional Publisher

Once you have edited and revised your memoir, it’s time to publish it. You can choose to self-publish or find a traditional publisher. To self-publish, you will need to format your book, design a cover, and upload it to a platform such as Amazon. If you choose to find a publisher, you will need to write a query letter and submit your book for consideration. When searching for a publisher, make sure to research the publisher’s guidelines to make sure your book is a good fit.

Marketing Your Memoir: Tips for Promoting Your Book

Once your personal memoir is published, you need to promote it to your readers. To do this, you should create a website and social media accounts, reach out to book bloggers and influencers, and make sure your book is available in online bookstores. You should also send out press releases and book reviews, attend book festivals and readings, and start a blog or podcast to promote your book.

Writing Exercises to Help You Develop Your Memoir: Practice Writing Techniques to Flesh Out Your Story

Writing exercises can be a great way to help you develop your memoir. These exercises can range from free writing and stream-of-consciousness writing to character sketches and outlining important events. Practicing these exercises will help you to flesh out your story and make it more compelling and engaging.

Writing About Difficult Times: Tips for Writing About Painful Experiences in Your Memoir

Writing about difficult times in your life can be both daunting and cathartic when you’re learning how to write a memoir. When writing about these experiences, it’s important to keep your focus on the story and how it has shaped your life. Don’t worry about the details being perfect, but aim for an honest and authentic representation of your experience. It’s also important to remember to take breaks and to seek emotional support if you need it.

Writing for an Audience: Tips for Writing a Memoir That Your Readers Will Enjoy

When you’re learning how to write a memoir, it’s important to keep your readers in mind. You want to make sure that your story is both engaging and enjoyable for your readers. To do this, you should use vivid descriptions, include interesting characters and dialogue, and use an honest and authentic tone. You should also make sure that your story has a clear beginning, middle, and end, and that you use the right balance of fact and fiction to make it believable.

Conclusion:

By following these tips, you can create a successful memoir that your readers will enjoy. Writing a memoir can be a rewarding process, so make sure you have fun with it and take the time to craft a story that you are proud of.

The task can still be daunting despite having a guide on how to write a book about your life. You’ll need to commit the time and energy to see it through. Unfortunately, it may take even longer if you’re not a natural storyteller.

But you don’t have to be. The writers at StorySavor can tell your story for you.

If you’re interested in preserving your life story, consider working with a professional biography writer. We’ll ensure your story is impactful and truly reflects who you are.

Schedule a call today to learn more about our services and how we can help you share your story with the world.

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• A Letter From Paris

How to write a memoir essay

If you’ve been reading my emails and posts for awhile you’ll know my favourite strategy for getting a book deal. Why is it my favourite strategy? Because it’s empowering! Let’s face it, publishing can be slow, elitist, confusing, and secretive!

My favourite strategy for getting a book published is not…

• Spending five years on your manuscript,
• Spending two years on your book proposal….
• Paying for endless critiques or constantly workshopping either of the two….

My favourite strategy is to leverage a published non-fiction piece – say, a blog post, an essay or an article – and turn it into a book deal.

This is how I found an agent and publisher for A Letter From Paris , it’s how dozens of authors I know have secured incredible book deals. You also earn money (if you pitch to a paying publication), improve your writing skills, build your platform and make impressive connections, learn a lot, and more.

Publishing a non-fiction piece either in a top publication or even a lesser-known outlet is also a great way to boost your writing profile (AKA that dreaded thing called ‘platform’ for the introverts among us!), gauge interest in your memoir topic or particular threads of the story, improve your google-ability (yes this IS a thing – be assured any agent or editor will google you before they do anything else!), add fantastic clips and extra material to your book proposal , finesse your story and improve your writing skills.

So how do you write a memoir essay?

In this post I’m going to give you the key points you need to remember to write a memoir essay – this is super important if you’re hoping that it will lead to a book deal for your memoir.

1: Clarify your Hook

The most important thing you need to get right for your memoir essay is also the most important thing you need in a book-length memoir: a strong hook.

Put simply, a hook is something unique, unusual, contrasting, strange or compelling about your specific personal story. I’ve talked about the hook in many of my blogs and webinars, but really, your hook is that part of your story that your friends say “WTF?” when you explain that the same day you lost your dog and your husband, you won the lottery.

It’s that part of your story that beggars belief but also elicits intrigue from your audience. It raises questions and interest.

Of course, you may not have lost your dog and your husband but also won the lottery on the same day, but the most human experiences can be given a strong hook. Find a common experience – right now, it’s the global pandemic. Throw in something unique to contend with or to assert: For example – you were on your second date when the lockdown was announced, and suddenly you had to decide whether to move in together or risk breaking the law or breaking up.

See what I mean? Practise finding your story hook by talking about your story with friends. What do they find most compelling? What is the question at the heart of your hook? You will spend the rest of the essay or article or series of blog posts exploring this.

Tip : Don’t just say “the essay is about my mother.” Or – “the essay is about my hunt for a house”. There has to be some kind of contrast. Even in a lyrical, prosaic essay, you need to explore the internal grapplings with something  – well, gripping.

Bonus tip: Start observing yourself when you watch a movie – how is the beginning of the story presented? How quickly do you learn the hook? Usually, it’s right, front and centre. For example: The Bourne Identity – Jason Bourne wakes on a boat in the mediterranean with amnesia, bullets in his body….  We have all these questions with a strong hook, we want to continue with the story…

2: Include both an inner and outer journey

Christopher Vogler in one of my favourite writing books, The Writer’s Journey   says:

“Good stories show two journeys, outer and inner…”

When I read a compelling memoir essay or article, I’m struck by how the narrator weaves the inner journey with what’s going on in their physical or outer world, and how the two reflect and build upon eachother. Have you read this essay by Lauren Hough ? What’s so human, and so compelling (and by the way, it led to a book deal for her forthcoming memoir from Vintage!), are the contrasts between her physical and working environment (being a “cable guy”) and the internal life she leads: left-leaning, queer, empathetic… These contrasts keep you reading (as well as the vivid examples she gives!). The characters she meets in her job (external) show who she is and what she believes (internal). Do you see what I mean?

Coming back to the hook element – it’s not enough to ‘explain’ something that happened to you – eg. I did this, I went here, I felt like this…. Plenty of these pieces get published. They’re clickbait, they’re quickly-forgotten, and you don’t want them on your clip list. Instead you need to deep-dive into how the external influenced the internal – to show those two journeys, inner and outer… To explore your own empathy, if you will.

Tip: Use the outer to provoke the inner. What do I mean? If you’re writing a story about meeting your real father for the first time at age 19 in a dive bar in New Orleans, relate the external reality of being in New Orleans with why and how you came to be meeting your father there…

3: Only include what’s relevant

I’ll come back to this, but a key pointer to an early versus a later draft is including relevant material. Essays need to be clean and concise – you don’t have an entire chapter to introduce a character, you have a few sentences or a paragraph. Even in longform essays, the story needs to be relatively tight. So, if your essay is about meeting your father in New Orleans (as the above example suggests), only include anecdotes, references, observations and material that relates to said meeting or how you dealt with said meeting.

Tip: Often (always?) you need to write out a whole heap of irrelevant material before you can get rid of it. You need to ‘write’ your way into the story. That’s fine! But make sure you leave it for a couple of days so you can assess what needs to go, when you come back to edit it.

4: End on a summary and/or show a clear transformation

The most important part in a memoir essay is that you show some sort of transformation in your character or point-of-view or change from beginning to end of the story. While you might be exploring a topic, question or theme in your story, you need to show that you, as a character, have changed or at the very least learnt and reflected from your journey. If it’s a non-fiction article, the ending will generally be a summary of what you’ve learnt, but with memoir it can be a little more subtle. You could end with a surprise realisation or moment of movement, to leave the reader on a high note.

Extra tips:

• Never ever send your first draft to an editor – leave your memoir essay or article for a few days and come back to it.
• Get some feedback . Truly – if one piece could mean you start fielding offers from agents and editors, wouldn’t you want to make it the best it can be?
• Edit for repetition and relevance: It always amazes me how much I repeat certain words in my writing. You only see this when you’ve left it a few days, and if you use that wonderful ‘search and replace’ tool in Word.  So look for repetition of certain words and delete or change them, if need be. Be ruthless.
• Relevance – As I touched on, above, if you’re aiming for a word count of 1200, for example (very standard for essays in publications such as the New York Times Ties section), and trying to lop 400 words off, what is LEAST relevant chunk to the main question or theme of your article? Remember: You can include the whole story in your book. This is a strategic published piece to elicit interest and engage in the most compelling elements of your story.
• Don’t take a huge ‘run up’ – Just as a huge issue many editors see in memoir manuscripts submitted to publishing houses is that they take too long to get to the point of the story – so you should jump right into the inciting incident, or compelling event, in the beginning of your essay. Don’t write three paragraphs of beautiful poetry about what you did the day before the big event. You don’t have a lot of words to waste in an essay or article.
• Study other essays – this should really be my number one piece of advice. Whatever outlet you choose to pitch to, study what has been published there and what has gone well.
• Read it out loud. This is a great tip one of my first newspaper editors gave me (particularly when you have a low word count). Reading out loud helps you see what needs to go, and what doesn’t work, very quickly.

Hi The detailed blogs are extremely helpful for memoir writing. Thank you so much for sharing your insight and the effort. much appreciated. ive been trying to download things and its unsuccessful.

Hi Annie – you’re welcome. I can see you signed up for the checklists but you need to confirm your email – check your spam as it might have ended up there?

Thank you so much for the response. You’re right! All your mails went into spam . Sorted and looking forward to accessing the masterclass. Thank you for the blogs. Informative and precise. Wishes from Scotland Annie

Argh – I find that a lot with gmail emails, their filters are annoying. Enjoy the masterclass!

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Writing a Memoir: How to Craft a Compelling Story

• September 6, 2023

Table of Contents:

What is memoir, a step-by-step guide on how to write a memoir, think of ideas for a memoir:, put the reader in your place, draft titles:, make it emotive:, memoir theme:, show your progress:.

• Revise Until You're Satisfied:

Key Characteristics and Profound Details

Conclusion:.

Writing a biography is all about learning how to tell an engaging story based on real events but in a way that grabs the reader’s attention.

You might have some great stories to tell, but with a good memoir outline and tone, you might get the memoir or writer’s life experiences outline that keeps your reader’s attention from the beginning to the end.

Have you ever tried to tell a really interesting family story, but it didn’t come out right?

It’s different than giving an interview to tell a story. Your family life, life experiences, and adventures require a good, engaging story format to get the reader’s attention for the emotional truth you’re trying to tell, but in a way that lets them understand where your strong story is coming from.

An autobiography is not the same as a memoir. In other words, it’s part of your life’s story. A memoir is a story from your life or about a part of your life.

The length and memoir outline will depend on what it’s about, but most of the time, people who want to write one have too much to say and need to cut it down. One way to do this is to make sure your themes are clear. Memoir is usually kept in check when the author knows what her main ideas are and writes each scene while keeping in mind two questions:

• What does this scene have to do with my main point?
• How do I want this scene to fit into the rest of my story?
• Memoir is about making sense of your story so that others can connect to it.

Memoir is not “what happened,” because unless you are famous, what happened to you in your life is not what will draw people to the page. The topic (like escaping a traumatic event, trying to live by the rules of self-help books, or being in jail) or the theme (like addiction, parent-child relationships, repeated family patterns, or finding your own identity) draws readers in.

Most memoirs are slow to read because the author needs to try to find value in their story. A person who reads it might wonder, “What’s the point?” If there’s nothing for the reader to learn from the story, the memoir needs two key parts that make it a memoir: thought and lesson.

If you share your life story with others, make it one they will remember. Many samples of memoir outline and advice for writing your own are included on this page.

How to start a biography? Start-up is always the hardest part of anything. Check out the “I Remember” writing exercise, similar to exercises found in “Writing Prompts” .  if you haven’t decided what to write about yet. This prompt is a great way to create a list of memories. Joe inspired it

Brainard’s book I Remember. From there, pick your most intense memory and start writing your story. It’s that easy! If you want more ideas, our Facebook group is a great place to look.

Writers with a lot of power show, not tell. And if you’re writing a biography, this is important to your success because you have to let the reader see things from your point of view so she can come to her conclusions.

The best way to do this is to let your reader see the story unfold before their eyes by using descriptive language that helps them picture each scene. Mary Karr has written three diaries and a book called “The Art of Memoir.” In “The Art of Memoir,” she says you must “zip the reader into your skin.” You could also think of it as if you were carrying an old-fashioned camera on your shoulder as you took your reader through the scenes of your life. You want your reader to feel like they are with you or, even better, inside your experiences.

Your autobiography is not a book or a guide. It’s a fun book, and people expect it to be exciting. Titles should be interesting and catchy but also make sense of the story.

Most writers make a rough draft of titles at the beginning, a process detailed in “E-Book Writing and Publishing Services” .

Once they finish writing, Book Writing Services check to ensure their titles are in the best shape possible. You can start by writing rough drafts of your titles.

Don’t try to blow the minds of your readers. Take off their pants, shirt, shoes, and even their underwear. Make your readers gasp in amazement, laugh wildly, cry tears of sadness or pity, or do all three.

Take them on an emotional journey that makes them want to read the next chapter. The best way to make your readers feel these emotions is to link your feelings. So as the main character, key thoughts and takeaways about what’s happening in your story.

If you want to write a good memoir, it needs to have an interesting theme. Think about the themes that run through the stories you want to tell.

What will your readers learn from them? Most great memoirs’ tone, style, characters, and stories show how the author feels about something.

So, the memoir outline of your book stays the same from beginning to end, and your readers can feel the vibe that made them want to read it in the first place. Now, think about the idea and look into the best ways to write about it.

Find out which frameworks, ways of telling a story, and nuances of language work best with the topic you chose to write about. Write down ideas for what kind of words to use and how to tell the story in a way that fits the theme.

By the end of your memoir, you should have show how you have grown, changed, or evolved, a crucial aspect in stories about “How to Write a Self-Help Book” .

Any events you talk about in your book will be more meaningful if you show how they affected you and how you grew and changed because of what you went through or survived. How has what you’ve been through altered the way you think about life? Change how you feel about other people or yourself. Help you in some way to get better or smarter?

It needs you to know things your character might not have known when they were the same age as you. That is why learning to mix in thoughts that don’t break the fictional dream is so important.

Revise Until You’re Satisfied:

Every good piece of writing is the result of many rounds of editing. Depending on what kind of writer you are and how you describe a “draft,” you may need three, seven, or even ten changes. There is no “magic number” of drafts you should aim for, so go with your gut.

You’ve wanted to write a biography for a long time, and resources like “Book Publishing Services” can help. and now is the time to do it. Now that you have a clear memoir outline plan, you can focus on how the reader will experience your story as you find the best ways to tell it. As you write, imagine that you are telling the story to a stranger for the first time. It is a good way to visualize how your reader will respond.

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Memoir coach and author Marion Roach

Welcome to The Memoir Project, the portal to your writing life.

How to Write A Memoir in Essays

Sorting the Stories — Memoir as Essay Collection

by Linda Styles Berkery

When I told a friend that I was taking a memoir-writing class, she replied, “Your life just isn’t that interesting.” Obviously she was thinking autobiography , not understanding memoir . I ignored her comment and continued to write about the small threads of wisdom I’ve learned.

After many edits, additions, and subtractions, I had built a wardrobe. I had a collection of fourteen personal essays—each one told through the lens of a dress. A Little Black Dress —learning compassion as illustrated by growing up in a funeral home. Memory Gown —naming mistakes as illustrated by a trip to the ER. Red Mini —seeing individuals as illustrated by teaching third grade. Ordinary dresses can bring out profound lessons.

Since all the writing pieces were in essay format, I adjusted Marion Roach Smith’s famous writing math, It’s about X as illustrated by Y to be told in a Z , and made a chart. To my Z factor, (essays) I added color and noted the dress: a turquoise paisley print, a navy maternity dress, an orange Hawaiian muumuu, a yellow sundress from 1941, a blue velvet jumper.

Each essay could stand alone, yet a book kept coming to mind. It was not enough to say I have a collection of “dress stories” of different length and various moods. I had more work to do. Although my structure would not be typical of a book length memoir (Act 1, Act 2, Act 3), even memoir as an essay collection must have an overall arc—a roof overhead, not just dress threads running through. Yes, memoir can be an essay collection, but it still needs structure and order.

I printed each story individually and laid them across my living room carpet. I knew which essay to put first and which would be last, but the other twelve? Originally I was tempted to group them. These three relate to my father’s WWII stories—put them together. Two had childhood dresses. My husband was mentioned in this group. But nothing really worked until my wonderful editor, Robyn Ringler, passed along tips she had learned from her own writing coach.

“Mix them up,” Robyn suggested. “Vary the word count. Don’t try to force the order, but pay attention to the emotions and lessons in the stories. Then, after you collect everything in the order you think might work, read the last paragraph of one story and the first paragraph of the following story and see if that works. You might need to do that process a few times.”

Robyn was right. I did arrange the essays a few times. But since these were, after all, dress stories, I got creative. If I had a photo of the dress, or a scrap of material from the dress, I stapled it to the printed page. Clearing a closet rod, I hung each essay from fourteen skirt hangers and started arranging them for a book. (Don’t try this at home.) I moved them and moved them until I could see a lovely rainbow arc for the entire collection.

When I was finally comfortable with the flow, I released my dress stories from their hangers and returned to the computer to cut and paste the individual essays into one long document. More edits. Moving paragraphs. Breaking up stories into parts. Adding just a bit more here and there. Writing an introduction and a final note to the reader. Two years after I wrote the first “dress story” for a memoir class, the book was published as Reflections: A Wardrobe of Life Lessons. Memoir, like a classic great dress, never goes out of style.

From the Introduction:

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

—Helen Hayes

At ten, I wasn’t the moody middle child wanting to be noticed, as much as the one who always seemed to notice. I was the sorter of stories, the keeper of traditions. Reaching up, or out, or down, I saw invisible threads that joined people together. I still do. Now, at seventy, I’m connecting more strands. And dresses are coaching my memory.

Three hard white suitcases live under my bed. I yank out the middle one and plop it on the blue star quilt. I’m not loading it up for a trip; it’s already full. I know what’s inside: dresses, scraps of fabric from dresses, and old photos. Clicking on the double locks feels like opening a black box of flight recordings. Messages vibrate from crinkles and creases, stains and frills. Memories rise from cotton, velvet, and silk—fibers from my journey through life.

Wisdom remains on the fold of one dress. I smooth a wrinkle and kindness appears. When I trace my pinky over white lace, I remember letting go. Hope is in there too, along with judgment, loss, compassion, forgiveness…a wardrobe of memories just waiting to be unpacked. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” I agree. But sometimes a life lesson can also be worn as a dress.

  Excerpt from a middle essay:  Navy Maternity

My first maternity outfit was a long-sleeved navy blue dress from Sears that I bought for my father’s wake and funeral. I wore it again on Father’s Day and then buried it under the lilac bush in my childhood backyard, watering the ground with my tears. The words from a homily echoed in my head. Ritualize where you are now . That’s what I was doing—dressing a wound by burying a dress…

The moment I stepped out of that dress, I felt different. Lighter. Aware. I was carrying a new life—had been all along—but now I could finally breathe. I glanced in the mirror and saw myself as a mother-to-be. I shoved the dress in the bag and tossed it in the car. The dress was easy to remove, but not the grief. Shifting my focus to new life, I decided to take one small step.

The following week, on my final day of teaching elementary school, I drove to my childhood home only two blocks away. I pulled the navy maternity dress from the white plastic bag. My mother was at work. But I didn’t need her. I knew where my father’s garden tools were kept. I grabbed a shovel and began digging in the dirt near the lilac bush—Dad’s favorite bush. It didn’t take long to scoop a hole big enough to bury a death dress…

Excerpt from the final essay: Dressing for a Reunion

At the Hyatt Regency Hotel near Dulles Airport, I’m wearing the same tri-colored dress that I wore for my 50 th  high school reunion in 2016—it’s mostly blue, with bands of black and white. I call it my past-present-future dress. The dress is making an encore appearance in 2017 at a different reunion tonight.  Can it really be called a reunion if we’ve never met?  My husband tells me to hurry. We exit the elevator and enter a full dining room. The celebration begins.

Arms reach across the table to shake my hand. A shoulder nudges close. I feel a tap on my back. Legs move toward me. Fingers clasp. Another arm extends around my waist. Then hugs, so many embraces and tears. I am aware of my middle-ness. I am a quiet middle child, in the middle of a loud story. I am in the middle of history, in the middle of generations, in the middle of Danish fishermen and American flyers. I’m standing in the middle of memory and expectation because I did what middle children do best—I made connections…

Author’s bio: Linda Styles Berkery holds an M.A. from Russell Sage College. Linda taught third grade, led retreats and worked in parish ministry. Her writings on faith/life have been published in various magazines, blogs and books. Her new book is Reflections: A Wardrobe of Life Lessons. 

HOW TO WIN A COPY OF THE BOOK I hope you enjoy Writing Lessons. Featuring well-published writers of our favorite genre, each installment takes on one short topic addressing how to write memoir. It’s my way of saying thanks for coming by. Love the author featured above? Did you learn something in the how-to? Then you’ve got to read the book. And you can. I am giving away one copy, and all you have to do to win is leave a comment below about something you learned from the writing lesson or the excerpt. I’ll draw winners at random (using the tool at random dot org) after entries close at midnight on May 15, 2019. Good luck!

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Related posts:

• Writing Lessons: Picking Small Topics To Write About
• Writing Lessons: Finding Time to Write
• Writing Lessons: How to Write About A Difficult Subject, by Bette Lynch Husted

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Reader interactions.

Amy Laundrie says

April 14, 2019 at 7:37 am

I found this extremely helpful. I’m a columnist for “The Wisconsin Dells Events” and am searching for a way to connect my “Slice of Life” columns into a second memoir. My first, “Laugh, Cry, Reflect: Stories From a Joyful Heart” includes pieces on nature, my pet ducklings, antidotes about my teaching career, and family stories. I appreciate the tips on how memoirists should make sure the last paragraph of one piece ties in with the first paragraph of the next and I think using dresses as a uniting metaphor was brilliant. I’m eager to read your book.

April 14, 2019 at 10:50 am

Dear Amy, I appreciate your kind words. I had a lot of fun using dresses as a thread through the essays. I would love to read your own slices of life columns. Marion has helped all of us go small. Linda

Susan Davies says

April 14, 2019 at 8:05 am

I love this concept! I have been so stuck in my writing, feeling overwhelmed. I had contemplated this approach but was so unsure….this lesson just gave me that push! Wish me luck! Thank you for your lessons! I enjoy them so much!

April 14, 2019 at 10:54 am

Susan, This is great news. I found all the writing lessons to be so helpful in my own work and I am honored that sharing my experience can help nudge you today. It is so good to give back. My editor, Robyn Ringler shared these tips from her own writing teacher so we are helping each other to gain movement. Linda

Laura McKowen says

April 14, 2019 at 8:09 am

Your content is so very helpful, Marion. About nine months ago, I read your book, and then I was on one of your calls. What I learned helped me focus, organize, and finish my manuscript for my first book, a memoir about sobriety. I sent it to my publisher last week. :) Thank you!

April 14, 2019 at 10:57 am

Marion’s content has always been so helpful to me too. Congratulations on completing your story.

David Sofi says

April 14, 2019 at 8:10 am

Excellent lesson and piece by Ms. Berkery. Especially resonating was the bit about Robyn’s advice from her writing coach. I will have that posted on my Writing Wall. I also tingled with her modification of The Algorithm (That is my personal emphasis of Marion’s lesson, it is so insightful and meaningful.)

Linda Berkery says

April 14, 2019 at 8:31 am

Marion’s writing math made each essay possible and I held it in mind throughout the entire book. Robyn RIngler’s advice pulled the entire collection together. Thank you for your comments.

Careen says

April 14, 2019 at 8:14 am

I want this book! Not only for its content, but because it illustrates the principles Marion puts forth.

April 14, 2019 at 11:34 am

Careen, I hope you continue to find help from the writing lessons and the wisdom from Marion. I surely did. Linda

Ginger Hudock says

April 14, 2019 at 8:16 am

This was wonderful post! The book would be something I could relate to because my age (61) and the metaphor of dresses. This is a great and doable way to structure a book as a series of essays. It seems much more doable for me. I am comfortable writing blog posts and magazine articles, but the thought of a long book is overwhelming sometimes.

April 14, 2019 at 11:01 am

Ginger, I am with you on the thoughts of a long book. It seemed too much for me. I was so happy to find that a series of essays was a reachable goal and Marion gave good feedback when I shared that I was attempting to do just that – she reminded me that I still needed an overall arc in order to print them together as a book. I hope you continue.

April 14, 2019 at 8:30 am

Breaking up the writing into smaller, more manageable pieces seems to tame the bigger writing project, sticking to the algorithm in each section. I loved seeing the process of finding the structure of the book, which is my biggest challenge.

April 14, 2019 at 11:40 am

Dear Beth, Smaller pieces worked so well for this collection. And yes, with each essay I made sure to follow the writing math. I kept asking myself what is this about ? Although told through the lens of a dress, it wasn’t about the dress… it was about a universal theme. Thank you for your thoughts. Linda

April 14, 2019 at 8:35 am

I can’t tell you how often I used Marion’s book and notes from her course as I was completing this book. Such good advice.

Elizabeth says

April 14, 2019 at 8:38 am

I flipped through my closet in my mind – many ideas there for essays, including the ban on trousers for women in my high school in the sixties, and the godawful bloomers for gym class. Thank you!

April 14, 2019 at 11:09 am

Oh Elizabeth, Our minds must run similar. There is a story about those gym “dresses” from my first P E class at Russell Sage College. And oh yes, a mini dress from my teaching days, when women were not allowed to wear pants, but COULD wear a mini dress three inches above the knees. Keep flipping through your closet in your mind. Clothing is so rich to draw out the memoir essays. Thank you for your post. Linda

Ruth Crates says

April 14, 2019 at 8:59 am

I continue to look for a way to write my memoirs. Essays might be a good fit for me. I love how Linda used an unlikely subject…. dresses – to relate her life experiences. If I don’t win the book, I will buy it…I loved the exerpt about burying her grief. We can all relate to that.

April 14, 2019 at 4:30 pm

Dear Ruth, I do hope that you will continue to write memoir. I found that essays were a perfect length. Mine ranged from about 800 to 1200 words in the book. Some had several parts but each one could be read alone which helped me continue. I am happy whenever someone considers the book, the proceeds are going to assist a local thrift store, called ReStyle, from Unity House in Troy. When we have some book signings we are also inviting readers to donate a gently used dress. So my unlikely thread of dresses is really being put to good use. Linda

April 14, 2019 at 4:34 pm

Isn’t it amazing how an idea can take off in so many directions! A wonderful way to help others.

April 14, 2019 at 4:40 pm

If you are in the Albany-Troy area look for several benefit book signings on the Facebook page: Reflections: A Wardrobe of Life Lessons

Cynthia C says

April 14, 2019 at 9:04 am

Incredibly helpful hearing about the writing process! I love reading how these authors make decisions about how the final product will look.

April 14, 2019 at 4:36 pm

Cynthia, I always loved reading the writing lessons from Marion’s posts. I was fascinated with the whole process of structure. Linda

Cassandra Hamilton says

April 14, 2019 at 9:41 am

Great post. I appreciate Linda Styles Berkery sharing her process. By breaking her subject into essays she was able to work ideas in smaller sections. I like how when she focused on the larger piece, the book, she turned to a visceral and visual method: hanging up her essays, each represented by a dress, to sort and rearrange until she felt they were right. I would think the photos of the dresses also evoked in her thoughts and feelings and helped her to pack her writing with vivid descriptions. I’m inspired with her process and how she cleverly teased us with snippets of her new work. Thank you!

April 14, 2019 at 4:44 pm

Dear Cassandra, Thanks for your comments. You are right about the visual part. It really helped me to organize the flow of the essays and the overall arc of the book. (And at one point when I realized that I didn’t have a green dress – it brought up a life lesson from an old memoir of a green gym dress!) Linda

Cheryl Hilderbrand says

April 14, 2019 at 10:08 am

Since the excerpts offered here resonated so strongly, I can’t wait to read the rest of the book. Is it just women our age who grew up with dresses who are so emotionally connected to fabric, and tucks, and gathers? A quilt made from childhood dresses keeps me warm, but I worry that I should put it away so that it’s scrapbook, memory-spurring nature can be preserved. The advice from Ms. Berkery’s editor was something I needed to hear . Thank you Marion, Linda, and Robyn.

April 14, 2019 at 4:49 pm

Dear Cheryl, I do think that dresses meant a lot more to us than they do to the next generation. My own adult daughters rarely wear dresses, but they still have emotional and memories attached to clothing. My husband saved his race t-shirts and had them made into a quilt! He no longer runs, only walks due to an injury, but that quilt hangs over his couch reminding him of all those races. Robyn Ringler’s insights (my editor for the book) were so valuable in getting this collection to print. I am glad to pass her advice along. Linda

Jen Chambers says

April 14, 2019 at 10:17 am

I find this very helpful- it solidifies a concept that I’ve been working on for some time of using essays as memoir in my own work. Using a literal thread to hold the narrative together made a great metaphor here. I am intrigued by the structural ideas and hope to get the book!

April 14, 2019 at 5:18 pm

Dear Jen, Thank you for your comments. I hope you continue to use essays as memoir. It really helped me to keep going.. I could focus on one essay at a time. Indeed I kept them in separate folders on my computer until I recognized how to make “dress stories” into a literary closet collection. Best regards,’ Linda

Debbie Morris says

April 14, 2019 at 10:28 am

I’ve had an idea brewing for years now, and this style has opened up a completely new way to join them yet keep them separate. I thoroughly enjoy the teachings here as well as that wonderfully inspiring sampling of essays. I feel energized, thank you!

April 14, 2019 at 6:03 pm

Dear Debbie, Thanks for the comments. I hope this idea keeps brewing and maybe finds a similar outlet. Linda

Barbara Womack says

April 14, 2019 at 10:38 am

I love this concept and have been inspired to use a similar approach in my own (somewhat stalled) writing.

I can’t wait to read this book!

April 14, 2019 at 6:06 pm

Dear Barbara, I am glad to hear about your writing. I wish you well on the journey and am happy that you found this approach to be helpful. Linda

Ann Hutton says

April 14, 2019 at 10:44 am

Excellent! I’m sharing this with a memoir writing group I facilitate. Meanwhile, I call out a “Yes!” to visually laying out your pages to really SEE what you’ve got and how it might fit together. Once I taped 260 pages to three walls in an empty office in order to look at the structure of a memoir manuscript. That’s when I realized that I did indeed have a beginning, middle, and ending! And looking for repetitions or other glaring mistakes was easier this way, rather than trying to read through pages on a computer screen.

Many thanks!

LInda Berkery says

April 14, 2019 at 6:11 pm

Dear Ann, Wow that must have been some wall sight! Yes, I think we sometimes need a visual way to keep us moving forward. Glad that worked for you and thank you for the comments. Best to your writing group. If you send me a personal message on Facebook page for the book. I will send you my “chart” with all the essays. My editor used that page for a talk she was giving on memoir writing. Linda

Merrie Skaggs says

April 14, 2019 at 10:49 am

Linda’s wardrobe structure is brilliant. I learned that I might be able to include an essay I wrote about my dad in my memoir. Also, Linda’s words spoke to me on several levels, or with various threads as she might say. I am still in the unraveling stage of my memoir writing and relish the connections since I am a Marion disciple, have seen my 70th birthday, and taught third grade. I learned much from your charming writing and the lessons you shared. Thank you, Linda, and thank you to our guru Marion. I’m not going to wait to win your book; I plan to buy it, read it, and learn from it now. “. . .bury a death dress. . .” My heart strings are still vibrating.

Linda Styles Berkery says

April 14, 2019 at 11:13 am

Dear Merrie, I am so happy to meet another over 70 writer of memoir. My father’s journey through his WWII experience rescued in the North Sea by Danish fishermen and as a POW is another thread through the collection. The proceeds from this book are also being used to help ReStyle, the thrift store run by Unity House in Troy, NY – my hometown. So buying the book supports a great cause. Thank you. Linda

Carol Gyzander says

April 14, 2019 at 11:00 am

I love the connecting device of the dresses! The first essay excerpt was interesting, but then I found myself curious about how it would be used in the next…and the next…

April 14, 2019 at 4:53 pm

Carol, I am so glad that you found yourself curious about the dresses used and the lessons they told. Sometimes I found myself pondering how a certain dress or saved piece of fabric could bring out so many memoires. What was going on? – You start writing and then you find more and more life experiences coloring the page. Linda

Jan Duffy says

April 14, 2019 at 11:15 am

Thank you Marion for another excellent post. The idea of basing a series of personal essays on a collection of dresses is so good. As I was reading the excerpts I felt as though I was Linda’s alter ego, experiencing every emotion that she did. Good work, I hope I can be as successful in my writing endeavors.

marion says

April 14, 2019 at 2:31 pm

Dear Jan, You are most welcome. Isn’t this a lovely, helpful post? Linda did an excellent job with this and with the book. I am delighted to see you here. Please come back soon. Best, Marion

Thank you Jan and Marion for your kind remarks. Several readers have commented that they felt they were standing right with me as they read. So we touched universal topics – close to our hearts. Linda

Karen Elizabeth Lee says

April 14, 2019 at 11:42 am

Thank you for writing this piece. I have been struggling with structure for my memoir for almost a year! writing short pieces as that is how it seems to be unfolding but then questioning myself – “Is this the right or acceptable format?” “Can I do it this way?” Your insight gives me the courage to follow this path – the essay path – to see where it will lead me! thank you.

April 14, 2019 at 4:57 pm

Dear Karen, I never started out to write a book or a collection. I just began with one essay of a brown plaid dress – a short piece for a writing assignment. I casually remarked, “I could probably write a lot more essays through the lens of a dress…” and I received such encouragement to continue. See where the short pieces lead you. Perhaps you have a collection rather than a traditional memoir book. Blessings for your good work. I am happy that this piece could encourage you. Linda

Cheryl A Kesling says

April 14, 2019 at 2:19 pm

Thank you, Linda, for sharing your story. I’m a 72-year-old struggling writer working on a memoir since 2014. It seems life keeps flying in front of me to the point of building a wall too high to see over. I’ve journaled, keeping track of unimaginable tragic moments and survival. I’ve written words on paper for a critique group but never seems to hit the mark, or at least to my satisfaction. Maybe I’m too hard on myself. Your memoir essay structure is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time but I know that each essay needs a reason or a lesson learned, and that is been my problem. Knowing what lessons I’ve learned is hard to put on paper when one holds back emotions. I’m sure reading your book would be helpful. Maybe making a chart as you did from Marion’s math and color coding for different periods ( as told in a Z- the essay) and using one metaphorical object to push the essays along is the answer for me as well. Thank you again.

April 14, 2019 at 5:06 pm

Dear Cheryl, Thank you for your heartfelt comments. Some essays (lessons) needed space and time before I could write about them. We all tend to be hard on ourselves. Keep writing. and Keep journaling. I found that going back to journals and circling some key memoires allowed me to move toward an essay. But journal writing is different than writing for print and I had to allow some pieces to stay in a journal and not try to force them to be an essay. But making the chart using X, Y, and Z was the most important formula I learned from Marion.

Etty Indriati says

April 14, 2019 at 3:11 pm

I love the excerpt of Linda’s book as it reflects the “what it is about” in Marion’s online course The Memoir Project that I took; and Linda cleverly wrote her book into chapters of personal essays. It makes me want to read the whole book! It is also inspires me to not giving up writing a memoir.

April 14, 2019 at 5:09 pm

Dear Etty, Marion’s outline is a wonderful way to start. I hope you can read the whole book and please don’t give up writing memoir in whatever form it takes. I think reflecting through writing is a blessing. Thank you for the comments. Linda

iliana says

April 14, 2019 at 7:23 pm

Linda, thanks so much for sharing aspects of your writing process! Cut and paste, and I really mean printing the pages, cutting where needed and rearranging, gluing them on another blank page, was my graduate advisor’s way of writing and editing articles, reports and proposals. That’s how I wrote my thesis too, hands on, feeling it. Looking at a dress as a metaphor, so clever! Looking forward to reading your book :)

April 14, 2019 at 7:36 pm

Seems like I did something like that old fashioned cut and paste on my TYPED thesis back in the day. Thanks for your kind remarks. Linda

KRISTA L RUSKIN says

April 14, 2019 at 7:28 pm

OMG. I’ve been struggling with not having lived “an important life” and yet wanting to write a memoir for my kids. My father died when I was 31. I often wished I had received more lessons from him and had them for my kids. In recording my own, 20 years later, on the upside of my life lessons, I’m hoping they see the possibilities for their lives even in The dark days. The idea of writing bits and and pieces of varying length and letting them tell me how to structure the book is liberating. Thank you!

April 15, 2019 at 9:00 pm

Dear Krista, I am happy that you can see your life as memoir worthy as it surely is. My father died when I was 26 and yet his influence is strongly felt in this collection. I wish you all the best for your writing. Linda

Lisa Sonora says

April 15, 2019 at 8:43 am

So many take aways here!

I haven’t read all of the comments, but skimmed, so hope to offer something not shared yet.

First, that you ignored your friends comment about writing about your life.

Then… using Marion’s algorithm for each of the essays (described in the second paragraph) —brilliant!

I too, am a student of Marion, and have been so STUCK on trying to figure out the algorithm for my memoir.

Your piece gave me the idea to look closer at the individual pieces within the book and trying to name what those are really about.

I just love the image of you hanging up your essays like dressed in the wardrobe, and laughed out loud at “don’t try this at home”. Because, yeah, I would try that at home — it make sense to give the writing some physical form that relates to the subject to help see it differently.

Congrats on the publication of your book, Lynda — I cannot wait to read it!

April 15, 2019 at 9:07 pm

Dear Lisa, Thank you for such great comments. Yes, hanging up those dress stories was crazy but a fun way to really see them in place. And it was wonderfully refreshing too. We often need to trust our own instincts sometimes more than the voices of dear but sometimes bossy friends! Best to you for your own writing. Linda

Cathy Baker says

April 15, 2019 at 8:47 am

I love everything about this post as I’m working on a book with mini-memoirs on our building my future writing studio, Tiny House on the Hill. After reading this post, I might consider having fewer chapters with a higher word count. I always learn so much from you, Marion, as well as those you coach. Thank you!

April 15, 2019 at 9:09 pm

I love the idea of mini-memoirs! Great! Thanks for your comments. I have also learned so much from Marion and her writing posts. Linda

Tammy Roth says

April 15, 2019 at 11:51 am

I’m always looking for clever ideas of arranging memoir topics and this is just brilliant. Thank you for sharing the process.

April 15, 2019 at 9:14 pm

Dear Tammy, Arranging those memoir essays was made easier using Robyn’s advice along with Marion’s wisdom. I was honored to share the process with so many interesting writers. Thank you for your comments. Linda

April 16, 2019 at 8:35 pm

Oh my! This came at the most perfect time. I am trying to write a memoir and it keeps running through my mind that I should try doing it in essays. I lost my son to suicide, so it’s about grief, hope, and faith. I loved what Robyn shared with you about connecting the last paragraph of one to the beginning of the next. The excerpts are wonderful. I can’t wait to read the book. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

April 16, 2019 at 9:01 pm

Dear Faith, I am glad that Robyn ‘s idea might help you find your way through a collection of essays. She suggested the last paragraph and the first one should flow for the reader but they can still stand alone as individual essays. I wish you blessings in your writing. Linda

Naomi Johnson says

April 16, 2019 at 10:51 pm

I LOVED the wonderful advice from her editor, while she was still working out the overarching structure: “pay attention to the emotions and lessons in the stories . . .. Then . . . read the last paragraph of one story and the first paragraph of the following story and see if that works.”

Lovely, indeed!

April 17, 2019 at 7:00 pm

Thank you for your comments. Robyn Ringler and Marion offer such valuable suggestions. And I am grateful. Linda

Melanie says

April 17, 2019 at 2:49 pm

I’m in the process of structuring my next book now. I was right there, with descriptions of white suitcases containing “…fabrics from my journey through life.” I could hear the crinkle of crinoline, and I was reminded of one of my absolute favorite couplets by Joni Mitchell: “Everything comes and goes, marked by lovers and styles of clothes…” As I enjoyed all the other places the piece had taken me, I asked myself, “Do I have milestones (like these dresses) that mark the milestones of my life?” And I realized, I DO! I am a songwriter, so of COURSE, every milestone has a song! Thanks, Marion & Linda for such beautiful and inspiring work.

April 17, 2019 at 5:23 pm

You are most welcome, Melanie. Please come back soon. Best, Marion

April 17, 2019 at 7:06 pm

Thank you for your comments and the great quote! Love it. And nice for me too as my maiden name was Styles. I am glad that you found yourself asking questions about your own milestones.

Teresa Reimer says

April 20, 2019 at 9:12 pm

What a wonderful idea to hang each story and it’s inspiration on a clothes hanger. Organization and expanding on the theme! Can’t get much better than that.

April 22, 2019 at 6:15 pm

Teresa Thanks for your comments. Yes it was definitely different but fun! Linda

Donna P says

April 29, 2019 at 11:36 am

Dear Linda,

Your ideas, along with Marion’s brilliant advice, strike a real chord with me. I, too, have been struggling with the concept of essays within a memoir. Due to health issues, I have not given my book as much attention lately. I’m going to paste this article to my forehead to keep it top of mind! Truly inspirational at a time when I really needed it. Thanks to you and to Marion. I will definitely buy the book.

April 29, 2019 at 12:34 pm

Dear Donna, Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Marion’s advice really helped me stay focused on each individual essay. And I am so happy to know that sharing my experience making a collection of essays could help you move your own writing along. Best to you for your writing. Linda

Gail Gaspar says

Essays in the form of a wardrobe of dresses, yes. I am wondering if my memoir will take the form of essays unified by a theme (I adore metaphors) and you have illustrated how it can done. As a coach, I am happy you listened to your inner voice and not to the friend who remarked, “Your life just isn’t that interesting.” I appreciate how you show, don’t tell, about what each dress represents. The image of your dress stories hanging in your closet is an excellent reminder of how creative and expansive the writing process can be – when we allow it.

Laurie says

May 1, 2019 at 3:10 pm

Marion – This is my first visit to your blog and site. So much info! Thank you! I too am working on a memoir that right now is a collection of stories. This truly resonated with me as I am stuck as to how to pull them together into a book. Linda – your insights and suggestions couldn’t have been more on target. I have already printed them out and moved them about – but I think I need to write a few more – and then piece them together – reading the last para / first para – and adding bits as you suggested. I LOVED reading the excerpt of the book – what a wonderful way to tie the stories together by the dresses. As a writer – I loved that creative idea to tie it all together – and as a reader – each except you shared – I could apply to my own life and my own past closet of dresses! Well done! I would be tickled to win the book and read more!

May 1, 2019 at 5:47 pm

Dear Laurie, Thank you for your thoughtful remarks. Finding Marion’s blog and site is certainly a real gift. I was fortunate to take a class when she was teaching in Troy before everything went online. But look how many more people can be reached. I am delighted that you could relate to the dress stories and find memories arriving from your own closet. I loved making the book a collection/ wardrobe of stories. All the best to you with your own memoir. Linda

May 2, 2019 at 11:52 am

What a lovely way to seamlessly piece together a book! I’m in awe of your process and inspired by the concept! I’ve always struggled to let go of certain garments because of the memories associated with them. Now I understand why: Not only does each one offer a memory, but you’ve proven each one tells a story. I can’t wait to visit your story-closet and read more!

May 2, 2019 at 8:59 pm

Dear Susan, Thank you for your kind remarks. I hope you do visit my “story-closet” as well as peek at some life lessons from your own wardrobe. Linda

Maggie Yoest says

May 3, 2019 at 10:57 am

I am new to memoir writing and have been encouraged by Susan and Marion. Hopefully, as I stay with this, some of the fear will dissipate and the courage to share myself and my view will grow. Thank you both!

May 3, 2019 at 4:00 pm

Maggie, I hope you continue with memoir. Marion is a wonderful guide. Linda

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How to write stories about yourself (a.k.a. memoir/personal essays), by moss geren, writing specialist, march 20, 2024.

              There are so many assignments I see coming through where students get to write about their own lif e — sometimes the professors call it a memoir, a personal essay, a mosaic essay, or whatnot. Basically, you’re writing about yourself and things you’ve been through. Here are some tips about personal essays for people new to personal writing. First, choose a topic that you’re okay sharing with the class. Then, ask yourself questions, but remember that it’s okay not to remember everything. And after you’ve written your first draft, break up those paragraphs.

              It’s important to choose a topic that interests you in any kind of writing; it will make the paper easier to write, and it will make the paper more enjoyable to read. However, you should think about your own comfort level as you decide what is interesting in your own life. If you feel hesitant sharing a story with your friends, it might be better to write about it for yourself, not for a class. It’s okay to not share the juiciest story you have. Choose something that you don’t mind people discussing.

              After you’ve chosen something interesting in your life that you’re okay sharing with a class, the next step is asking yourself questions. Specifically, what are the details of the memory or memories you chose? Use imagery. How did the moment look, sound, feel, smell, or taste? If someone laughed, ask yourself how they laughed. Was the laugh deep and authentic or was it anxious and forced? If you were swimming in a lake with friends, was the water warm or cold? Was the lake clear or foggy? Were there fish? What kinds of fish? Was the ground all mucky and muddy under your feet? Did you think the mud was gross or did you think the squish was satisfying? You want the reader to feel like they’re there in the moment with you, and you can do that by capturing what details you can remember.

              But what if you can’t remember? There aren’t usually sources in this personal kind of story because it’s about your own life. This isn’t journalism. You aren’t stating the facts of the matter like it’s going to be in a newspaper. Memoirs and other personal stories involve remembering what details you can; however, it’s okay if you can’t remember someone’s name, what they were wearing, what order events happened, etc. It’s more about sharing an adventure, an emotion, and how you experienced the moment then getting everything factually accurate. It aims for the truth, but human memory is messy. Plus, it’s hard to remember everything. If you can’t remember exactly what your brother said when he dropped your ice cream cake on your seventh birthday, that’s okay. Capture the essence of what he said on the page the best you can. You are sharing a memory, your memory, not documenting an event for the news.

              Another tip I like to mention is —  personal essays aren’t five-paragraph essays like most students are used to. If there’s dialogue (A.K.A. someone speaking), you should start a new paragraph each time a new person speaks. A paragraph can even be one sentence in this kind of writing.

“Like this,” Moss said.

Think about how paragraphs look in books; they don’t generally have too many long paragraphs like how your normal essay or textbook is structured. So, if you’re finding that one of your paragraphs is a page long or even half a page long, break it up some. That will make your story more easily digestible.

            These are the most common tips I give students working on personal essays when they visit the DSC Writing Center. There is so much more I could share, but that might fill a couple of books if I tried. Come to our Writing Center if you ever need help brainstorming a memoir topic, figuring out dialogue, or doing anything communication related. I would love to hear your story. And remember! Choose a topic you don’t mind discussing publicly, ask yourself questions about sensory details, remember that you don’t have to remember everything, and break up your paragraphs like you’d see in a book.

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• Last Updated: Jul 17, 2023 8:55 AM
• URL: https://library.daytonastate.edu/WC/Blog

Navalny Wrote a Memoir Before He Died

April 11, 2024 at 9:18 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“During the years leading up to his death in a Russian prison, Aleksei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was writing a memoir about his life and work as a pro-democracy activist,” the New York Times reports.

“Titled Patriot , the memoir will be published in the United States by Knopf on Oct. 22, with a first printing of half a million copies, and a simultaneous release in multiple countries.”

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Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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