It’s Not Obvious
Perhaps it’s easier to begin with what a memoir is not.
It’s not an autobiography, for that is a complete, factual account of your life from birth to the present day.
It’s not a biography, which also focuses on presenting your entire life story.
It’s not a journal or collection of musings.
And it’s not that string of amusing stories that your friends love to hear.
A Memoir Is a Piece of Your Life
It’s a carefully selected “slice” of your life.
This slice revolves around a situation, experience, event, or interaction with others that brought forth powerful emotions or triggered profound insights. And these emotions or insights, whether positive or negative, challenged you; they forced you to grow or change in a significant way.
In short, a good memoir offers readers a look into the author’s heart and soul, in story form.
Yes, A Memoir Is a Story…
… but it’s not your entire life story.
It is, instead, a story you tell about yourself. About the way you felt and responded to a certain time, situation, problem, person, or event in your life.
A memoir is akin to a novel in that the principles of dramatic structure apply. Your tale should be compelling, include some conflict, internal or otherwise, build to a climax, and have a satisfying resolution.
But whether dramatic, humorous, nostalgic, or romantic, whether full of fireworks or fairly calm, a memoir should focus on your thoughts and feelings, challenges and changes.
The Memoir Is Always True, In a fashion
It is “remembered history,” which means that the dialogue and situations are recounted to the best of the author’s recollection and the result is subjective.
Readers accept the fact that a memoir is the “truth” as far as the memoirist is concerned, because they are most interested in the writer’s response to what has happened, even though “what has happened” is always open to interpretation.
There Are Different Types of Memoirs
All memoirs are the same in the sense that they show how the writer’s life has been influenced by something that happened to them.
There are, however, specific types of memoirs, including coming-of-age, business, confessional, celebrity, romance, travel, addiction and recovery, family, grief, Christian, LGBTQ, and many more. There are even coffee table memoirs.
(For more, see “Should Your Business Book Include Memoir?”)
There Are No Autobiographical Memoirs
This takes us back to the memoir-versus-autobiography issue.
Remember that a memoir focuses on the writer’s feelings and emotions, and their response to selected people, places, things, or events during a particular period of life.
An autobiography, on the other hand, is a factual presentation of all the important people, dates, places, and events in a person’s life. It’s a kind of a blueprint that allows you to reconstruct someone’s entire life.
While there is some overlap between memoir and autobiography, they are not the same thing.
(For more, see “The Autobiographical Novel.”)
There Are No Biographical Memoirs
No.
Like an autobiography, a biography is a presentation of a person’s life, a complete recitation of the primary people, dates, places, and events in that life. (The difference is that with an autobiography, you write about your life, while with a biography, you write about someone else’s life.)
A memoir, by comparison, generally covers a portion or slice of a person’s life, with an emphasis on the author’s thoughts and feelings during that time or episode.
There is an overlap between a biography and a memoir, and a memoir may contain a fair amount of biographical information. But they are not the same thing.
There Are, However, Memoir Essays
A memoir essay is a short piece, perhaps the length of a school paper or a magazine article, that focuses on a particular event or significant person in the author’s life.
The essay is very much like a full-fledged memoir, but shorter and more focused on a single event or person.
Key Steps To Writing a Memoir
Begin with a great theme. The theme is the central problem, situation or question that drives the story. A strong theme can turn a collection of stories into a compelling memoir with a compelling point of view. Without a theme you can easily slip into the “and then I did” approach—which is deadly.
Next, pick stories that fit your theme. You may have loads of stories, many of which are your favorites, but if they don’t fit into your theme and build your central idea, leave them out. They will only weaken your memoir.
Engage your readers emotionally. To do so, you’ll need characters that they can identify with, a strong plot, and emotional tension. Focus on feelings, rather than the facts and build the emotional tension to a climax, which you’ll resolve at the end.
Make it more about feelings than facts. Memoirs are based on feelings, thoughts, and your reactions to whatever you were going through at a specific time. So reveal your feelings as much as possible. At the same time, avoid piling on the facts about the people, places, and events involved. Obviously, some facts are necessary, but too many will bog down your memoir and water down its emotional impact.
Finally, make your characters come alive. Find the characteristics, habits, words, and actions that will breathe life into your characters and inspire identification, delight, fear, anger, or other emotional responses in your readers. Well-drawn characters will keep them interested and emotionally involved.
Remember that the top three things that readers want from a memoir are theme, emotional engagement, and entertainment.
If you can provide all three throughout the manuscript, it’s highly likely that your readers will enjoy your presentation and stay with you to the end.
(For more, see “11 Tips For Writing a Memoir That Moves Readers.”)
Memoir Writers Have Lots of Helpers
Lots of people!
A memoir ghostwriter will help you write your memoir from scratch. All you have to do is tell your story to the ghost, and he or she will take it from there.
A writing coach will critique your manuscript as you’re writing it, giving you suggestions for strengthening the storyline or premise and improving the writing overall.
A developmental editor will take the manuscript you’ve already written, cut some sections and move others around, offer ideas for parts to add, and give you feedback on your writing style.
A line editor will go through your manuscript and help you improve your language usage to better convey your ideas, emotion, and story elements to your readers.
A copy editor will carefully comb through the final draft of your manuscript, looking for spelling and grammar mistakes and other problems.
A proofreader will check your manuscript for spelling, grammar, punctuation, syntax, usage and consistency, marking errors for your correction.
Whether you use the services of all of these experts or just one, they can do much to ensure that your ideas and stories are turned into a professionally written memoir.
(For more, see “Help Writing Your Book.”)
Examples of Interesting Memoirs
Here is a list of intriguing memoirs:
- All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot
- Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
- Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
- The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
- The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
- Brain of Fire: My Month of Madness, by Susannah Cahalan
- The Liar’s Club, by Mary Karr
- Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, by Alexandra Fuller
