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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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April 7, 2019 By Anne R. Allen 16 Comments

How to Write a Memoir: 14 Tips for Writing Memoir That Sells

by Anne R. Allen

In a much-shared article titled “ Why Your Memoir Won’t Sell, ” former Writer’s Digest editor Jane Friedman listed the things that will trigger an agent or publisher to reject a memoir by a non-celebrity.

A lot of people working on memoirs have been pretty discouraged by it.

But you don’t have to be. Jane was simply saying that you need to learn what makes a compelling memoir and what doesn’t.

It is true that memoirs are problematic. They’re devilishly difficult for a new writer to do well, but they’re what newbies usually write.

The urge to put our own life story on paper is the most common reason people start writing. Adult education programs and senior centers everywhere offer courses in “writing your own life.” And there’s the old adage that says everybody has a book in them—their own life story.

That means there are a whole lot of memoirs out there, and most of them are written by newbies. Agents and editors cringe when a memoirist approaches them, because they’ve seen so many amateurish ones.

But here’s the thing: there’s a BIG market for entertaining, well-written memoir.

In this age of massively popular true crime shows and “reality” TV, there’s a huge audience for shared real-life experience. Readers are hungry for true stories: look how angrily they reacted to writers like James Frey, Margaret B. Jones, Clifford Irving, etc. who passed off fiction as memoir.

Compelling memoirs like  Eat, Pray, Love, The Color of Water, The Glass Castle, and of course the entire oeuvre of David Sedaris (a hero of mine) top the bestseller lists.

So keep working on that masterpiece-in-progress.  Hone your craft.  Learn patience. Write short creative nonfiction essays and get a bunch of published work out there.  And keep writing. The results will be worth it.

It will help if you follow some basic dos and don’ts.

1) DO Read Other Memoirs

Before you put pen to paper, it’s a good idea to read the currently popular memoirs. You want to know what readers are buying.

You can also see what works and what doesn’t. Where are you flipping pages and reading “just one more chapter”? Work on getting that kind of tension into your story. On the other hand if you find the story getting bogged down somewhere, you know where not to go. Does something sound self-serving? Leave it out of your own work.

All authors need to know their genre and audience to write something that sells. Memoir is no exception.

2)  DON’T Write an Autobiography

I know this sounds like I’m just playing with words. But technically, an autobiography is a list of events: “I was born in (year) in (place) and I did (this) and (that.)

But a memoir is a story of one aspect of your life that has a beginning, a climax and a resolution.

The truth about autobiographies is that unless you’re already a rock star, nobody cares.

Except your family. And they do matter. So don’t let anybody discourage you from self-publishing a chronicle of your life as a gift to your family and descendants. Just be aware that an autobiographical list of events is not the same thing as a publishable, compelling memoir.

3) DO Tell a Page-Turning Story

A book-length memoir is read and marketed as a novel. It needs a novel’s narrative drive. That means tension and conflict—and ONE main story arc to drive the action.

So generally you don’t want to write a series of loosely related vignettes and stories. A memoir has to be one story.

Most memoirs fail from lack of focus.

Choose a basic storyline, like: “Orphan kids save the family farm during the Depression,” or “A cross-dressing teen survives high school in the 1960s.”

But note: vignettes and nostalgia pieces do have a market—in magazines, journals and blogs. (See # 13)

4) DON’T Confuse Memoir with Psychotherapy

Writing about a traumatic personal event can be amazingly cathartic for the writer, but there’s a reason shrinks charge big bucks to listen to people’s problems. Readers want a rip-roaring story, not unrelenting misery.

Writing does makes great therapy, though. Go ahead and write it all down in a journal. Then you can save that raw material to mine later for fiction, poetry, personal essays, and maybe even a well-crafted memoir.

5) DO Focus on Significant and Unique Personal Experience, Especially When Tied to Well-Known Person or Event

If you gave birth in the mud at Woodstock, dated Kurt Cobain, or were a first responder on 9/11, make that the focus of your book. That’s not “selling out” or falling for “celebrity culture.” It’s common sense. People want to read about stuff they’ve heard of more than they want to read about your dear Aunt Edna, lovely as she was.

Iconic events are shared experiences. Your readers have their own emotions tied to that event, so they’re eager to know how it felt to be close to it.

6) DON’T Include Every Detail

Including every little incident and every character because “it’s what really happened” doesn’t make good storytelling.

Just because something is true doesn’t mean it’s interesting.

Your happy memories of that idyllic Sunday school picnic in vanished small-town America will leave your reader comatose unless the church caught fire, you lost your virginity, and/or somebody stole the parson’s pants.

7)  DO Remember that a Memoir, like a Novel, is Read for Entertainment.

A memoir may be nonfiction, but it requires a creative writer’s skill set. Always keep your reader in mind. Never fabricate, but only tell what’s unique, exciting and relevant to your premise.

I had a friend who lived a fabulously exciting life, rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. But in his memoir, he kept insisting on giving equal time to his very ordinary relatives and schoolmates.

It’s all very well to be “fair” to all the people and events in your life, but that’s not what’s important when you’re writing for publication.

The only person you must treat with fairness is your reader.

If your reader isn’t going to be thrilled reading two chapters about your Uncle Wilbur’s gout, then don’t put them in the book.

8) DON’T Neglect Social Media

There are online groups for everything these days. When I was working on my novel that features the ghost of Richard III, So Much for Buckingham , I discovered more than 50 Facebook groups for people who think Richard III has been falsely maligned.

For any kind of disease or trauma, there is probably an online support group…or twelve. Look for them and make contact. (But don’t stick around if things seem “off.” Groups can often be taken over by one or more bullies. You won’t find help—or readers—there. Move on.)

One of the most important things you’ll need to do before you publish is connect with online communities who are interested in your niche. Visiting and commenting on the blogs, vlogs and podcasts of other people interested in your field can really help you tap into a community of possible readers.

9) DO look at Small and Regional Publishers.

A national publisher may not be interested in stories of the vanished ranch life of old California, or growing up in a lighthouse on the coast of Maine, but a local publisher who has outlets at tourist sites and historical landmarks may be actively looking for them. Another plus: you don’t need an agent to approach most regional publishers.

Not a lot of agents are interested in memoir, but many small publishers are. Here are seven publishers who don’t require agents and are looking for memoir.

10) DON’T Expect a Big Audience for Medical Journaling

If you or a loved one has a serious disease, chronicling your experiences can be invaluable to those suffering similar trials.

To the general public—not so much.

You may find it’s best to reach out to people who share your medical experience through online forums and blogs as well as print journals. Remember that publishing is a business, and no matter how sad your story, if it’s not an enjoyable read, it won’t find an audience.

But you may find exactly the audience you’re looking for with a blog, so read on…

11) DO Consider Writing Your Experiences as Blog.

I urge all nonfiction authors, especially memoirists, to start a blog as soon as possible.

As I said, a memoir needs to be written like a novel. But real life doesn’t have a story arc, compelling dialogue, and good pacing. That means you have to superimpose those things on a story that already exists, instead of creating your story around a structure the way you do with a novel.

But those things aren’t a problem on a blog. Most of what people read online is nonfiction, and readers love stories with heart.

Blogs are made for short personal essays. With illustrations. That means blogging might be the most effective way to write your memoir. Later, you can make the blogposts into a book of collected essays with a ready-made audience.

Even if you’ve finished your memoir, or are in the final stages of polishing, you can use segments of your book in blogposts and add lots of photos (expensive to put into books, but magnets for blog readers.)

12) DON’T Jump into the Self-Publishing Process before your Book—and YOU are Ready.

First hone your skills as a creative writer. Unless you’re only writing for your grandchildren and heirs (nothing wrong with that—but be clear in your intentions) you need to become an accomplished writer before you can expect non-family members to read you work. Even the most skilled editor can’t turn a series of reminiscences into a cohesive narrative.

NOTE:  There are ghostwriters who specialize in memoirs, so if you want to get your story into book form and aren’t interested in becoming a professional writer, you can hire one. Many editing services offer ghostwriting—a more expensive process than editing—but worth the cost if you don’t enjoy the writing process. I’d recommend using a memoir specialist like  YourMemoir.co.uk where Marnie Summerfield Smith provides an excellent service I can highly recommend.

13)  DO Think Outside the Book

Beginning writers often make the mistake of jumping into a book-length opus. But it’s smarter and easier to start with short pieces of creative nonfiction—what one writer friend calls “memoiric essays.”

Keep in mind that even though book-length memoir is a hard sell, there is a big market for creative nonfiction essays.

You can market short personal essays to magazines, anthologies, journals, websites, blogs and contests. You’ll be building platform and can even make some money.

Nostalgia and senior-oriented magazines and blogs are great venues for tales of life in the old days. Niche journals and websites focusing on hobbies, pets, disabilities, veterans, etc. are always looking for submissions.

These will also give you some great publishing credits, and you won’t have to slog for years before reaching an audience.

If you’ve been working on that memoir a while, you probably have a whole lot of material already written. With a few tweaks, your excerpts can become publishable personal essays.

And the good news is, those short pieces can pay very well. Look at the fantastic success of anthologies like the Chicken Soup series. And if you get into an anthology along with some well-known authors, you’ll establish a readership that would take years to garner with a solo book release. Check out our post on anthologies .

14) DON’T Get Discouraged.

If you’re working on a memoir, polish your creative writing skills, work at building a platform, and keep your reader in mind. That way you’ll avoid the cringe-making amateurishness that agents, editors and readers fear.

And you don’t need an agent. Plenty of writers have had success with self-published memoirs.

Eldonna Edwards wrote and self-published a memoir of her experiences as a kidney donor in Lost in Transplantation . She did some great marketing and it sold well. That led to a major book contract with Kensington Publishing. Eldonna’s second novel with Kensington, Clover Blue launches in May in hardcover.

For more about the strain and rewards of writing a memoir, see Michael Harris’s post The Story that Took 50 Years to Write.

by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) April 7, 2019

What about you, scriveners? Are you working on a memoir? Do you write creative nonfiction essays? Have you ever thought about blogging your memoir? What’s your favorite memoir?

BOOK OF THE WEEK

A satire of the dark side of online reviews and the people who make a game of them…a game that can lead to murder.

Camilla and Ronzo see their reputations destroyed by online review trolls who specialize in character assassination, while Plantagenet Smith heads over to England, where he encounters a dead historical reenactor dressed as the Duke of Buckingham.  Plant is promptly arrested for the murder. In jail, Plant meets the ghost of Richard III, and hears what it’s like to live with character assassination “fake news” that has persisted for half a millennium.

“This wonderfully satiric comedy is a joy to read. On the surface, it’s a frothy romance cum suspense story about a whacky writer, Camilla, whose life is threatened by trolls and who topples from one hilarious disaster into the next.

But underneath, it provides a perceptive insight into the mad world of modern publishing, the sub-culture of Internet lunatics and the mindset of cultists who can – and do – believe ten impossible things before breakfast.

The reader is left with the question: how much of the story, perish the thought, might be true? Tremendous fun, wittily satiric and highly recommended”…Nigel J. Robinson

So Much for Buckingham is available at all the Amazons ,

Kobo ,  Nook   Smashwords ,  iTunes , Google Play ,  24Symbols  and  Scribd . And in paperback it is available at

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Also in AUDIOBOOK! (see, we’re on trend here!)

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OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

SEQUESTRUM EDITOR’S REPRINT AWARD  Fee: $15 .  Prize: $200 and publication in Sequestrum  for one previously published piece of fiction or nonfiction and one previously published piece of poetry. A minimum of one runner-up in each category will receive $25-$50 and publication. Maximum 12,000 words for prose and three poems.  Deadline : April 30th. 

Dribble Flash Fiction Contest . Write a story in 50 words or less. $100 prize. Deadline May 3rd.

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Don’t let those published short stories stop working! Here are 25 Literary Magazines that will take reprints.

7 PUBLISHERS FOR MEMOIRS! You don’t need an agent. From the good folks at Authors Publish

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About Anne R. Allen

Anne writes funny mysteries and how-to-books for writers. She also writes poetry and short stories on occasion. Oh, yes, and she blogs. She's a contributor to Writer's Digest and the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market.

Her bestselling Camilla Randall Mystery RomCom Series features perennially down-on-her-luck former socialite Camilla Randall—who is a magnet for murder, mayhem and Mr. Wrong, but always solves the mystery in her quirky, but oh-so-polite way.

Anne lives on the Central Coast of California, near San Luis Obispo, the town Oprah called "The Happiest City in America."

April 7, 2019 at 10:33 am

Anne—Lots of solid advice here. Will also refer to Michael’s post for us about writing his NYT bestselling military memoir THE ATOMIC TIMES. He talks about how to deal with intense emotional experiences, how to use humor, and the importance of deciding just how much you want to reveal. http://annerallen.com/2012/09/an-awesome-awardplus-story-that-took-50/

April 7, 2019 at 10:38 am

Ruth–Thanks for the reminder! I’ve added a link to Michael’s interview in Tip #14!

April 7, 2019 at 10:45 am

No surprise — more good advice. It brings to mind our old critique partner, Dr. Marty Rochlin & his brilliant memoir. Thanks for sparking the memory.

April 7, 2019 at 11:27 am

CS–Marty Rochlin’s memoir was entertaining and well written, but still he had trouble selling it, I think that was because it wasn’t shaped like a novel. A good editor could have done that. I wish he’d been able to find a publisher who wanted to work with him.

April 7, 2019 at 11:18 am

I was late to the Sunday PM party as usual, but this is terrific advice Anne. No interest from me, I must say, except of course to remember that quip from P.D. James that I’ve shot out here before: “All fiction is largely autobiographical…”. I can’t tell you what a chill that sends through me when I’m reviewing my epic fantasy tales!

But in my view, much of the advice you give here survives intact to any genre fiction tale- DON’T tell them everything, or keep it even-handed among characters out of a sense of “fairness”. DO get your homework done on outside aspects, social media, and keep your eye on entertaining the reader with something that compels the page-turn.

I’m also minded of John Eldredge’s quick read “Epic” in which he suggests that we are always telling each other the story, with our lives, which you touched on. Whether we write it or not, we all do indeed have a story to tell. Woodworking does that. Safely driving a school bus does that. Singing on a street corner does that, I can tell you, and the guys who came to arrest me would agree.

April 7, 2019 at 11:31 am

Will–You’re not late. You’re early. 🙂 Our notices used to go out at 1 PM Pacific Time and now they go out at 1 PM Eastern Time.

You’re right that humans are always telling stories. It’s only the medium that changes. And all writers should be keeping their reader in mind, no matter what their genre .

April 7, 2019 at 11:38 am

This is so timely for me. After writing several historical fictions and short story collections, I feel ready to write my memoir of backpacking Europe in the 1980s with a Eurorail pass and $100 in my pocket. Thank you for some excellent tips! I think I’m on the right track!

April 7, 2019 at 1:59 pm

Tam–How fun to write a memoir of those travelling days. I did much the same in the 1970s. Lots of fun stories. Maybe I’ll even tackle a memoir some day. Best of luck!

April 20, 2019 at 8:43 am

Quick question–if I put some of my “memoiric essays” on a personal blog does that hurt the chances of them getting published since they are already out there in the world? Thanks for any insight into this.

April 21, 2019 at 2:59 pm

Julie–Each publication has different rules about what “previously published” means. But they tend to be more lax for nonfiction. Most places will take a piece that’s been published on a blog, but some won’t. They’ll usually tell you in the guidelines.

If you put blogposts in a book of collected essays, just change things up a bit and there’s usually no problem. But you don’t want to publish a book of blogposts taken directly from the web without alteration, because Amazon may take you down for selling something that is “freely available on the web.” .

April 22, 2019 at 11:15 am

Thank you for the reply. Very helpful.

May 14, 2019 at 12:50 am

Memoir writing can be very specialized and needs a certain level of expertise to do properly. Thanks for sharing these useful tips Anne.

May 14, 2019 at 10:03 am

Michael–It does indeed. The memoirs that really take off, like “Eat, Pray, Love” are usually written by professional writers with lots of experience. It’s hard for a newbie to write a good one.

November 16, 2020 at 3:45 pm

I can’t simply go without leaving a comment. This post is a great read.

I hope you can take the time to read my post as well The Excellent Benefits of Reading Memoirs

April 28, 2021 at 3:36 pm

Thanks for this article! I’m working on a memoir of sorts written in verse, similar to Eric Gansworth’s recently published, Apple Skin to the Core. And you have some helpful tips!

April 28, 2021 at 4:36 pm

Bridgitte–That’s quite an undertaking! But Gansworth’s book may have paved the way, and yours will be part of a trend. Best of luck with it!

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18 Narrative and Memoir Essays

Narrative writing.

Human beings tell stories every day. We understand most of nature through stories. Though facts can be memorized, stories — the details, the description, the experience — make us believe.

Therefore, as we begin to study writing, we need to begin with the properties of the story. How do good storytellers make us believe? How can good writing draw a reader into a story? How can we harness the power of the story to make a point, even in a dry, academic context?

The purpose of narrative writing is to tell stories. This is a form we are familiar with, as any time we tell a story about an event or incident in our day, we are engaging in a form of narration. In terms of writing, narration is the act of describing a sequence of events. Sometimes this is the primary mode of an essay—writing a narrative essay about a particular event or experience, and sometimes this is a component used within an essay, much like other evidence is offered, to support a thesis. This chapter will discuss the basic components of narration, which can be applied either as a stand-alone essay or as a component within an essay.

Ultimately, narrative writing tries to relay a series of events in an emotionally engaging way. You want your audience to be moved by your story, which could mean through laughter, sympathy, fear, anger, and so on. The more clearly you tell your story, the more emotionally engaged your audience is likely to be.

WHERE DO WE FIND NARRATIVE?

We talk about narrative writing in many ways. Books will introduce it as Narration, Narrative, and Storytelling. Narrative creeps into most of the other kinds of writing we learn about, too. Persuasive essays use short stories — often called anecdotes  — to engage a reader’s attention and sympathy. Consider the difference between these two openings to the same essay:

Which opening makes you want to read more? The second one engages its readers with a story — and we’re hard-wired, as humans, to want to hear the end of a story.

Television plays on this characteristic all the time. Think of your favorite show and the maddening, brief preview that starts before the credits roll. It’s always a quick snippet that makes you stay tuned because the writers and producers know their audience will sit through several minutes of mindless commercials just to find out how the story will continue.

In our own writing, we can use stories in just the same way. We can draw our readers into our own experiences, even if they’ve never been through anything even similar to what we have, by telling our own stories.

HOW DO WE WRITE A NARRATIVE?

A narrative essay is a piece that tells one consistent, cohesive story. In academic writing, a narrative essay will also always convey a lesson, a moral, or a point that the writer wishes the reader to take.

When we say “moral,” some people think of after-school specials and having “good behavior” tips crammed down their throat. However, the most powerful lessons conveyed through writing are often done with great subtlety. True, the punishing pace of writing expected in a college course may not leave enough time to develop a nuanced story — no one is going to churn out War and Peace  or even  The Hobbit  in ten weeks — but not every story has to have the moral stated clearly, in bold font, at the very beginning.

Think about it this way: When you were a kid, if your grandmother had sat you down and said, “Listen. We’re now going to have a thirty-minute conversation about how it’s really bad if you start smoking,” would you have listened? Probably not. If, however, your grandmother took you to visit your uncle Larry, who had terminal lung cancer, and then casually mentioned as you left that Larry had been smoking since he was your age — would you get the lesson? Would you remember it? Do you remember better the 200 lectures you had as a teenager about not being a bully, or do you remember the one time that you witnessed its effects firsthand?

In a narrative, we want to pull that same kind of trick on our readers: get our point across, but do it in a way that engages the imagination and attention. Use the power of the story.

The narrative relies on the same components that all good writing does: it needs detail, clear organization, and a central purpose (AKA our friends Development, Organization, and Unity).

NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT: BRING THE DETAILS

Consider this passage from the very first Sherlock Holmes mystery, “A Study in Scarlet,” which describes a major character:

The author includes detail upon detail to describe this gentleman. He could have simply said, “He was dying from hunger and from thirst,” which would tell us everything we need to know. Instead, he describes how these feelings have had an effect upon the man — he is  gaunt , he’s starting to look like a skeleton, and he can barely stand without the support of his rifle.

Think of the best book you’ve ever read (or the best television show you’ve ever watched, or the movie you love), and you may be able to relate to this. Good description is the difference between hearing a game on the radio and watching it live in the stadium (or on a ginormous 3-D television). The very breath of life in a narrative will always be your ability to describe a scene.

This relies on the use of specific language. As you read through the revision section, you were encouraged to avoid phrases that your audience might find misleading. Consider this as you write a story. With every sentence, ask, “What does my audience know? What do they think?” If you say a car is “beautiful,” will your audience think of a 2018 Hybrid Honda Accord or of a 1966 Chevelle (pictured at right)? If there’s some doubt, change your words to reflect your meaning.

You may have heard the advice that asks you to “show, not tell” in writing. This is what we mean: be so descriptive in telling a story that the reader feels s/he is there beside you, seeing the swimming pool or the school’s front doors or the new car or the new child with his/her own eyes.

NARRATIVE ORGANIZATION

Narrative traditionally follows time order, or  chronological order , throughout. This seems obvious when you think about it — we tell stories in time order, starting (usually) at the beginning and working through to the end.

In an essay, pieces of the story can be organized into timespans by paragraph. For instance, if I’m describing a particularly harrowing day at work, I might have a paragraph just for the morning, and then a paragraph about my terrible lunch break, and then a paragraph about my afternoon.

Narrative essays usually can’t cover more ground than a day or two. Instead of writing about your entire vacation experience, study abroad month, two years of work at the plant, or 18 years living at home, focus on one particular experience that took place over a day or two. That’s enough for a reader to digest in a few pages, and it will also give you a chance to really lay in details without feeling rushed.

Sometimes, we start stories out of order. Many popular movies and television shows do this regularly by showing a clip of something that happens later before starting the whole show. If you’ve ever seen an episode of NCIS, you’ll be familiar with this technique: they start each section of the show with a photo of the ending scene, then start an hour or two before that scene in the live-action. Shows often jump to “One Week Earlier” between commercial breaks.

Think of the emotional impact that has upon you as a viewer. Again, it’s a trick the writers pull with their story to drive you through the boring/silly/pointless/insulting commercials so that you’ll stay with them. We want to know how the characters get to that end.

You can manipulate your audience in this way, too, but be careful; giving away too much of the ending may sometimes make a reader simply put down what they’re reading. It’s safer (though not always better) to just start at the beginning and write things down as they happened. Particularly in a first draft, sticking to the natural story order will be a good way to make sure nothing gets missed.

Chronological order , the order in which events unfold from first to last, is the most common organizational structure for narratives. Stories typically have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Certain transitional words and phrases aid in keeping the reader oriented in the sequencing of a story. Some of these phrases are listed below.

Figure 5.2 Transition Words and Phrases for Expressing Time

The following are the other basic components of a narrative:

•  Plot . The events as they unfold in sequence.

•  Characters . The people who inhabit the story and move it forward. Typically, each narrative has there are minor characters and main characters. The minor characters generally play supporting roles to the main character, or the protagonist.

•  Conflict . The primary problem or obstacle that unfolds in the plot, which the protagonist must solve or overcome by the end of the narrative. The way in which the protagonist resolves the conflict of the plot results in the theme of the narrative.

•  Theme . The ultimate message the narrative is trying to express; it can be either explicit or implicit.

Writing at Work

When interviewing candidates for jobs, employers often ask about conflicts or problems a potential employee had to overcome. They are asking for a compelling personal narrative. To prepare for this question in a job interview, write out a scenario using the narrative moved structure. This will allow you to troubleshoot rough spots as well as better understand your own personal history. Both processes will make your story better and your self-presentation better, too.

Narrative Anecdotes

An  anecdote  is a short, personal  narrative  about something specific. It is often used as a component in an essay, acting as evidence to support your thesis, as an example to demonstrate your point, and/or as a way to establish your credibility. It always has a point in telling it.

Elements of an Anecdote

1. Who, Where, When

Have you ever wondered why children’s stories begin something like this?

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, the teachers were revolting …

It is the start of a simple narrative. It also contains all the elements of a beginning to any narrative: when, where, and who. An anecdote, because it is short, will begin similarly:

One day, while I was sitting at a stop sign waiting for the light to change…

This little particle of an anecdote tells when, who, and where before the first sentence even ends.

Note : An anecdote sets up a particular incident; it does not tell about a long period of time.

2. What Happened (Sequence of Events)

Any narrative also includes a sequence of events. You should be able to read an anecdote and tell what happens first, what happens next, and so on. In the following anecdote, the bolded words suggest each event in the sequence.

Example Anecdote:

My first day of college I parked in the “South Forty,” which is what everyone called the huge parking lot on the edge of the campus. It was seven forty-five in the morning, hazy and cool. I walked across the parking lot, crossed a busy street, walked over a creek, through a “faculty” parking lot, crossed another street, and came to the first row of campus buildings. I walked between buildings, past the library and the student mall. I passed many quiet, nervous-looking students along the way. Many of them smiled at me. One trio of young girls was even chuckling softly among themselves when they all smiled and said “Hi” to me at once. By the time I got to my classroom, far on the other side of campus from the parking lot, I was smiling and boldly saying “Hi” to everyone, too, particularly the girls. Every single one of them smiled or responded with a “Hi” or made a friendly comment or even chuckled happily. It was my first day of college.

When I found the building I was looking for, a friend from high school appeared. She was in my first class! I smiled at her and said, “Hi!” She looked at me. She smiled. Then she laughed. She said, “Why are you wearing a sock on your shirt?” I looked down. A sock had come out of the dryer clinging to my shirt.

3. Implied Point

Most of us want to make sure that we “get the point across” to whatever story we are telling, assuming it has a point. To do this, we tend to explain what we are telling. It is sometimes very difficult to stop. However, stopping in a timely way allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

Show, don’t tell

In the anecdote above, I am very tempted to tell the reader what I felt at the moment I realized that everyone was laughing AT me rather than just being friendly. For the ending, where the point is in this case, it is best to let the reader infer (draw conclusions, fill in the blanks) what happens implicitly rather than to state explicitly what the point is, or what the narrator felt, or anything else.

The more indirect you are about your object or place the better. In the anecdote above, it might be obvious that my object is a sock or my place is a parking lot. The point is, it is not an anecdote “about” a sock; it is referred to indirectly.

How do we show rather than tell? First, describe what you see (I don’t really see anything with “I was SO embarrassed…”) or what you smell, hear, or taste, but NOT what you feel. An easy way to check whether you are showing or telling is to go through your anecdote and underline the verbs. If the verbs are “be”-verbs (is, was, were, etc.) or verbs that describe actions we cannot see (“I thought…” “I believed…” “I imagined…” “it made me upset…” and so on) then you are probably telling. In the sentence above I used “walked,” “lecturing,” “ripped,” and “said.”

Most Common Question:

“What makes stories or anecdotes interesting and something I can relate to?”

Actually, it is a simple principle, even though it may not be obvious. We “relate” or “connect” most easily to situations we recognize and so fill in the blanks. If you “tell” me, for example, “I was SO embarrassed …” then you have not let me fill in MY embarrassment. On the other hand, if you “show” me a scene, it allows me to fit my own experience into it:

“I walked past the corner of the aluminum whiteboard tray while lecturing to a class. It ripped my pants. After a moment I said, ‘Class dismissed.’”

The writer of those statements, hopes the reader will fill in some similarly embarrassing moment without the writer clearly stating that this is what is supposed to be done. The connection, the act of “filling in,” is what people tend to refer to as “relating to.”

Interestingly, it does not even matter whether or not readers fill in what the writer intend for them to fill in; it is the act of filling in our own experiences that makes us “relate” to an incident. From a writer’s perspective, that means we should show rather than tell.

Second, resist the temptation to “explain.” Let the reader fill in the blanks! It is so much more personal when the reader participates by filling in.

Assignment 1

Write an anecdote that contains who, where, when, and what happens (a sequence of events). Think about an anecdote that  involves ,  alludes to, or otherwise includes your object or place ; it does not have to be “about” your place. It also does not have to be “true” in the strict sense of the word; we will not be able to verify any believable details if they add to the effect of the anecdote. Type it out. Keep it simple and to the point.

What are ‘clichés’ and why can’t we use them?

Clichés are figurative phrases and expressions that you have probably heard a million times. For our purposes, there are two kinds of clichés: the ones that jump out at you and the ones that we use without thinking.

If you are paying attention, you will notice that the two sentences above contain at least 3 clichés. You might also notice that clichés are best suited to spoken language, because they are readily available and sometimes when we speak, we don’t have time to replace a common expression with a unique one. However, we DO have time to replace clichés while we are writing.

The problem with clichés in writing is that they are too general when we should be much more specific. They also tend to tell rather than show. In the first sentence above, we have most likely heard the phrase, “have probably heard a million times.” In speech, that expression works. In writing, it should be  literal  rather than  figurative.  The first sentence is better this way:

Clichés are figurative phrases and expressions that we have heard so many times that we all share some understanding of what they mean.

Not exactly what you thought when you read it at the beginning of this answer, is it? That is why being  literal and specific  in writing is better than  figurative and vague  as a rule.

Here is a re-write of the second sentence at the start of this answer:

For our purposes, there are two kinds of clichés: the ones that are obvious expressions (like “You can lead a horse to water …”) and the ones that are not part of expressions but seem to “go” easily into a group of words (like “we use without thinking”).

The second type is more difficult to identify and eradicate. Usually it is a group of words we have heard before that doesn’t add anything to a statement. For example, instead of “We watched the donuts roll down the street every night,” you might be tempted to add to it this way: “We watched the donuts roll down the street each and every night.” Avoid clichés in your writing.

To see more see more commonly used clichés and for guidance on how to rewrite them, see this  handout (https://writingcenter.unc.edu/cliches/)from The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Writing Center.

Some Other Rhetorical Tips

• To create strong details, keep the human senses in mind. You want your reader to be immersed in the world that you create, so focus on details related to sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch as you describe people, places, and events in your narrative.
• Create tension by making the reader nervous about what is going to happen through sentence structure, tone, and voice.
• Add dialogue to show the immediacy and drama of the personal interactions (re-creating conversations as necessary to make your narrative work).
• Name specific objects to re-create the scene by selecting details that leave the readers with a dominant impression of how things were.
• Show people in action by describing precise movements and dialogue to convey the action of the scene.

External Links:

“ Sixty-nine Cents ” (https://tinyurl.com/ybjasq9c) by Gary Shteyngart: In “Sixty-nine Cents,” author Gary Shteyngart describes a coming-of-age experience as a first-generation Russian-Jewish immigrant in modern America.

Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Reservation in Washington State. He chronicles his challenges in school, starting in first grade, in  Indian Education (https://tinyurl.com/hlshngr).

Sandra Cisneros offers an example of a narrative essay in “ Only Daughter ”  (https://tinyurl.com/yc4srod7) that captures her sense of her Chicana-Mexican heritage as the only daughter in a family of seven children. The essay is also available here  (https://tinyurl.com/y7hzxhz6).

 Annie Dilliard offers an example of a narrative essay in an excerpt, often entitled “ The Chase ” (https://tinyurl.com/ycsen7r4) from her autobiography  An American Childhood , outlining a specific memorable event from her childhood. This essay is also available  here  (https://tinyurl.com/y7udsl88).

NARRATIVE UNITY

The final consideration in putting together a narrative essay should be unifying it around a single theme or lesson. As you draft, you may already have this lesson in mind:  everyone should wear a seatbelt.  However, remember that your reader needs to make up her own mind. Don’t insult a reader by beating them up with your lesson, and don’t leave them guessing about the meaning of your piece by leaving it out completely.

Many writers include a paragraph of reflection after telling a personal story in an essay that lets a reader know, directly, the significance that the story has on the writer’s life. This can be a good way to get a lesson across. Showing what you’ve learned or found important in an event will provide the reader with a clue about the overall meaning of the story.

You should use “I” in a personal, narrative essay . There are types of academic writing where “I” is inappropriate, but this is not one of those times. In fact, the best narratives will often be the most personal, the stories that avoid hiding behind “you” or “they” and instead boldly tell the writer’s own story.

NARRATIVE OUTLINES

The typical narrative essay follows an outline that should seem like common sense:

• Paragraph 1: Introduction
• Paragraph 2: Event #1
• Paragraph 3: Event #2
• Paragraph 4: Event #3
• Paragraph 5: Conclusion

This outline is flexible. Perhaps the first event in your story will take significant space to describe; it may need 2 paragraphs of its own. Maybe there are smaller events that happen within the larger events. Maybe for your piece, it makes sense to jump right into the story instead of spending an introduction paragraph to give some setup. What matters most is that a reader can easily follow the piece from beginning to end and that she will leave with a good understanding of what you wanted the reader to learn.

Student Sample Essay

My College Education

The first class I went to in college was philosophy, and it changed my life forever. Our first assignment was to write a short response paper to the Albert Camus essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” I was extremely nervous about the assignment as well as college. However, through all the confusion in philosophy class, many of my questions about life were answered.

I entered college intending to earn a degree in engineering. I always liked the way mathematics had right and wrong answers. I understood the logic and was very good at it. So when I received my first philosophy assignment that asked me to write my interpretation of the Camus essay, I was instantly confused. What is the right way to do this assignment, I wondered? I was nervous about writing an incorrect interpretation and did not want to get my first assignment wrong. Even more troubling was that the professor refused to give us any guidelines on what he was looking for; he gave us total freedom. He simply said, “I want to see what you come up with.”

Full of anxiety, I first set out to read Camus’s essay several times to make sure I really knew what was it was about. I did my best to take careful notes. Yet even after I took all these notes and knew the essay inside and out, I still did not know the right answer. What was my interpretation? I could think of a million different ways to interpret the essay, but which one was my professor looking for? In math class, I was used to examples and explanations of solutions. This assignment gave me nothing; I was completely on my own to come up with my individual interpretation.

Next, when I sat down to write, the words just did not come to me. My notes and ideas were all present, but the words were lost. I decided to try every prewriting strategy I could find. I brainstormed, made idea maps, and even wrote an outline. Eventually, after a lot of stress, my ideas became more organized and the words fell on the page. I had my interpretation of “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and I had my main reasons for interpreting the essay. I remember being unsure of myself, wondering if what I was saying made sense, or if I was even on the right track. Through all the uncertainty, I continued writing the best I could. I finished the conclusion paragraph, had my spouse proofread it for errors, and turned it in the next day simply hoping for the best.

Then, a week or two later, came judgment day. The professor gave our papers back to us with grades and comments. I remember feeling simultaneously afraid and eager to get the paper back in my hands. It turned out, however, that I had nothing to worry about. The professor gave me an A on the paper, and his notes suggested that I wrote an effective essay overall. He wrote that my reading of the essay was very original and that my thoughts were well organized. My relief and newfound confidence upon reading his comments could not be overstated.

What I learned through this process extended well beyond how to write a college paper. I learned to be open to new challenges. I never expected to enjoy a philosophy class and always expected to be a math and science person. This class and assignment, however, gave me the self-confidence, critical-thinking skills, and courage to try a new career path. I left engineering and went on to study law and eventually became a lawyer. More important, that class and paper helped me understand education differently. Instead of seeing college as a direct stepping stone to a career, I learned to see college as a place to first learn and then seek a career or enhance an existing career. By giving me the space to express my own interpretation and to argue for my own values, my philosophy class taught me the importance of education for education’s sake. That realization continues to pay dividends every day.

Most People Don’t Understand Memoirs  

In 2006, James Frey wrote a memoir about parts of his life when he was under the influence of drugs called  A Million Little Pieces , and after Oprah had him on her show to discuss the book – it was featured in her popular book club, of course – she was told that he “lied” about certain parts. Well, he didn’t lie. Memoirs contain what we remember. What we remember isn’t always “fact.” What I always say is that if you have all of your family members report what happened at a family gathering – like a birthday party or Christmas – whose report would be correct? No ones! That’s what a memoir is. It’s still nonfiction because it’s what the person remembers, but it’s not false on purpose. If I remember that my sister responded to me in a snotty way one day and my other sister didn’t think so, no one is correct. It’s just my memory versus hers.

Now, typically, memoirs encompass just a chunk of someone’s life, like when James Frey wrote about his drug years, but sometimes, some famous person in their 70s (or older) will write his/her memoir. No matter what, it’s simply what they remember, and I suppose if someone’s on drugs or has an awful memory, the stories could appear to be false. But they aren’t. That’s why they say, “life is stranger than fiction.”

Memoirs are part of the nonfiction category of literature; they contain a lot of description and detail, and they are typically very, very personal in content.

The Bits and Pieces of Memoir

The memoir is a specific type of narrative. It is autobiographical in nature, but it is not meant to be as comprehensive as a biography (which tells the entire life story of a person). Instead, a memoir is usually only a specific “slice” of one’s life. The time span within a memoir is thus frequently limited to a single memorable event or moment, though it can also be used to tell about a longer series of events that make up a particular period of one’s life (as in Cameron Crowe’s film memoir Almost Famous ). It is narrative in structure, usually describing people and events that ultimately focuses on the emotional significance of the story to the one telling it. Generally, this emotional significance is the result of a resolution from the conflict within the story. Though a memoir is the retelling of a true account, it is not usually regarded as being completely true. After all, no one can faithfully recall every detail or bit of dialogue from an event that took place many years ago. Consequently, some creative license is granted by the reader to the memoirist recounting, say, a significant moment or events from his childhood some thirty years, or more, earlier. (However, the memoirist who assumes too much creative license without disclosing that fact is vulnerable to censure and public ridicule if his deception is found out, as what happened with James Frey and his memoir,  A Million Little Pieces .)

Furthermore, names of people and places are often changed in a memoir to protect those who were either directly or indirectly involved in the lives and/or event(s) being described.

Why read memoirs?

To learn about other people’s lives and their thoughts about events that have occurred.  Memoirs are a personalized look at history.

How to write memoirs?

Reflect n your life. write what you remember about events that matter to you from your unique point-of-view.

Dialogue is another way to bring life to your writing. Dialogue is conversation or people speaking in your story. An engaging dialogue goes beyond what is simply being said to include descriptions of non-verbal communication (facial expressions, body movement, changes in tone, and speed of speech) and characterization. The way people speak and interact while talking reveals much about them and the situation.

Writing a natural-sounding dialogue is not easy. Effective dialogue must serve more than one purpose – it should:

• Drive the plot forward,
• Reveal information about the characters, and
• Build tension or introduce conflict.

Sample Dialogue

“So, what was it really like?” I asked.

“I’ve told you. It was amazing.”

I shifted to my side so I could look at her. “You have to give me more than that,” I insisted, “and not the mom and dad version.”

Liv mirrored my move to her side and propped up her head with her arm. Her blue eyes searched my greens, looking for the right words. “I shouldn’t–”

We broke our gaze as we heard our mom call for us. Once again, I didn’t get the truth.

Basic Dialogue Rules

• “I want to go to the beach,” she said.
• He asked, “Where’s the champagne?”
• “That is,” Wesley said, “that neither you nor me is her boy.”
• Even if the speaker says only one word, with no accompanying attribution or action, it is a separate paragraph.
• Start a new paragraph when you wish to draw the reader’s attention to a different character, even if that character doesn’t actually speak.
• For internal dialogue, italics are appropriate.

Example Memoir

Chocolate Can Kill You

Just when you think your life could not get any better, the Great One Above throws you for a loop that causes you to think upon your life, yourself, and your “little” obsession with chocolate. I am somewhat ashamed of this story, but it taught me so much. I still remember Alisa’s face when I came crying into the Valley City gym, I can hear Dad’s echoing “Are you OKAY?” consistently in my mind as if it had been a childhood scolding, and I see the image of the snow coming at me at 70mph every time I drive on a highway now.

In 1997, the morning after Valentine’s Day, I took off to see my sister in Valley City. She was there because of a wrestling meet. She is one of their prized assistants and without her, they would never get to see how goofy they look in tights. It was a crisp morning, and I cannot remember if I filled the bronco’s tank, but I did purchase a Twix bar before heading out on I-94. I vaguely remember thinking, Gee a seat belt would be good, even though the roads were as clean as they could have been in a North Dakota February. On that ten-degree morning, I met up with no one on the highway.

I was just bee-bopping along the left side of the road, listening to the radio and singing aloud as if I was Mariah Carey. It was at this time that I chomped into my first Twix bar.

In an attempt at a different radio station or something or another, I dropped the last bar between my legs onto the floor of the black beastly bronco.

This is where I become a stupid human. I tried to recapture the chocolate bar thinking, or maybe not even thinking, It will only take me a second. Whoever has said that seconds count in any accident WAS RIGHT! All of a sudden, I look up to see that I am driving 70 mph into the median’s snowdrifts. I cranked the wheel, thinking I could just drive back onto the highway. I mumble a few swear words and realize I am going 70 MPH IN A VERY DEEP SNOWDRIFT! I take my foot off the accelerator and while the front end slows, the back end has accumulated too much energy or velocity (a good physics question) and begins to lift upwards. I close my eyes, cross my arms across my chest, and crouch back into my seat and start to feel the bronco as well as myself turn and twist and hover for what seemed an eternity in slow motion. I did not open my eyes once.

And then all of a sudden, the small jolted car lands- PLOP – ON ITS WHEELS! My chair has completely reclined, and I sit up seeing smoke coming from my engine. I forget how to work my car and instinctively get out as if to show God I am alive. I stand on top of the drift becoming taller than my boxy 4×4. There are small dents in the front where you would open the hood but that is the biggest damage I can see.

“Are you OKAY?” An old couple are parked and honking at me from the other side of the highway going towards Fargo. They tell me to come with them and turn off the engine. I grab my parka and make my way through the snow to sit down in the back seat of the long car and take in that old people smell. This is when I quietly cry.

“You did a flip! It’s amazing you walked away from it,” says the old man and I think to myself sarcastically to calm down, Yeah I tried to do that. I ask them to take me to Valley City trying not to sound three and a half. Another major thought echoes What will Dad say?

They turned around at the next available bridge which was a mile away and the lady told me the exit so I could give it to the people that will tow my little bruised bronco. They talked to themselves as I tried to think of what exactly happened, how glad I was to be alive, and how I felt about it. Once inside the gymnasium, I found Alisa’s eyes and she instantly frowned and looked scared.

“Did you and Jason fight?” No, I try to say but I am crying in front of a large crowd who all seem more interested in me now than the matches. I sit down beside her and say:

“I did a flip… the bronco… flipped … it did a 360.”

“The bronco did a WHAT! ARE YOU OKAY!” She panics. I go to call Dad as she tells her friends, and they also feel sympathetic and are quite amazed. I don’t know how I managed to remember my calling card number, but I reached Mom and Dad just waking up. Once again Dad frightens me with his voice and vows to be there as soon as possible and tells me to call the highway patrol.

I was the only accident that whole day on the highway, I think, so I looked pretty silly.

Mom and Dad showed up an hour later. Mom was half-awake, and Dad looked like he’d been chugging coffee left and right. They had seen the bronco being towed incorrectly towards Fargo, so Dad feared the transmission was screwed up again much less the rest of the car. We took off for Fargo and stopped at the spot seeing the tracks lead into the snow, then 25 feet of no tracks, and suddenly a large indentation where the bronco had sat down.

Once at the Mobile on I-29, Dad jumped into the bronco to try to start it. It revved right up. I shook my head and thought of the motto, Built Ford Tough. Only the alignment and steering was off from me trying to turn it back onto the road, and the steam I had seen was the radiator fluid splashing onto the hot engine.

We had to meet with a highway patrolman, so the bronco could get a sticker and photos could be taken. I also, fortunately for the taxpayers, had to pay a Care of Vehicle bill of thirty dollars which means that the government basically can fine someone for trashing his/her own vehicle. This pissed me off incredibly after a day like I had just had. My mom had to remind me though that at least it wasn’t a medical bill.

The highway patrolman reminds me how valuable it was that I had had a seat belt on because I would have for sure gone through the windshield with that type of event and all the tossing that I had endured. That does not make replaying this event in my memory any better. As if God was saying: “No, not yet.”

It’s a common joke to not let me eat while I am driving.

That day made me incredibly grateful for my life, and for the people who came to my aid, especially my parents for spending their whole Saturday with me. Whether we were trying to contact the highway patrolman, paying the tower and the ticket, or comforting me- they never complained. Who knew chocolate could lead to such a life-threatening, yet philosophical day?

Time to Write

Purpose:  This assignment will demonstrate the understanding of how to write a memoir

Task: This assignment frames a single event for the memoir essay.

Write a Memoir Essay.  This essay should clearly identify a significant event or series of closely tied events that convey the significance of that event or has somehow shaped your personal perspective.  Remember that you are writing for an audience that doesn’t share your knowledge of the event(s), people, setting, etc. It is up to you to make your memoir come to life.

Key Features of a Memoir:

• Invoke the 5 senses
• Use narrative suspense
• use metaphor
• include significant details
• provide descriptive language
• use effective dialogue
• include transitions

Key Grading Considerations

• The rhetorical purpose is clear, focused, and appropriate to the audience and assignment.
• The purpose is focused on the memoir.
• Shows engagement with issues of story, language, rhetoric, or thinking deeply about a personal event.
• The theme relates to a personal experience but also illustrates more universal principles.
• Transitions
• Learning Point Thesis Statement
• Topic Sentences
• Some Narrative Elements that flow with the paper
• Clear introduction, event story, and conclusion
• Dialogue is used
• Descriptions and quotes to help visualize the event
• Correct, appropriate, and varied integration of textual examples, including in-text citations
• Limited errors in spelling, grammar, word order, word usage, sentence structure, and punctuation
• Good use of academic English
• Demonstrates cohesion and flow
• Uses the rules of dialogue
• Date format

Attributions

• Memoir Content Adapted from Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). (2020).  Excelsior College. Retrieved from https://owl.excelsior.edu/ licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .
• Narrative Writing Content Adapted from BETTER WRITING FROM THE BEGINNING . (2020).  Jenn Kepka. Retrieved from Better Writing from the Beginning licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .

English 101: Journey Into Open Copyright © 2021 by Christine Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Memoir Method: 7 Steps to a Powerful Personal Story

Joe Bunting

How do you tell or write a story about your life that captivates your audience? How do you write a memoir that isn’t just okay, but has the potential to become a massive bestseller at the level of Eat, Pray, Love or Wild ?

That’s the question I set out to answer when I started writing my own memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris . This is what I learned.

Wait, I don't want to write a memoir

No problem. Being able to tell your story, whether in casual conversation or in writing, is a useful skill for anyone to have. You need to work out what it is about your life or career that will really interest people.

That's where the memoir method comes in. If you were trying to sell your story, how would you tell it?

Follow the steps below to identify your key "plot points", and then learn how to bring them together to tell a story that keeps people listening.

The Pitfalls of Memoir Writing

7 steps to write a memoir that’s actually good, you can write a powerful memoir, ready to start editing your memoir take a free tour of prowritingaid to see how it can help:.

Honestly, I used to think writing a memoir was easy. You sit down and you write about all your experiences. How hard could it be? After all, I’d already written a novel and over ten non-fiction books. Compared to those projects, writing a memoir would be easy.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Penning a good book about my life has been the hardest challenge of my writing life. In fact, the book I thought I would finish in a few months ended up taking me over five years to write and get published.

Why are memoirs so hard to write? To be clear, writing a book about your life isn’t so difficult. No, the hard part is writing a good book about your life.

Here are just a few things that made writing a memoir hard for me:

• Everything feels important. After all, it’s your life! And so when the time comes to cut scenes or chapters to make the story work, you’re too close to the book to know what to cut.
• You can’t change your life events to make them more interesting or fit the plot or theme.
• There’s nothing like looking closely at your own life story to trigger all your latent self-doubt and fears of vulnerability.

It took me five years, thousands of hours, and gallons of sweat and tears to learn how to take my so-so memoir and turn it into an objectively good book.

So how did I do it?

Here’s the process I followed to turn my mediocre memoir into a great story.

Step #1: Start with a Single-Sentence Premise

The first lesson to writing a memoir that’s actually good is to realize you can’t write about everything.

The best memoirs keep it focused, and the best exercise I’ve ever found for writing a focused memoir is to write a one-sentence premise before you start writing your book (or as soon as possible, if you’ve already started).

How do you simplify your entire life to a single-sentence premise? To give you an example, here’s the premise from my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris :

• To raise $600 for his dream Paris trip, a cautious writer accomplishes 12 uncomfortable adventures given by his Internet followers, and through it all learns that the best stories come when you get out of your comfort zone.

Here are the three things every memoir premise must have:

1. A character.

YOU are the main character in your story. So describe yourself in two words (e.g. "cautious writer").

2. A situation.

You can’t write about everything. What is the core situation that will center your story?

3. A lesson.

Good memoirs pass along an important life lesson to your readers. What lesson did you learn through the situation you experienced?

Now that you have your one-sentence premise, let’s use it to get to the heart of your book.

Step #2: Figure Out What Kind of Book You’re Trying to Write

What is your story actually about? What values are at stake?

One of the most important things I learned about writing a great memoir was from Shawn Coyne, a New York editor who created an objective, systematic approach to story called Story Grid. I had been stuck and confused about what my story was really about. But then I talked to Shawn.

“You’re writing an adventure story,” he told me. “That means your story is about life vs. death, and your very first scene needs to be about one of the biggest life and death moments of your book.”

If you want to use the same method to figure out what your memoir is really about, here’s a thorough guide to Story Grid’s genre system that will get you started.

Step #3: Write Your “Shitty First Draft”

When you’re writing a book, whether a memoir, a novel, or a non-fiction book, it’s easy to get stuck in perfectionism. You want your book to measure up to the books you’ve read and loved before.

However, no book starts out good. Writing is an iterative process. Your second draft is better than your first, and your third draft is better than your second. But to get there, you first have to write what Anne Lamott calls a “shitty first draft.”

So write. Don’t worry if it’s terrible. Set a deadline. Create a consequence that will happen if you don’t meet that deadline. And finish your first draft.

Step #4: Revisit Your Premise to Get to the Heart of Your Story

The next step is to rewrite your one-sentence premise based on what you’ve learned from your first draft.

Here’s how to do it: Once you finish your first draft, set it aside for a week or two. Then go back and reread it. Take everything you’ve written and summarize it into a new, one-sentence premise. It should still contain those three elements we discussed above: a character, a situation, and a lesson.

Step #5: Cut Everything that Doesn’t Fit Your Premise. (Put Everything Else in the Next Book!)

You’ll have heard this bit of advice (variously attributed to Ernst Hemingway, Agatha Christie, and Stephen King) before: “Kill your darlings.”

Cut every scene that doesn’t fit your main premise. Anything that doesn’t build the character, fit the situation, or point to the life lesson in your premise should be cut.

This was the hardest part of finishing my memoir. I couldn’t help but try to pack more and more into my story, but when I tried to explain to people what my book was about, I found myself talking for five minutes before I ever got to the point.

You can’t do everything in one book. Instead, realize that this won’t be your last book. You can write another great memoir, even one about parallel events. Take everything that doesn’t fit this book and put it into the next one.

Step #6: Rewrite Each Scene Around an Important Decision

Now that you have only the most important scenes, you need to make them good !

To make sure every scene is driving the story forward, center each scene on a decision, a moment when you have to make a hard choice between two very good or two very bad things.

Not sure how to do this (or even what I’m talking about)? Here’s a guide on literary crisis that will help.

Step #7: Polish the Story with an Eye for Drama

Second drafts are for the structuring work we’re talking about in steps 4–6. Third (and sometimes fourth) drafts are for polish.

But when you polish, don’t just fix commas and typos. Also look for ways to enhance the drama of each scene, each paragraph, each sentence.

One of the most important changes I made to my memoir in the final draft was reorganizing the first paragraph to begin, “I was going to die there.” I had that phrase toward the end of the paragraph, but by bringing it to the beginning, it made the first impression so much stronger.

When you rewrite, look for the drama in your story and bring it to the front!

Writing an entertaining, instructive, emotionally powerful memoir is hard. I think it’s the hardest form, harder than a novel, non-fiction book, or short story.

But if you can avoid the temptation to tell everything , if you can focus instead on telling a really good story with the events in your life, you can write something that will inspire the world.

Don’t forget to to enjoy the process.

What is your favorite memoir? How did it move you? What did you learn from it? Let me know in the comments.

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Joe Bunting is the author of the new book _Crowdsourcing Paris_, a real life adventure story set in Paris.

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How to Write Your Memoir: A 5-Step Guide

Memoir is not just a fancy literary term for an autobiography. I say that from the start, because I so often hear the terms incorrectly interchanged.

Your memoir will be autobiographical, of course, but it can’t be about you.

Confused yet? Stay with me.

You may have heard both of these genres associated with creative nonfiction .

• What is Creative Nonfiction?

The term can seem confusing, but it’s all about telling a compelling true story while using the same kinds of elements found in good fiction to make it sing.

Creative Nonfiction is a term that can be applied to a wide array of genres,  including memoir, autobiography, biography, travel writing, personal essays, interviews, blogs, and more. Actually, it should be characteristic of almost any form of nonfiction.

In many ways, Creative Nonfiction reads like fiction while sticking to the facts. It allows you to tell a true story in a most compelling way by employing narrative elements like foreshadowing, backstory, dialog, conflict, tension, description, and more.

Such elements aren’t in themselves fictional. Your story remains absolutely true, but such tools enhance the reading experience.

Some nonfiction is designed primarily to educate and inform (think textbooks, how-to books, or self-help books), but would argue that even these can benefit from Creative Nonfiction techniques. Why not build a narrative that helps readers best relate to the content and become immersed in it?

Memoirs (from the French and Latin for “memory” or “remembrance”) by definition focus on your personal experience, intimacy with the reader, and reflecting both transferable principles and universal emotional truth.

That’s why, ironic as it may sound, a memoir should be as much about the reader as the writer. Yes, it’s your story, based on your experience, but unless readers see a bit of themselves in it, what’s the point? You will have written a book that is merely about something, rather than for the purpose of something.

So what can Creative Nonfiction bring to your memoir? Resonance. Relatability. Accessibility.

And how will it manifest itself? By triggering the theater of the readers’ minds so they can feel the story, imagine themselves in it, experience it with you.

Most importantly, convey your emotional truth . Show how your experiences, challenges, and lessons learned made you feel, how you coped, and the impact they had on your personal or spiritual growth.

• Autobiography vs. Memoir: What’s the Difference?

An autobiography is your life story from birth to the present.

A memoir is theme-oriented with anecdotes from your life that buttress a specific theme .

Too many authors write a memoir because they believe their lives are so interesting that even strangers would enjoy a detailed account .

Don’t misunderstand — maybe you are interesting.

All of us are, to some degree. I know hardly anyone who doesn’t have a story.

But unless you’re a celebrity, sorry but most people beyond your family and close friends aren’t likely to care.

They care about themselves and how your personal story might somehow benefit them.

So your theme must be reader-oriented, offering universal truth, transferable principles that will help them become a better person or get them through whatever crisis they might be facing.

The closest I have come to writing my own memoir, Writing for the Soul , uses selected anecdotes about famous and interesting people I’ve met to illustrate points I make about writing.

Had I merely written an autobiography and not offered writing instruction, it would’ve been largely ignored.

• Should You Write a Memoir?

While you don’t have to be famous to write a great memoir, you must tell a story that educates, entertains, and emotionally moves the reader.

You may write a memoir without intending to traditionally publish it. You might write it for only your family and friends.

I’m here to help, regardless your reason for writing your memoir.

• What Should Your Memoir Be About?

Your memoir should draw on anecdotes from your life to show how you progressed from some unlikely place to where you are today.

In that way, it’s about you, but it’s for the benefit of the reader.

Maybe you’re:

• From the other side of the tracks
• From a broken home
• A victim of abuse
• A recovered addict

Yet you have achieved:

• Financial security

You might start with how bad things once were for you and how unlikely it was that you would escape your situation.

Then you would show pivotal experiences and people important to your transformation, what you learned, and how your life changed.

Naturally, the better your stories and the more significant your change (in fiction, we call this a character arc ), the better your memoir.

However, great stories are not the point — and frankly, neither is the memoir writer (you).

The point is reader takeaway.

Readers should be able to apply to themselves and their own situations the larger truths and principles your theme imparts.

That way, you don’t have to awkwardly try to apply your message to them. Ideally, they’ll do that for themselves.

They may be enduring something entirely different from what you did, yet your story gives them hope.

• What Publishers Look For

Don’t buy into the idea that only famous people can sell a memoir. Sure, they might be able to get away with a recitation of their daily routines, because people are interested in the minutiae of the famous.

But memoirs by the largely unknown succeed for one reason: they resonate because readers identify with them.

Truth, especially the hard, gritty, painful stuff, bears that universal truth and those transferable principles I mentioned above.

Candor and self-revelation attracts readers, and readers are what publishers want .

Astute agents or publishers’ acquisitions editors recognize how relatable a memoir will be.

Agents and editors tell me they love to discover such gems — the same way they love discovering the next great novelist.

The key is a compelling story told with creative writing.

So, when writing your memoir…

Remember, you’re the subject, but it’s not really about you.

It may seem counterintuitive to think reader-first while writing in first person about yourself, but readers long to be changed by your story.

Give them insight about life through your experiences. Give them the tools they need to overcome their own struggles, even if they’re not at all like yours. Give them a model for overcoming.

Couch it in entertaining, educational, and emotional stories, and they’ll not only stay with you till the last page, but they’ll also recommend your memoir to their friends.

• How to Write a Memoir
• Settle On Your Theme
• Select Your Anecdotes
• Outline Your Book
• Write It Like a Novel
• Avoid Throwing People Under the Bus

Step 1. Settle On Your Theme

Your unstated theme must be, “You’re not alone. If I overcame this, you can overcome anything.”

That’s what appeals to readers. Even if they do come away from your memoir impressed with you, it won’t be because you’re so special — even if you are. Whether they admit it or not, readers care most about themselves.

They’re reading your memoir wondering, What’s in this for me? The more transferable principles you offer in a story well told, the more successful your book will be .

Cosmic Commonalities

All people, regardless of age, ethnicity, location, and social status, share certain felt needs: food, shelter, and love. They fear abandonment, loneliness, and the loss of loved ones. Regardless of your theme, if it touches on any of those needs and fears, readers can identify.

I can read the memoir of someone of my opposite gender, for whom English is not her first language, of a different race and religion, who lives halfway around the world from me — and if she writes of her love for her child or grandchild, it reaches me.

Knowing or understanding or relating to nothing else about her, I understand the love of family.

How to Write a Memoir Without Preaching

Trust your narrative to convey your message. Too many memoir writers feel the need to eventually turn the spotlight on the reader with a sort of “So, how about you…?”

Let your experiences and how they impacted you make their own points, and trust the reader to get it. Beat him over the head with your theme and you run him off.

You can avoid being preachy by using what I call the Come Alongside Method. Show what happened to you and what you learned, and if the principles apply to your readers, give them credit for being smart enough to get it.

Step 2. Select Your Anecdotes

The best memoirs let readers see themselves in your story so they can identify with your experiences and apply the lessons you’ve learned to their own lives.

If you’re afraid to mine your pain deeply enough to tell the whole truth, you may not be ready to write your memoir. There’s nothing a little less helpful — or marketable — than a memoir that glosses over the truth.

So, feature the anecdotes from your life that support your theme, regardless how painful it is to resurrect the memories. The more introspective and vulnerable you are, the more effective your memoir will be.

Create a list of events in your life and their impact on you. These may be major events like a war, your parents’ divorce, a graduation, a wedding, or the loss of a dear friend or relative.

But they may also be seemingly mundane life events that for some reason affected you deeply. Just make sure they support your theme.

Who is unforgettable and what role did they play in making you the person you’ve become?

Interview family and friends for different perspectives. Peruse photographs, revisit meaningful places, research dates, the weather, and relevant history.

Step 3. Outline Your Book

Without a clear vision, trying to write a memoir will likely end in disaster. There’s no substitute for an outline .

Potential agents or publishers require in your proposal a synopsis of where you’re going, and they also need to know that you know.

One that changed the course of my writing career is novelist Dean Koontz ’s Classic Story Structure, spelled out in his classic How to Write Bestselling Fiction . Though obviously intended as a framework for a novel , I discovered it applies perfectly to almost any genre (including TV sitcoms, if you can believe it).

And fortunately, for the purposes of my subject today, Koontz’s classic story structure serves a memoir beautifully too.

Here it is in a nutshell:

• Plunge your main character into terrible trouble as soon as possible
• Everything he does to try to get out of it makes it only progressively worse until…
• His situation appears hopeless
• But in the end, because of what he’s learned and how he’s grown through all those setbacks, he rises to the challenge and wins the day.

You might be able to structure your memoir the same way merely by how you choose to tell the story. As I say, don’t force things, but the closer you can get to that structure , the more engaging your memoir will be.

For your memoir, naturally, you’re the main character.

And the Terrible Trouble would be the nadir of your life . (If nadir is a new word for you, it’s the opposite of zenith .)

Take the reader with you to your lowest point, and show what you did to try to remedy things.

But what about that “as soon as possible” caveat?

Maybe your terrible trouble didn’t manifest itself until later in life.

Fine, start there. The backstory can emerge as you progress, but you’ll find his structure and sequencing will make for the most compelling read.

Important in fiction as well as in a memoir is to be sure your reader is invested in the main character enough to care when he is plunged into terrible trouble.

While in fiction that means some hint of the stakes — he’s a husband, a father, has suffered some loss, etc. If that’s also true of you, subtly inject it.

Also in a memoir, you want to promise a good outcome, some form of your own wonder at who you are now compared to who you once were or destined to be. That way, readers can take from your story that things can dramatically change for the better in their lives too.

One of the reasons this structure works so well in fiction is because it’s often true in real life.

If you’ve become a successful, happy person despite an unfortunate background, it’s likely that you tried many times to fix things, only to see them deteriorate until you developed the ability to break through.

All Koontz and I are saying is to emphasize that .

Keep your outline to a single page for now.

Then develop a synopsis with a sentence or two of what each chapter will cover.

Write this in the present tense. “I enroll in college only to find that…”

And don’t worry if you’ve forgotten the basics of classic outlining or have never felt comfortable with the concept.

It doesn’t have to be rendered in Roman numerals and capital and lowercase letters and then numerals, unless that serves you best.

Just a list of sentences that synopsize your idea works fine, too.

And remember, it’s a fluid document meant to serve you and your book. Play with it, rearrange it as you see fit — even during the writing.

Step 4. Write It Like a Novel

It’s as important in a memoir as it is in a novel to show and not just tell .

My father was a drunk who abused my mother and me. I was scared to death every time I heard him come in late at night.

As soon as I heard the gravel crunch beneath the tires, I dove under my bed.

I could tell by his footsteps whether Dad was sober and tired or loaded and looking for a fight.

I prayed God would magically make me big enough to jump between him and my mom, because she was always his first target…

Use every tool in the novelist’s arsenal to make each anecdote come to life: dialogue , description, conflict , tension , pacing, everything.

These will make sure you grab your readers’ attention and keep it — because these tools ensure that they’ll become engrossed in your story.

Worry less about chronology than theme.

You’re not married to the autobiographer’s progressive timeline.

Tell whatever anecdote fits your point for each chapter, regardless where they fall on the calendar.

Just make the details clear so the reader knows where you are in the story .

You might begin with the most significant memory of your life, even from childhood.

Then you can segue into something like, “Only now do I understand what was really happening.” Your current-day voice can always drop in to tie things together.

Character Arc

As in a novel, how the protagonist (in this case, you) grows is critical to a successful story. Your memoir should make clear the difference between who you are today and who you once were. What you learn along the way becomes your character arc .

Point of View

It should go without saying that you write a memoir in the first person . And just as in a novel, the point-of-view character is the one with the problem, the challenge, something he’s after. Tell both your outer story (what happens) and your inner story (its impact on you).

Setups and Payoffs

Great novels carry a book-length setup that demands a payoff in the end, plus chapter-length setups and payoffs, and sometimes even the same within scenes. The more of these the better.

The same is true for your memoir. Virtually anything that makes the reader stay with you to find out what happens is a setup that demands a payoff. Even something as seemingly innocuous as your saying that you hoped high school would deliver you from the torment of junior high makes the reader want to find out if that proved true.

Make ‘em Wait

Avoid using narrative summary to give away too much information too early. I’ve seen memoir manuscripts where the author tells in the first paragraph how they went from abject poverty to independent wealth in 20 years, “…and I want to tell you how that happened.”

To me, that takes the air right out of the tension balloon.

Many readers would agree and see no reason to continue reading.

Better to set them up for a payoff and let them wait.

Not so long that you lose them to frustration, but long enough to build tension.

Step 5. Avoid Throwing People Under the Bus

If you’re brave enough to expose your own weaknesses, foibles, embarrassments, and yes, even your failures to the world, what about your friends, enemies, loved ones, teachers, bosses, and coworkers?

If you tell the truth, are you allowed to throw them under the bus?

In some cases, yes.

But should you?

Even if they gave you permission in writing, what’s the upside?

Usually a person painted in a negative light — even if the story is true — would not sign a release allowing you to expose them publicly.

But even if they did, would it be the right, ethical, kind thing to do?

All I can tell you is that I wouldn’t do it. And I wouldn’t want it done to me.

If the Golden Rule alone isn’t reason enough not to do it, the risk of being sued certainly ought to be.

So, What to Do?

On one hand, I’m telling you your memoir is worthless without the grit. On the other, I’m telling you not to expose the evildoers.

Stalemate? No.

Here’s the solution:

Changing names to protect the guilty is not enough. Too many people in your family and social orbit will know the person, making your writing legally actionable.

So change more than just the name.

Change the location. Change the year. Change their gender. You could even change the offense .

If your own father verbally abused you so painfully when you were thirteen that you still suffer from the memory decades later, attribute it to a teacher and have it happen at an entirely different age.

Is that lying in a nonfiction book? Not if you include a disclaimer upfront that stipulates: “Some names and details have been changed to protect identities.”

So, no, don’t throw anyone under the bus. But don’t stop that bus!

• Common Memoir Mistakes

Making it too much like an autobiography

Memoirs aren’t a chronological history of everything that’s happened in your life. Make sure your theme is strong, compelling, and reader-focused. If the stories you include don’t speak to your theme, cut them.

Including minutiae

Use only the details that matter. Have a large family or circle of friends, only a few of whom were critical to your outcome? Leave most of them out. Avoid describing day-to-day experiences or descriptions unless they directly relate to your theme.

Your memoir isn’t the place for touting your achievements. You’ll turn readers off. Describe your challenges and emotional truths authentically. Own your successes but stay humble. Memoir is about the journey more than the destination.

Glossing over the truth

Writing a memoir will challenge you emotionally. It can be hard to revisit tough times or traumatic experiences — but unless you tell the whole truth, your readers won’t be able to relate and your story will fall flat.

How can you avoid sounding preachy or overbearing in your writing? Look for any time you use the words “must,” “should,” “ought,” or “have to,” and then find ways to reword your sentences using the Come Alongside Method to encourage, inspire, or suggest instead.

Affecting the wrong tone

Your memoir isn’t a place to be flippant, sarcastic, or condescending. You can be lighthearted at times, but use humor judiciously. Don’t try to cover up your emotional truth with lame jokes. Your story won’t feel authentic and your readers will lose interest.

• How to Start Your Memoir

Start slowly by setting the stage or explaining family dynamics and you’ll soon lose your reader’s attention.

Hook your reader from page one by beginning in medias res — in the middle of things. That doesn’t mean it has to be slam-bang action, but something must be happening.

Not sure exactly where to start ? No problem.

You don’t have to know the best beginning for your book in order to start writing — and you shouldn’t procrastinate indefinitely until you figure it out.

Instead, many memoir writers only discover their strongest potential opening as a last step. Decide what stories you’ll include, write those, and choose the best one once you see what you have to work with.

• Memoir Examples

Thoroughly immerse yourself in this genre before attempting to write in it. I read nearly 50 memoirs before I wrote mine ( Writing for the Soul ). Here’s a list to get you started:

• All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg (my favorite book ever)

The Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter tells the story of growing up dirt poor in Alabama with a father who had a “murderous temper” and a mother who went 18 years without a new dress to make sure her kids had a better life.

• Cultivate by Lara Casey

Part inspiration and part practical guide, Lara’s insight helps women who feel “inadequate, overwhelmed, and exhausted” to find grace through cultivating what matters most.

• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

One of Hemingway’s most beloved books, this memoir provides a fascinating snapshot of his life as a writer in 1920s Paris.

• Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

Modern Library named this classic book, written in 1937, as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time. In it, Karen describes her experiences running a coffee farm with her husband in Kenya in 1914.

• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

The history of Frank McCourt’s “miserable Irish Catholic childhood” and how stories helped him to survive slums and starvation and ultimately thrive as a professional storyteller.

• Still Woman Enough by Loretta Lynn

In a much anticipated follow-up to her first memoir, Coal Miner’s Daughter , Loretta tells the story of the second half of her life. She writes about the stresses of fame and candidly discusses her often turbulent relationship with the husband she married at age 13.

• Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

A moving and insightful look into one of the greatest comedians ever — including Steve’s creative process, his incredible work ethic, and why he walked away during the height of his career.

• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Didion’s story of marriage, family life, and unexpected tragedy will touch anyone who’s ever loved and lost a spouse or child.

• This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff

After divorce splits his family, a young Toby Woolf runs away to Alaska, forges checks, and steals cars — then redefines his life.

• Molina by Benjie Molina and Joan Ryan

The story of a father who raised 3 famous major league baseball catchers and left a legacy of “loyalty, humility, courage, and the true meaning of success.”

• Undone by Michele Cushatt

Michele’s story of divorce, cancer, and integrating a new family shows readers how embracing faith and letting go of the need to control can lead to a vibrant life despite chaos and messiness.

• Will the Circle Be Unbroken? By Sean Dietrich

Sean’s story of love, loss, and the unthinkable gives readers hope for a future that breaks the destructive cycles of previous generations.

• Turn Your Life Story Into a Captivating Memoir

If you’ve ever thought about writing a memoir (or wondered if you should even try), you now have everything you need.

Think about your theme. What have you learned that could help others? How will you tell your stories to inspire your readers and change lives?

Brush up on the 7 essential story elements to make sure your memoir is as relatable as possible.

And once you’re ready to get started, head over to How to Outline a Nonfiction Book in 5 Steps .

Are You Making This #1 Amateur Writing Mistake?

Faith-Based Words and Phrases

What You and I Can Learn From Patricia Raybon

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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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• A Research Guide
• Writing Guide
• Essay Writing

How to Write a Memoir Essay

• The seedier side of town
• A broken family home
• A tumultuous or abusive relationship
• Addiction or substance abuse
• The social service system
• In a position of power
• Fit or healthy
• Open to faith

Tips How to Write a Memoir Essay – Step by step

• Understand your theme, and stick to it: Remember that no one cares that you’ve ‘made something of yourself’, except for your mom and maybe a handful of other close friends and relatives who already know and love you.
• Find a Common Ground
• Pick your Anecdotes Carefully
• Write your Memoir like You Would Write a Novel
• Share your story, but don’t steamroll people

What is the difference between a Memoir vs. Autobiography

• less formal
• less inclusive
• focused more on emotional truth and how it has shaped the current life of the writer
• less strict to factual events
• Written by the subject, or with a collaborating writer
• A chronological account of the entire life of the subject
• Extremely fact based

Tips for Writing a Well-Written Memoir

• Don’t make it too much like an autobiography. Stick to your theme.
• Don’t include minutiae. (Small, insignificant details that no one cares about)
• Try not to gloat or brag.
• Don’t gloss over the truth. Yes, you can change identifying details so that you don’t expose the people you are writing about, but don’t outright lie.
• Try not to sound to ‘preachy’ or like you are far superior to those around you.

Some Remarkable Memoir Examples

• Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
• Trafficked by Sophie Hayes
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Dancing to the Beat of the Drum by Pamela Nomvete
• The Girl from Foreign  by Sadia Shepard

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Memoir Writing Resources

Learn tips and tricks from accomplished memoirists about how to write your own memoir, it is important to claim your story, own it, and tell it how you want to tell it. memoir writing can be hard though, so we’ve compiled a list of past and upcoming programs, podcasts, and blogs with writers who have written memoirs. discover how to write a memoir, what to do when you’re stuck, and other advice for writing a memoir. writing a memoir is about telling your own story, but you don’t have to do it alone…the writers in the american writers museum can inspire you, upcoming memoir writing events.

Making Up True Stories: Novels and Books About Real People

Fiction/Genre Stage - Reception Hall, Harold Washington Library Center

Writing Memoir

VIEW ALL UPCOMING AUTHOR EVENTS

Explore Exhibits

Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice

Our current special exhibit, on display now, honors the significant impact of Black writers by examining the work of Black American writers from the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights Movement. During this time, slave narratives emerged as a fascinating political tool that allowed many people to give voice to the struggles of enslaved people to white audiences. Visit the exhibit to dive into iconic slave narratives by Harriet Jacobs, Booker T. Washington, and more. Plan your visit today !

Classroom resources are available to download as well.

Pauli Murray: Survival With Dignity

Pauli Murray was a poet, a lawyer, a priest, a freight hopper, Eleanor Roosevelt’s friend, arrested for refusing to comply with bus segregation laws, a closeted member of the LBGTQ+ community, a professor, and so much more. They also wrote two memoirs: a family history titled Proud Shoes and a more traditional memoir titled Song in a Weary Throat . Dive into the online exhibit to learn more about Murray’s life and work, and be sure to explore the interactive map that highlights important events in their life and career.

My America: Immigrant & Refugee Writers Today

Explore our temporary exhibit, now available in its entirety online, to see how immigrant and refugee writers have written memoirs to not only share their stories and represent their homes and people, but also to better understand their journeys and find community. Discover the role writing—and memoir writing in particular—has played a role in the lives of some of the featured writers as they navigate themes of home, community, language, and more. Plus many more stories and truths from writers across genres!

Watch contemporary writers, scholars, and activists read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in its entirety. Douglass’s memoir is read by Jacqueline Woodson, Mikki Kendall, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and more.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Chapter I

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Chapter II

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Chapter III

Advice for writing a memoir on awm author talks.

Throughout the years we’ve hosted many memoirists for public programs, as well as writers who typically work in other genres but who wrote their own memoir. Check out some of our favorite episodes below, and stream all AWM Author Talks episodes here .

Saeed Jones How We Fight for Our Lives

“If America was going to hate me for being Black and gay, then I might as well make a weapon out of myself [with writing].”

Natasha Trethewey Memorial Drive

“This is the situation I was in: a difficult childhood, a tragic loss when I was nineteen. That was the situation, but it took a very long time to figure out what story I had to tell.”

Keah Brown The Pretty One

“In writing this book it was…a way for me to teach people about the identity of disability and what it’s like to live in my own disabled body and help change the perceptions that people have about disability.”

Gary Paulsen Gone to the Woods

“The reason [my memoir] is third person…I thought by getting detached a little bit I could have more clarity. And it worked.”

Learn how to write a memoir from greats of the past on these episodes of  Nation of Writers

• Maya Angelou : Before becoming a writer, Angelou worked many odd jobs, including as a fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, and actress. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , which tells some of those stories, brought her international recognition.
• Reinaldo Arenas : Due to his open homosexuality and anti-Castro themes in his writing, Arenas was exiled from Cuba and escaped to the U.S. in 1980. Sadly, he became a victim of the AIDS epidemic, contracting the disease and ultimately ending his life after finishing his memoir Before Night Falls .
• Anthony Bourdain : Perhaps best known for his work in television, Bourdain flipped the restaurant industry on its head in 2000 with the publication of his searing, no-holds-barred memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly .

Stream all episodes of  Nation of Writers here.

Memoir Writing Tips and Tricks from the American Writers Festival

Watch these videos recorded live at the American Writers Festival for insights into memoir writing, as well as what to do when you feel stuck or the memories are too painful to engage with.

Ashley C. Ford and Dr. Eve L. Ewing - American Writers Festival

In her memoir Somebody’s Daughter , Ashley C. Ford steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana with a family fragmented by incarceration, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be.

Will Jawando - American Writers Festival

Will Jawando discusses his book My Seven Black Fathers: A Young Activist’s Memoir of Race, Family, and the Mentors Who Made Him Whole , a deeply affirmative story of hope and respect for men of color at a time when Black men are routinely stigmatized.

Blogs by writers about the memoir writing process and journey

Check out some Q&As and op-eds from memoir writers we have worked with in the past, and access all of our blogs here .

Tim O’Brien Dad’s Maybe Book

“I needed to do something with the pain, I needed to put it somewhere…A couple years later I had my first book which is a war memoir, three-quarters of which was written without the intent of writing a book. It was written mostly for me.”

Julissa Arce Someone Like Me

“As a writer, I am constantly asked to make my stories more relevant, but relevant to whom? To make them less angry, but it’s not anger that is etched on my words, it is truth…But all I want to do is write stories that make sense to other people like me.”

Elliot Ackerman Places and Names

“When I’m writing, if it’s going well, I am feeling something as I put the story on the page. And if you, as a reader,…feel what I felt despite the fact we’ve never met, despite our differences, this act is an assertion of our shared humanity.”

Rebecca Deng What They Meant for Evil

“Writing was really healing for me in a way because I was writing and had to think deeply and it took me to memories that I didn’t want to go to. A couple of times I would cry but then keep writing. And the whole process now that I look back was so healing.”

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4.2.1: Memoir or Personal Narrative- Learning Lessons from the Personal

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Figure \(4.1\) Personal narratives and memoirs give the narrator’s perspective on a life experience. Here, a Florida family is having a makeshift meal together at a shelter set up during Hurricane Charley in 2004 for people who had to evacuate their homes. How do you imagine the parents and children are feeling and getting along during this time? What might the children, now adults, say about their memories of the hurricane? Family relationships and living through natural disasters are frequent subjects of personal writing. (credit: “Photograph by Mark Wolfe” by Mark Wolfe/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Chapter Outline

• 4.2.1.1: Exploring the Past to Understand the Present
• 4.2.1.2: Trailblazer
• 4.2.1.3: Glance at Genre- Conflict, Detail, and Revelation

Introduction

Since pen was first put to paper, authors have been recording their personal experiences in order to perpetuate them, share meaningful lessons learned, or simply entertain an audience. Indeed, even as far back as Roman ruler Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), who wrote accounts of his epic battles, authors have written to preserve history, seek acclaim for accomplishments, and pass down wisdom. Writing about your own life can feel alternately satisfying, terrifying, and exhilarating. It allows you to share meaningful personal experiences, to reflect on them, and to connect on a new level with your audience. Personal writing can reveal more than just events you’ve experienced—it tells your audience who you are as you relate personal experiences to convey humor, compassion, fears, and beliefs.

Language Lens Icon

A personal narrative is a form of nonfiction writing in which the author recounts an event or incident from their life. A memoir is a type of nonfiction writing in which the author tells a first-person version of a time period or an event in their life. Because the two genres, or forms of writing, share more similarities than differences, they are covered here together. Personal writing, whether a narrative or a memoir, is an opportunity to share your lived experiences with readers. A personal narrative tells a story and often includes memories and anecdotes (short, amusing, or interesting stories about something that happened in real life) to relate events and ideas. Like all good writing, personal narratives have an overarching theme (message you want to impart to your readers) and a purpose beyond the story itself. Although personal narratives usually follow the traditional narrative arc of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, personal writing has several unique features. Unlike some forms of academic writing, personal writing welcomes the use of first-person point of view (narrator participates in events), and narratives and memoirs often have a narrow focus.

The key to effective personal writing is to know your audience and purpose. You may write to relay an event, to teach a lesson, or to explore an idea. You may write to help provide relief from stages of deep emotion (a process called catharsis ), to evoke an emotional response, or simply to entertain readers. Above all, a personal narrative or memoir tells about an individual's experience or a series of events in a way that emotionally engages readers. The more clearly and vividly you share your experience, the more likely readers will be moved.

This chapter presents an excerpt from American writer Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (1883), a memoir about his years as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Studying this text and Twain’s use of the components of personal narrative will help you understand how authors create meaningful accounts of personal events. Later in the chapter, you too will create a personal narrative about an important event in your life.4

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.

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How To Write An Autobiography

How To Write A Memoir

How To Write A Memoir - A Beginner's Guide

11 min read

Published on: Aug 29, 2021

Last updated on: Mar 25, 2024

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So, you want to tell your life story? Writing a memoir can be an incredibly rewarding experience, allowing you to reflect on your past, share your unique experiences, and connect with others on a deeply personal level. 

Whether you're an aspiring memoir writer or simply want to preserve your memories for future generations, this guide will help you start on your memoir-writing journey.

Let’s dive in!

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What is a Memoir

A memoir is a genre of literature that focuses on the author's life, offering intimate reflections on personal experiences. It focuses on emotional resonance and explores the significance of events rather than providing a comprehensive overview.

On the other hand, autobiographies chronicle an author's entire life, from birth to the present or a significant point. They follow a chronological structure and aim to provide a comprehensive record of the author's achievements, relationships, and experiences.

A brief examination of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love , and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin underscores the profound differences between memoirs vs. autobiographies.

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How To Start A Memoir? 

Here is how to begin your memoir on the right foot:

• Begin with a captivating moment.
• Write the opening last, after exploring your story.
• Craft a compelling first paragraph.
• Infuse humor or wit early on.
• Connect personally with your readers.
• Use sensory details to immerse them.
• Start with a memorable quote or anecdote.
• Pose an intriguing question or statement.
• Create anticipation for what's to come.

Steps on How to Write a Memoir 

If you've lived a life full of interesting experiences and want to share them with others, writing a memoir is a great way to do it. 

Here's how to write a memoir for students.

Step 1. Reflect on Your Life and Narrow Your Focus

Before you start writing, take the time to reflect on significant moments, experiences, and themes in your life. Consider what story you want to tell and what message you hope to convey. It's essential to narrow down your focus to specific events or periods that best illustrate your central theme.

Step 2. Identify Your Central Theme 

Every memoir has a central theme or message that ties the narrative together. This theme could revolve around personal growth, resilience, overcoming adversity, or self-discovery. 

Identifying your central theme will help guide your storytelling and give your memoir a clear focus.

Step 3. Outline Your Story

Creating an outline is an important step in organizing your memoir and shaping its narrative arc. 

Outline the key events, emotions, and characters you want to include, and consider the chronological order or thematic structure that best suits your story.

Step 4. Be Honest and Vulnerable

Honesty and vulnerability are essential qualities of a compelling memoir. Share your experiences, thoughts, and emotions authentically, even if they make you feel exposed or uncomfortable. 

Readers appreciate raw honesty and connect more deeply with narratives that ring true.

Step 5. Put Your Readers in Your Shoes 

Effective memoirs allow readers to step into the shoes of the author, experiencing their journey firsthand. 

Use vivid sensory details, descriptive language, and introspective reflections to immerse readers in your world and evoke empathy and understanding.

Step 6. Employ Elements of Fiction

While memoirs are rooted in truth, incorporating elements of fiction can enhance the storytelling experience. Use dialogue, scene-setting, and narrative techniques to bring your memories to life and create a vivid, immersive narrative for your readers.

Step 7. Create an Emotional Journey 

A compelling memoir takes readers on an emotional journey, eliciting a range of feelings and reactions along the way. Infuse your narrative with moments of joy, sorrow, humor, and introspection to engage readers on a deeper emotional level.

Step 8. Showcase Your Personal Growth

A memoir is not just a recollection of past events but also a testament to personal growth and transformation. Reflect on how your experiences have shaped you as an individual and share insights into the lessons learned along the way.

H2- Memoir Examples 

Looking for inspiration or guidance on your memoir? Reading examples of well-written memoirs can be a great way to learn how to craft your own.

Check out these examples of powerful and moving memoirs.

• " Angela's Ashes " by Frank McCourt is a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir that recounts McCourt's impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland, and his family's struggle for survival amidst hardship and loss.
• " The Motorcycle Diaries " by Ernesto "Che" Guevara documents Guevara's transformative motorcycle journey across South America, offering insights into his political awakening and ideological evolution.
• " Bossypants " by Tina Fey is a humorous and insightful memoir that offers a behind-the-scenes look at Fey's rise to prominence in comedy, from her early days in improv to her tenure at Saturday Night Live and beyond.
• " When Breath Becomes Air " by Paul Kalanithi is a profound memoir that chronicles Kalanithi's journey from neurosurgeon to terminal cancer patient. Kalanithi reflects on life, mortality, and the pursuit of meaning in the face of death.
• " Persepolis " by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic memoir that depicts Satrapi's coming-of-age in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution. Through stark black-and-white illustrations, Satrapi explores themes of identity, politics, and freedom.
• " The Diary of a Young Girl " by Anne Frank is a timeless memoir that captures Frank's experiences hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. Frank's diary offers a poignant and intimate glimpse into the life of a young girl grappling with fear, hope, and resilience.
• " Just Mercy " by Bryan Stevenson is a powerful memoir that chronicles Stevenson's work as a lawyer advocating for marginalized communities and challenging systemic injustice within the criminal justice system.
• " The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks " by Rebecca Skloot tells the true story of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cells were taken without her consent and used for groundbreaking medical research. Skloot explores the ethical implications of scientific discovery and the enduring legacy of Lacks' cells, known as HeLa cells.
• " Girl, Interrupted " by Susanna Kaysen is a memoir that offers a candid and compelling account of Kaysen's experiences as a young woman in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. Through her introspective narrative, Kaysen reflects on mental illness, institutionalization, and the search for identity.
• " Brooklyn: A Memoir " by Colm Toibin is a reflective memoir that explores Toibin's upbringing in 1950s Ireland and his journey to America. Through vivid storytelling and poignant introspection, Toibin captures the complexities of immigration, identity, and belonging.

These memoirs encompass a wide range of experiences and perspectives, offering readers insight into the human condition and the power of storytelling.

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In conclusion, writing a memoir can be a challenging but rewarding experience. Following these tips can help you create a memoir that is engaging, authentic, and meaningful. In addition, our AI essay writer can provide you with excellent results!

If you're struggling to write your memoir or any other type of essay, don't hesitate to reach out to our essay writing service.  

Our team of experienced writers can help you craft a high-quality essay that meets your specific needs and requirements. 

With our reliable essay writing service online , you can focus on sharing your unique voice and story with the world.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the 5 parts of a memoir.

The five parts of the memoir are: 

• Theme 
• Truth 
• Voice 
• Musing 

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As a Digital Content Strategist, Nova Allison has eight years of experience in writing both technical and scientific content. With a focus on developing online content plans that engage audiences, Nova strives to write pieces that are not only informative but captivating as well.

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30+ Memoir Topic Ideas + Tips for Choosing One

Updated 11/19/2021

Published 06/26/2020

Sam Tetrault, BA in English

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A memoir is a personal account of your life, an experience, or anything that shapes you into the person you are today. There are a lot of examples of some of the best memoirs out there, but have you ever considered writing your own?

Jump ahead to these sections: 

Personal memoir topic ideas, tips for choosing the best memoir topic, tips for starting your memoir.

There are no rules when it comes to writing your own memoir. You can choose any topic you’d like, and there are no restrictions on how you write your life story . This is a great writing exercise for students, older adults, and everyone in between. 

By taking the time to write about an experience that matters to you, you also do a lot of self-reflection. This could shine a light on how you want to be remembered, your legacy, and any changes you’d like to make in your life. 

There are so many important things you’ll recognize only once you begin writing. Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, here are 30+ memoir topic ideas and tips for choosing the right one for you. 

If you're interested in unique ways to continue the legacy of a loved one, you can consider a custom urn from a store like Foreverence  or even have a memorial diamond made from ashes with a company like  Eterneva .

A personal memoir is something that’s meaningful for you. This could be an interesting event, a life-changing moment, or even just a bit of internal reflection. Again, there are no rules. Let these ideas be your guide. 

Ideas for middle school and high school students

A memoir is an excellent writing exercise for students in middle school and high school. Though these students might not have a lot of life experience, they still have unique perspectives on the world. Capturing these ideas in writing is worth its weight in gold. 

1. A major life event

We all experience major life events, even as children. What major life event defines your life, and how can you grow from it? It could be a transition from middle school to high school, a parent’s divorce, or even a vacation. These are the memories that define who we are. 

2. Your favorite place

Where do you find the most comfort? Is it at home in your bedroom or outside somewhere special? Why does this space have so much meaning for you, and how do you spend your time here? Share an experience you’ve had here.

3. Your best day

Best days might not come around all that often, but they sure are memorable when they do. Share one of the best days you’ve ever had, who you were with, and what you did. What made this moment so special?

4. Favorite food

Food is one of the things that bind people together. What food speaks the most to you, and why does it have such an important place in your heart? What does food mean within your family?

5. Favorite teacher

Teachers impact the way we think, and their role transcends the classroom. Who was your most memorable teacher? What stood out about them, and how do you work hard to make them proud?

6. Favorite book

Everyone has a book they’ve read that stuck with them. Humans share who they are through stories. Like the memoir itself, this book plays a role in who you’ve become. What book is your favorite, and what does it mean to you?

7. Most prized possession

This topic is like show-and-tell in written form. What item do you hold in the highest esteem? Is it a beloved shirt or a prize from a sporting event? Where do you keep this item, what does it look like, and what place does it hold in your heart?

8. Your favorite class or subject

No matter your feelings about school, there are bound to be some classes or subjects that stood out to you. What inspired you about these lessons? What have you learned, and how will you use these teachings moving forward?

Who are your closest friends? When did you become friends, and what keeps you close? Exploring these relationships in a memoir is a wonderful tribute to those who matter the most. 

10. Favorite holiday

Holidays have a lot of meaning around the world. Which holidays matter the most to you? What do these say about your family, culture, and personality? What is your favorite way to celebrate?

Ideas for college students

College students are at a defining moment in their lives. They have a lot of responsibility, but they’re not quite on their own in the “real world” just yet. This is the perfect transition point for some reflection through a memoir. 

11. Major or focus

In college, most students define a major or area of study. What major did you choose, and what significance does this have for you? Where do you see yourself in a few years using this major?

12. First love or friendship

We’ll never forget our earliest relationships. Share a time when you fell in love or had a close friendship. What did this relationship mean to you? How did you feel in the moment, and how do you feel now?

13. Obituary

While this might sound odd, a common writing exercise is to write your own obituary. An obituary or death announcement is a way to share your legacy on the world. Though you hope to have many happy years ahead, what do you want to include in your obituary ?

What is your most memorable travel experience? From spring break with friends to family holidays in nearby cities, the places we experience often define us. What have you learned from your journeys both near and far?

15. Hometown

If you’re no longer in your hometown, reflect on what this means to you. Was your hometown somewhere to escape from or to? How has moving away for college affected your relationship with this place?

Describe an experience of loss. Whether you lost someone you love, a pet, or even just a favorite sweater, we all experience these feelings in our own ways. What does loss mean to you?

17. Grandparents

Talking to our grandparents is one of the best ways to bridge gaps between generations. Talk to your grandparents about their experience in college or at your age. How does this compare to your own experience?

18. First job

What was your first job like? When did you receive your first paycheck, and what did this experience mean to you? If you’ve never worked a “real” job, what do you imagine it will be like? Describe a volunteer, academic, or professional experience. 

19. Future you

Write a memoir from the perspective of your future self. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? 20 years? How will this version of yourself look different? What will they have accomplished?

20. Failure

Though difficult to write about, it’s important to reflect on our weaknesses just as much as our strengths. Have you ever failed in your life? How did you move on from this, and what did you learn along the way?

Ideas for older adults

As someone with more life experience, there’s a lot of room to reflect as an older adult. Here are some ideas to get those creative juices flowing as you drift down memory lane. 

How exactly do you want to be remembered by friends and family? What have you accomplished that you’re most proud of, and how will this affect your legacy?

What is your favorite hobby? Describe your experience learning this hobby and becoming a part of the culture. How does it affect your day-to-day life?

23. Life’s passion

While most people have a variety of passions, try to define a single, key passion that defines your life. Limiting it to one helps you focus on what matters most. 

24. Historical event

Have you witnessed any historical events? Things like national disasters, wars, rights movements, and so on are all once-in-a-lifetime experiences. How did they affect you, and what is your perspective on these happenings?

25. Paradigm shift

Was there ever a moment where your point of view changed drastically? Did it stem from someone, something, or a single experience? Describe this moment. 

26. Trip abroad

If you’ve traveled abroad, write about your experience in a new place and surrounded by an unfamiliar culture. What do you remember the most? What lessons did you take with you back home?

What is your relationship with change? Is it something you welcome with open arms or run from? Evaluate how your relationship with change has adapted over time. 

28. Built a home

What does “home” mean to you? Is it the place you grew up or somewhere you built for yourself? Define what home means to you and how you’ve built your own home life. 

While your career isn’t everything, it does say something about you and the life you lead. How has your career affected your life, and what doors has it opened or closed?

30. Life story

Finally, consider sharing your entire life story. If you’re not sure where to start, try the beginning. Each of us has a story to tell, no matter how big or small. 

There are no one-size-fits-all questions for sparking your memoir topic. Follow these tips below to find the right fit for you. 

Writing time and experience

Before you begin, consider how much time you have to dedicate to writing. While writing your life story might be a great goal, this should only be attempted if you have the time to follow through. Otherwise, choose something with shorter writing requirements like sharing an experience. 

Brainstorm before you begin

If you’re not sure where to start, simply start brainstorming or journaling. Often you’ll find the answer in what you write here. What are you drawn to most naturally? Where do your thoughts focus the most? This is where your story lies. 

Choose multiple topics

There are no rules that you only have to stick to one memoir topic. You could write a series of essays that discuss many of the topics above. There is no need to worry about them fitting together perfectly. Life isn’t a highlight’s reel. It’s raw and imperfect, and that’s okay.

Sometimes, the hardest part about starting a memoir is just that: getting started. While you need to have a solid overarching story, you also need to make a strong impression on readers early on. Like all forms of writing and craftsmanship, this process can be intimidating. 

The good news is it’s okay to be messy, to make mistakes, and to figure it out as you go. For inspiration, follow these tips for starting your memoir. 

Start with action

While it’s tempting to start your memoir off with backstory or context, this doesn’t necessarily draw readers into the story. Instead, begin in the middle of the action. There will always be time for context and further explanations later. 

Engage your audience in the work from the first moment, grabbing the reader’s attention. Whether you begin at an important decision-making moment, on a trip abroad, or wrapped in a moment of passion, make every inch of the page count. 

Treat your reader like a friend

Spilling your truth on the page is no easy feat. Because a memoir is your own story, it’s normal to feel anxiety about letting these feelings out from deep inside. One helpful tip for starting your memoir is to treat the reader like a trusted friend. 

This is someone you confide in regularly, and you know you can trust them. They won’t meet you with judgment or confusion. They’re just present in the moment, listening to what you have to share. When you place your trust in the reader, they feel that trust as well. 

Borrow from fiction writers

While you don’t want to borrow elements of stories, borrow writing techniques from your favorite fiction writers. Who said nonfiction had to read like a textbook? The best memoirs all tell a story creatively, relying on traditional fiction techniques to paint the narrative. 

Just like with fiction, create a structure for your story. This includes a strong opening, middle, climax, and resolution. Even a truthful memoir needs a clear course for readers to follow. Take inspiration from other memoirs, fictional stories, and the tales that inspire you. What can you learn from other authors?

Write for yourself

Most importantly, write for yourself. Writing your own memoir can be a healing process. When you write your own stories, even if they’re never shared, you let go of this weight inside ourselves. 

While you shouldn’t look exclusively inward, don’t focus so much on the reader that you lose sight of yourself. Invite your reader into these real-life moments. Let them exist inside them for a little while, even if it’s only on borrowed time.

Above all, write the story you have to tell. Everyone has something inside of them that wants to be let out. Your memoir is an opportunity to share that truth with a blank page, even if this is something you don’t share with others. 

Start Writing Your Memoir

There’s nothing holding you back from writing your memoir. As long as you’re willing to put the words to paper, you can get started today. You don’t need any formal training or writing experience to get started. Memoirs are written by people from all backgrounds and walks of life. 

You don’t need to worry about your story being “good enough” or “exciting enough.” A true story is a worthy story, no matter how it’s told. Let these 30+ topics above be your guide. From there, the page is yours to explore.

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Writing Your Memoir: A How-To Guide for Seniors

Have you thought about leaving something of value behind for the people you love? Something even more personal than your personal assets? You might want to consider writing a memoir. You don’t have to be a professional writer or someone with connections in publishing. In fact, if you don’t try to be a “writer” and simply be yourself, you’ll be able to preserve your voice and your perspective for all time. And it’s always your choice whether to publish it or not. The act of writing a memoir is a reward in itself, but it doesn’t hurt to come to the task with some basic understanding and a few memoir writing tips in your pocket. Let’s find out what memoir writing is all about.

What a memoir is, what it isn’t, and what you need to begin.

Is a memoir the story of your entire life? No, that would be a book-length autobiography. A memoir is a much shorter story — it can even be a personal essay — that illuminates one specific aspect of your life. A good, tight memoir takes place during one particular period of time, or one certain set of events. Because of this, you must make a series of reducing decisions. Everyone and everything in your life doesn’t belong in your memoir. You need only include those people and things that are relevant and that coalesce around a single theme — mercy, honor, growth, transcendence, patriotism, love, or whatever it is you feel about this particular episode.

You can write about something from your childhood or a place you’ve visited. You can write about an injustice you encountered, or an unexpectedly happy occasion. A memoir can be about anything, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential. You don’t have to search intensely to find episodes you think are “important” enough to be worthy of including in your memoir. Just look for small, self-contained incidents that are important to you and still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, they have meaning for you, and they may contain something readers will recognize in their own lives. Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance — not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.

Memoir writing is about sharing honestly what you think and feel; it’s writing about something you’ve gone through with the possibility that someone else may learn something from it. It’s also a way for you to learn and understand what you really think about these events that have stayed with you for so long.

Tell your story, but don’t make yourself the hero.

To the extent that you refer to yourself in the narrative, don’t paint yourself as faultless. It comes across as insincere and it doesn’t accurately display the growth and insight that gives your memoir its power. If you skim over your own mistakes or shortcomings, the story will feel superficial, and it’ll be hard for any reader to relate. Don’t use your memoir to air old grievances or settle old scores; get rid of that anger somewhere else. The best memoirs are written with a sense of love and forgiveness about something that might have meaning beyond just yourself. So, how do you begin?

Find your theme.

The theme is the universal takeaway from your memoir; it’s how someone else will relate to your personal story. How do you find it? Look back at your life and think about critical choices, influential people, key conflicts, lasting beliefs, changing beliefs, lessons learned, and maybe even mistakes you’ve made. Plot your life’s most significant moments. Look for one pivotal event that stands out as particularly intriguing or meaningful. If you don’t see one, don’t worry. Just look inward and feel the different turning points in your life. Eventually, you’ll find a story that wants to be told — the one experience that led to who you’ve become today.

Interview yourself.

Now that you know what you’ll be writing about and when it happened, sink into your memories, and see if you can uncover something new about it all. Just attempting this may yield new insights or ideas on how you want to structure your story. Collect the key moments of your narrative. Unlike an autobiography, a memoir distills just those relevant moments from a particular event in your life to illuminate your theme. Find the moments of highest emotion … the most important moments on this particular timeline … the moments that changed you.

Be as accurate as you can.

Fact-check everything that can be fact-checked. Dates, names, places, the weather … if you mention any kind of event or anything that would have been in the news, you can fact-check to see if it actually happened the way you remember it. Revisit locations to make sure you’re portraying them accurately. Look through newspapers and photos from that time and place. All this will jog your memory to help you mine for additional details, and also give you an objective reference against which to compare how you remember things. When you’ve done your research, write out a timeline of events to make sure you have everything in order in your mind. If you’re not able to figure something out, don’t make it up … especially if it’s something that could possibly be fact-checked. If you as the author don’t do it, someone else may. Being incorrect about verifiable facts takes away from the credibility of your story.

In medias res.

This Latin term means “in the midst of things.” It’s a narrative technique that, with no preamble or chronological setup, plunges the reader into a crucial situation that’s part of a related chain of events. So, you might start your memoir at a moment of high tension or deep importance that captures the essence of your theme. Then, take readers back to the beginning and work forward to that crucial moment. Telling your story in strict chronological order can come off as predictable and less interesting.  

What was said and done, exactly?

Go for a balance of dialogue and expository detail. Precisely what was said? It’s not always possible to know. It’s rare, if not impossible, to remember the words of everyone involved in actions that may have occurred years ago. Try to think how you felt in the moment. Think of the others who were part of this scene. Recreate dialogue as best you can, and keep it as true to the moment as possible. Don’t twist anyone’s persona. Don’t worry about making what you write perfect. Just relax and focus on getting the story out. There’ll be time to polish it later.

Feedback is important.

Finally, when you think you’re done, but before you actually stop writing, be sure to get some outside opinions of your memoir — from friends or family who are familiar with, or were present at the events you describe, as well as from people unfamiliar with anything in your story. They’ll be able to see it more objectively and determine whether it’s a compelling narrative that stands on its own without the bias of having been in the story themselves. Consider carefully what they tell you, then revisit your draft and make adjustments accordingly.

You might want to enroll in the memoir writing class at The Glebe

A memoir is a portal to self-discovery. Everyone has stories to tell, and telling them teaches us who we are and what we think and feel about things. Living at The Glebe in Southwest Virginia gives senior adults the chance to do this every day.

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How to Write a Memoir Outline: 7 Essential Steps

POSTED ON Nov 22, 2020

Written by Joe Bunting

How do you write a memoir outline that not only results in a really captivating book about your life, but also saves you hundreds of hours? 

You know that you have a story to tell, but you don’t know how to get started with writing it. 

Hint: It starts with a memoir outline. 

But what should you include in a memoir outline? How do you structure it? What information should you add? 

When I was writing my memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , these are the questions that occurred to me about six months too late, after I had already finished the first draft. It was only then that I realized what my so-so memoir needed to become a great memoir: an outline.

And so I set out to figure out how to write the perfect memoir outline. In this post, I want to share exactly what I learned, and how you can write a memoir outline that will save you time and increase your story’s quality. 

Need A Fiction Book Outline?

Here are the steps to write a memoir outline:

• Know when to create a memoir outline
• Write your memoir idea as a one-sentence premise
• Find the big moments in your memoir
• Add the first act to your memoir outline
• Build the outline with the second act
• Include your memoir’s final act
• Structure each scene for your memoir outline

Learning how to write a memoir outline will help you have a better memoir in a fraction of the time. How do I know? Because I tried to write a memoir—a real-life adventure story set in Paris—without an book outline and failed. Then, I began to learn how to outline a memoir, and it changed my entire writing process.

#1 – Know when to create a memoir outline

The biggest mistake I made when I was writing my memoir was in creating my outline too late. 

Honestly, I should have known better. This wasn’t my first book, it was my fifth, and each of those books relied heavily on outlines, so I knew how to write an outline.

But writing a memoir felt different. After all, it was a story about the experience I had in Paris. All I had to do was remember , right? How hard could it be?

And so it wasn’t until after I had written the first draft of my memoir that I finally realized I wouldn’t be able to make it good without writing an outline.

So when is the best time to create a memoir outline? The answer: as early as possible. 

Let me break it down:

If you’re thinking about writing a memoir, start with learning how to write a memoir outline.

If you’re in the middle of your memoir, take a step back and create an outline using the process below. 

And if you’ve already finished your memoir and are thinking about next steps, it’s not too late to create your outline to help finetune your manuscript. 

Outlining your memoir will help you at every stage of the process. 

Even if you identify more with the pantsers on the planner vs pantser spectrum , having some kind of outline using the elements below will help you.

Here’s when to create a memoir outline: 

• Before you start writing. If you haven’t started writing your memoir yet, then this is the perfect opportunity to get ahead and create your memoir outline before you start.
• If you’ve already started. Even if you’ve started writing your manuscript, you can still draft a memoir outline to use as a roadmap for your writing.
• Once you’ve completed your manuscript. Already finished writing your memoir? It’s not too late to create your memoir outline. This can help you identify any gaps in your story, and can help in your editing process. 

Now that you’ve identified when it’s the right time to learn how to write a memoir outline, it’s time to move on to the next part, which is all about what to include in your outline. 

To begin, we’ll start with your idea.

#2 – Write your memoir idea as a one-sentence premise

Why sum up your whole book idea in one sentence? Because you can’t write about everything. Good memoirs—books like Wild and Eat, Pray, Love —are not about your whole life. No, they’re about a specific season, a particular, very intense period of time. 

One of the biggest mistakes new memoir writers make is to try to do too much in one book, to share too many stories, to talk too much about details the reader doesn’t care about.

That’s why, at the very beginning, you narrow your memoir idea down to a single sentence, because it forces you to focus on only the most important events for your story. 

Then, anything that doesn’t fit in that sentence can go into the next book.

How do you write that sentence? Every premise for a memoir needs to contain three things: a character, a situation, and a lesson. 

Here’s what to include in your memoir’s one-sentence premise:

• A character . For memoir, this is going to be you, the author. Fill out a character profile template , so you can look at yourself objectively as a character in a story.
• A situation . What is the specific situation you were going through that will make up the core of the story?
• A lesson . NY Times bestselling memoirist Marion Roach Smith says , “Memoir is about something you know after something you’ve been through.” What big life lesson did you learn from this situation?

How does this look practically? Here’s an example premise from my memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris :

“ To raise $600 for his dream Paris trip, a cautious writer accomplishes 12 uncomfortable adventures given by his Internet followers, and through it all learns that the best stories come when you get out of your comfort zone. “

Let’s break that down. Character : a cautious writer. Situation : not quite enough money to make it in Paris. Lesson : the best stories come when you get out of your comfort zone.

#3 – Find your memoir’s big moments

Your premise sets the scope of your story. Again, the point of memoir is not to share everything that ever happened to you. The purpose of memoir is to share a compact but powerful story about a specific situation that led to a life-changing realization.

Once you have your premise, then you can start making a list of all of the most important moments that fit into the scope of that premise. 

Look especially for life and death moments, moments of intense romance (or betrayal), or moments of rebellion against society’s expectations.

Important Note: Don’t discount the intensity of these moments. One major realization I had as I wrote Crowdsourcing Paris was how easy it is to look back at our life and downplay the intensity of an event. 

For example, there was this one moment when I experienced sheer terror in Paris. I was in the catacombs, the 170 miles of illegal caves and tunnels below the city, and I was lost and all alone in the pitch black with nothing but a tiny LED flashlight that was all but worthless. I honestly thought I might die there. 

But for years, looking back at that moment, I would minimize the terror I felt. After all, five minutes later I was *spoiler alert* once again perfectly safe and happy. 

But the good memoirist doesn’t diminish her terror or excitement or hurt or bliss. She puts a magnifying glass to it realizing that this is where the best parts of our stories lie.

It took me three years to learn that lesson, but when I did it changed everything for me.

Tips for adding the big moments to your memoir outline: 

• Keep it relevant to your memoir’s premise. With your one-sentence premise from the previous step in mind, think about all of the big events or moments that fit into the scope of your story’s premise. 
• Think big. Include any milestones, major moments, or memorable experiences that are relevant. Include any life and death moments, and moments of intense feeling or action.
• Don’t minimize the moment’s intensity. Try to remember how intense the feeling or experience was for you, and work to authentically re-create the experience for your readers. 

#4 – Add the first act to your memoir outline

Good memoirs contain the best of a novel and a nonfiction self-help book . They should be entertaining and instructive at the same time.

And like a novel outline , good memoirs have a first, second, and third act.

Your job is to slot the events in your life into these three acts so that it feels like a cohesive story.

Here’s a trick to creating your outline: if the average memoir has 60 scenes or moments, your first act should have about 15 scenes, your second act should have about 30 scenes, and your final act should have the final 15 scenes (including your big climactic moment). 

Here are a few tips to keep in mind about your memoir’s first act:

• Begin the story as late as possible . For example, my memoir is a travel memoir, and most travel memoirs begin when the author is first arriving in the country. 
• Use flashbacks, but carefully . To begin the story as late as possible, you can use flashbacks to give the reader important information that happened earlier in the story. Be careful to only use full scenes, though, and not info-dump.
• Start big . Since my memoir is an adventure story, Shawn Coyne, creator of Story Grid , told me that my “very first scene needed to be about one of the biggest life and death moments of the book.” The same is true for your story. For example, if your story is about a romantic relationship, you can begin with a moment of love or rejection. 
• End the first act with a major decision . As the main character, it’s your decisions that drive the story. Too often, memoir writers talk about the things that happened to them, not the things that they made happen. Instead, focus on the decisions you made that drove the events of your story forward, and make sure to include one of those important decisions toward the end of your first act.

What moments from your list of big moments that you made in step #2 feel like they would fit here in the first act?

Too often, memoir writers talk about the things that happened to them, not the things that they made happen.

#5 – Insert the second act

The second act is often the hardest part of writing any story, whether a memoir or novel. 

It’s usually twice as long as the first and third acts, and often it can feel slow and disorganized if you don’t handle it right. 

Here are a couple of tips to make your second act sing:

• Start your subplot here. One thing I learned from Save the Cat is that if you’re story is going to have a subplot, it usually begins in the second act. In fact, it’s often the first scene in the second act. 
• Center your second act on the all is lost moment . This might be weird, but my favorite thing to write is the all is lost moment, the moment when everything has gone wrong and the main character finally comes to the end of themselves. Why do I like it? Because it’s always this moment when the character finally learns they need to grow if they are going to make things right. Even better, that event happens in the second act, usually about 60 to 70 percent of the way through the story. 

What moments from your list of big moments that you made in step #2 feel like they would fit here in the second act ?

#6 – Include the final act of your memoir

The third, or final, act is where all the pieces come together and all the clarity that you’ve fought for in acts one and two finally start to pay off.

For me, the final act is always the most fun to write, the payoff to all the things you’ve been building throughout the book. Have fun with it!

Here are a few tips for your third and final act:

• Your final climactic moment comes here . The climax of a novel almost always happens in the third act, and the same is true for your memoir. The climax is when the main character makes a huge, life changing decision, evolving from the smaller person he was in act 1 to the much bigger person he is in act 3.
• This is also where you learn, once and for all, the big lesson of the memoir. Remember the lesson you outlined in your premise from step #1? The moment when you finally learn and cement that lesson happens in act three.
• End the story with the conclusion of your subplot . If your subplot begins in the second act, the final moment of your subplot works really well as the final scene of your memoir. For example, the subplot of my memoir was about my relationship with my wife, and so the final moment of the book is about holding my wife’s hand as we leave Paris together. Readers are subconsciously expecting this, and when you can deliver on it, it makes them feel like your book is working.

#7 – Structure each scene for your memoir outline

Now that you’ve outlined each act and placed the big moments of your story into each act, you can start thinking about how to structure each scene.

Here I’ve learned so much from Story Grid, which says every scene must contain five things .

The five things to include in each scene for your memoir:

• Inciting incident . The conflict that begins the action of the scene.
• Progressive complications . A series of events where bad goes to worse.
• Crisis . The most important part of the scene, when a character is presented with a choice between either two very bad things or two very good things. (For more on this, check out my article on literary crisis .)
• Climax . The payoff when the character makes the decision presented in the crisis.
• Resolution . The new world order after the decision is made.

These are traditionally elements for a novel, but when I went through each scene of my memoir and rewrote them to include these five elements, it made the book as a whole much better.

Now, I plan every scene with this structure, and you should too.

Your memoir outline can change your life

It sounds kind of grandiose to say that an outline can change your life, but it’s true. Not only will the outlining process I shared above save you hundreds of hours, it will result in much better memoir.

Take the time to plan your memoir strategically, regardless of where you are in the process. Even if you’re not naturally a planner, spending time in this process will pay off for you.

And don’t forget, writing a memoir should be fun. Happy writing!

How about you? What is your one-sentence memoir premise?

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Emotional Pacing: Lessons in Writing a Trauma Memoir

As I began writing, I groped my way in the dark, daunted by the amount and nature of the material I had to cull. What I’d lived through was complex and layered, freighted with dark events and heavy emotions. More questions than solutions arose. For example, how should I present my mother’s abuse and neglect of me without those events overwhelming the narrative? How and when should I reveal that I’d discovered the family secret by snooping in my parents’ private papers when I was nine, leaving me with a secret of my own to hide? With each question, I confronted an artistic choice around where and how to present highly charged, emotionally laden content.

Memoirists who’d inspired me, such as Maya Angelou, Mary Karr, and Joy Harjo, had created compelling literary art from childhood familial trauma without its darkness and weight straining or imploding the narrative. They paced their memoirs, narratively and emotionally, handling their injurious experiences artfully and intentionally, modulating the emotion embedded in their experiences as a composer would when writing an especially moving musical score.

I began thinking of this modulating as “emotional pacing.” Intuitively, I sensed that it differs from narrative pacing in this way: Narrative pacing addresses the overall speed of storytelling; emotional pacing addresses the impact of events and their associated emotions throughout the narrative. I returned to Angelou, Karr, and Harjo to explore my intuition.

Through close reading, I detected recognizable patterns of emotional pacing that turned on the way each writer manipulated narrative distance around and between emotional events. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou manipulates narrative distance as if she were adjusting the lens of a movie camera, toggling between exposition and narration and shifting perspective between the narrator’s child and adult selves. Her shifts often incorporate poetic devices, figures of speech, and imagery to amplify or compress emotion or convey its felt sense in the body. For example, when depicting her rape as an eight-year-old, the narrator stays almost solely in narration from her child perspective, slowing the pace significantly up to the assault then pausing the pace completely during the assault. In that pause, the narrator shifts into exposition and her adult perspective to deliver the following commentary:

The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can’t. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot.

The shift increases the scene’s emotional potency, while the graphic, biblically-inspired metaphor further intensifies both the emotions of terror, betrayal, and helplessness and the felt experience of physical pain from the rape itself. From her adult perspective, the narrator gives voice to what her eight-year-old self in the midst of being brutally violated couldn’t possibly have articulated. The shift in perspective amplifies the emotional impact of the rape, the resonance of which lingers in the chapters that follow.

In The Liars’ Club , Karr, like Angelou, manipulates narrative distance by toggling between both the narrator’s adult and child perspectives, and between exposition and narration. She also uses shifts in verb tense from past to present and closely-coupled digressions to pace important, emotionally impactful events such as her mother’s breakdown.

For example, after comparing her mother to Anthony Perkins’ character in Psycho from her adult perspective and in past tense, the narrator shifts to present tense and her child’s perspective:

Then we’re in the lavender bedroom….[Mother] picks up toys one at a time off the closet floor and flings them into the box. We have left our room a mess, she says in a hoarse voice I don’t think of as hers. But that’s the only voice she has left, her drunk Yankee one.

The syntax changes here, too, from more complex, textured sentences to shorter, more staccato, subject-verb-object constructions. The impact of this complex moment relies on slowing the narrative in present tense and zooming in through the narrator’s child perspective. Copious sensory details delivered in rich, figurative language—the narrator’s scuffed oxblood loafers, her satchel thumping her right hip, the day’s heat making the air thick as gauze —further intensify the scene’s emotions.

In Crazy Brave, Harjo uses yet another technique to manipulate narrative distance: blending genres. Her narrator incorporates poems, fictionalized memories, and mystical stories from her Native American heritage, fusing them with a more traditional approach to nonfiction narrative.

For example, the narrator interrupts the traditional narrative to braid in an archetypal Native American story of the girl and the water monster, “a story no one told anymore.” This story stands in as a microcosm for her own heroine’s journey to reclaim her power against a monster who she sees “fighting with lightning,” whose force “broke trees, stirred up killer winds.” Harjo inserts this metaphorical story between scenes in which she depicts her stepfather’s abuses and the imminent threat he presented to her and her family. It places her personal story within a universal story from her culture, thereby resurrecting the archetypal story and signaling that she will find her way out. Nested poems and indigenous stories function as step-backs from the intensity of the narrative that precedes and follows them while foreshadowing what is to come, lending texture and depth to the portrait she’s creating of her emerging Poet self.

The way each writer emotionally paced her story was driven by her story’s message. This was a direct response to questions that propelled her investigation into her past and that were reflected in the work’s themes. I saw how each story’s emotional pacing functioned separately but in tandem with its narrative pacing, each writer adjusting the narrative tempo as necessary to support the emotional story. Scene breaks and juxtapositions—almost any kind of change in technique—affected how emotions were carried or co-mingled, how long they were held, and the way they rose up and dissolved from one narrative moment to another.

Emotional pacing relies on shifts in narrative distance around and between the narrative’s emotional events. Techniques to accomplish this can be subtle, such as inserting a poetic device or creating a juxtaposition. They can be overt, such as changing point of view, verb tense, or genre, or inserting scene or chapter breaks. Typically, techniques are blended. How we select and combine them depends on our purpose in shaping the narrative to deliver a particular message. Try some of these techniques when writing about complex and layered experiences freighted with dark events and heavy emotions and see which ones bring the emotional story alive in the reader.

Aggie Stewart writes memoir and essays. She moderated a panel on emotional pacing in the trauma narrative at AWP22 in Philadelphia. She has an essay forthcoming in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies in October 2022 . Ms. Stewart is writing a memoir about growing up in the shadow of her maternal aunt’s murder, which occurred when her mother was pregnant with her and which her mother kept a closely guarded family secret.

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On Murder Memoirs

I spent years preparing to write about my cousin’s murder. the story i ended up with was not what i had imagined..

This piece is from the book  First Love: Essays on Friendship  by Lilly Dancyger. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted with permission of The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

When I was deciding whether to attend the trial of the man who raped and murdered my cousin Sabina, I felt like I should go so that the jury would see me there. I knew how easy it would be for her to become an abstraction to them:  the victim, the deceased, the body . To us—to me and my aunt and my mother and the rest of our family and her friends—she was still Sabina, still a real girl who we would never see or hug or dance with again. If we were all there, sitting on the bench behind the prosecutor, I thought, maybe the jury would be able to see that there was a real person missing. And maybe they would want to punish the man who had taken her from us.

I also thought I should go to the trial because I might want to write about it someday. I had already learned, at 23, that the page is the safest place for me to try to make sense of things that feel senseless. Telling myself I would write about what happened to Sabina someday meant I didn’t have to fully face the horror of it just yet. I could put it on a shelf, where it would wait until I was ready to arrange it into something from which I could extract some kind of meaning. And whenever that day came, I figured, the trial would be an important part of the story I would tell.

But despite these two compelling reasons that I felt I should get on a bus to Philadelphia and sit in that bright, formal room to hear the worst of human cruelty discussed in a discordantly procedural and orderly way, my body refused. Two years after her murder, my whole self was still clamped shut, bracing against the truth of what had happened to Sabina—to my first and favorite childhood playmate. The idea of sitting through detailed explanations of her final moments—seeing photos of her body in the dirt, hearing detectives and medical examiners describe the brutality enacted on her—was too much. I couldn’t even look at the mug shot of her killer or read a single news article about what he had done, let alone be in the same room as him; hear his voice, see his body move through a room or shift in a seat, so very alive, while she was not. And so I didn’t go. If I wanted to write about Sabina’s murder someday, I would have to do without the firsthand courtroom scenes.

In the meantime, I kept working on the book I had started the year before Sabina was killed, a book about my father. I approached that story like a journalist—the job I was in graduate school to prepare for while the trial was happening—interviewing people who knew my father, trying to push beyond the limits of my own memories to put together something that felt more like a capital-T True story. Thinking like a reporter while writing about my father’s heroin addiction, his art, his complicated and ill-fated relationship with my mother, and his death when I was 12 years old had provided something of a buffer between me and the ugliest parts of the story I was digging out of the earth like bones. I imagined that when I was ready to write about Sabina—someday—I might approach the story of what happened to her in a similar way: I would read transcripts of the trial I hadn’t been able to bring myself to attend; I would interview the friends Sabina had been with in the hours before she was killed, drinking champagne on a Philadelphia rooftop. I would re-create that final evening until it felt almost like I had been there, standing next to her while she laughed for the very last time. Someday, when I was ready, I would finally look directly at the truth of the way that night ended. And somehow, though I wasn’t quite sure how yet, this would help me grieve.

First Love: Essays on Friendship

By Lilly Dancyger

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When David Kushner’s memoir  Alligator Candy  came out in 2016—six years after Sabina’s murder, four years after the trial I didn’t attend—it sounded like a potential model for the story I still wasn’t ready to write. In  Alligator Candy,  Kushner, a reporter, revisits the disappearance and murder of his brother Jon when the two were kids in 1970s Florida, attempting to make sense of his life’s defining tragedy using the tools of his trade. I thought it might help me start thinking about how to approach Sabina’s story, while I waited for the emotional fortitude to shore itself up in me.

I got 94 pages in—to a scene where Kushner goes to the library to read the news reports about his brother’s death for the first time—when I started to feel seasick, like the room was heaving up and down around me. This scene described something I still had not been able to do: allow the vague looming darkness to settle into the familiar shape of a news story. I squeezed my eyes shut and closed the book, noting matter-of-factly that I wasn’t ready to even read murder stories yet, let alone write one.

I continued to buy what I thought of as “murder memoirs” when they came out, which they did with increasing frequency over the next few years—a trend later identified as “true-crime memoir,” which felt at the time like a pointed reminder of what I couldn’t yet face. I bought Carolyn Murnick’s  The Hot One,  Sarah Perry’s  After the Eclipse,  Rose Andersen’s  The Heart and Other Monsters,  and  Natasha Trethewey’s  Memorial Drive   when they came out between 2017 and 2020, and placed them on my bookshelf next to  Alligator Candy,  unopened. I added older titles to my growing collection, too: Maggie Nelson’s  The Red Parts,  Melanie Thernstrom’s  The Dead Girl,  and Justin St. Germain’s  Son of a Gun . I didn’t read those either.

I couldn’t handle them yet, but I knew that eventually I would need to see how other writers had managed to write a “crime story” about something so personal and painful when, as far as I could tell from my previous associations with the genre—mostly the shows like  Forensic Files  and  Cold Case  that my mother devoured when I was a child—a good crime story required a certain degree of callousness, an ability to view cruelty with curiosity, even eagerness.

Portraying a real person on the page is always a subtle violence—reducing their multidimensional humanity, the unknowability of their inherent contradictions and mutable nature, into something flat and digestible. Even the best-rendered character on the page is only a fraction as complex as a real person. Doing this to a person who has been murdered— whose very literal humanity has already been stolen from them—feels like a larger injustice than doing it to someone who’s still living and can flout your depiction with their continued humanness. Murder already threatens to eclipse a person—it is so shocking that those of us who mourn someone who was murdered have to work to make sure the terror of their death doesn’t take up more space in our memories than the living person they once were. Writing about a murder inevitably solidifies the murder as the defining detail of a victim’s life.

So, I wondered, could I write about Sabina without reducing her to another dead girl in a story about male violence? Could I draw readers’ eyes away from the brutality and toward Sabina singing and dancing down the street on a fall day with yellow and orange leaves wet and slick under her feet? Toward the scoliosis that made it look like she was always cocking her hip, about to say something sassy—and the fact that she usually was?

Sabina came to visit me in New York when she was 20 and I was 21, and I brought her to one of my favorite dive bars. She scanned the chalkboard of bottle beers, the rows of liquor, and the taps, before asking, “Do you have any champagne?”

The bartender let out a little laugh of surprise, and said they might have some somewhere. I smiled at her and shook my head—who orders champagne at a dive bar? It felt so perfectly her—undeniably and unapologetically sparklier than everyone else. Making a special occasion out of a regular afternoon.

She gave me a shy smile, explaining, “It’s the only thing I really like to drink.”

“Of course it is!” I responded, laughing and throwing my arm around her. “Only the best for Bina.”

By then the bartender had fished an unopened, frosty bottle from way in the back of the fridge, laughing, “I think this is from New Year’s.”

“Fuck it,” I said, “I’ll take one too.”

He poured us two wineglasses of champagne, setting mine next to my whiskey soda, and we clinked our glasses and said a cheers to each other and to the day.

Could I make moments like that as vivid in a story about her as the violence they all lead back to?

When Truman Capote first pitched a story about the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family—Herb and Bonnie, and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon—to his editor at the New Yorker ,  he described a story about the impact the crime had on the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. It was going to be about the victims, he said. Despite this stated aim, the resulting book,  In Cold Blood ,  devotes more than twice as many pages to the depiction of the murderer, Perry Smith (and, to a lesser extent, his partner, Dick Hickock), as it does to anyone else. The Clutters are relatively thin characters, each reduced to an archetype: the hardworking father, the nervous mother, the popular daughter, the rambunctious son. The all-American family, a stock cast that could easily be swapped out for another. Meanwhile, Perry is given emotional depth, complexity, development.

Capote was not the first person to write about crime—not even the first person to write about it in an immersive, narrative style. But, as true-crime expert Justin St. Germain puts it in his book  Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood,  “Capote spiked a vein, and out came a stream of imitators, a whole bloody genre, one of the most popular forms of American nonfiction: true crime.” And the genre he spawned has replicated his project’s central contradiction over and over again: No matter how sincere the intention to center the victim, the killer is a black hole, pulling focus to himself. Murderers are enthralling in their aberration, and made even more alluring and terrifying by the glimpses of recognizable humanity that confirm they could be almost anyone. If we as a society are captivated by murder stories (which we undeniably are), it’s no surprise that our fascination tends to focus on the most active and defining participant—the one who actually does the deed.

Many  true-crime books (and shows, and podcasts)  are also devoted to the second most active character in a story of murder: the investigator. True crime as we know it today is the land of sleuths, both professional and amateur—from the older shows my mom used to watch on A&E to their modern heirs like  Making a Murder   and  The Jinx ,  from books like  I’ll Be Gone in the Dark   and  We Keep the Dead Close  to podcasts like  Serial   and  In the Dark . Fans of the genre, having internalized the methods and perspectives of professional investigators, have begun taking on the role themselves, sometimes solving crimes that have stumped law enforcement (or that law enforcement couldn’t be bothered to investigate with the vigor that police-valorizing true crime has advertised).

In sleuth-focused true crime, the detective or prosecutor becomes a stand-in for the reader or viewer as we try to understand how such a thing could have happened. They, more than the murderer, are our best chance at ever getting an answer to the maddening question of “why,” because they’re asking it, too. Their doggedness and cleverness and ultimate defeat of the killer are also the security blanket of true crime—assuring us that we are safe, that the monster will always meet his match in the end.

If  In Cold Blood  spawned the true-crime genre as a whole, then  Helter Skelter,  the 1974 account of the Manson murders written by the prosecutor who handled the case, Vincent Bugliosi (with Curt Gentry), set it on the investigation-focused path it’s largely stayed on since.  Helter Skelter  opens on the morning of Aug. 9, 1969, when the bodies of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Jay Sebring, and Steven Parent are discovered in the house on Cielo Drive that Tate shared with her husband, Roman Polanski—the audience enters the story at the moment it becomes an investigation. From there, the book follows a detailed timeline of police arriving at the scene; when each new clue was discovered, missed, misinterpreted, and finally put into context; and how the mystery was eventually solved and the killers brought to justice. Even the brief attempts to humanize the victims early in the narrative are couched in the perspective of the investigation, overshadowed by the crime. Brief passages about Tate, Folger, Frykowski, Sebring, and Parent—about them as living people with families and interests and plans for the future—are folded into the details of their autopsy reports, each one ending with the manner of death, presented in clinical terms. There’s a self-awareness to this technique, an acknowledgment that once we’ve encountered them first as bloody corpses, it’s impossible ever to see these people as fully alive; as anything other than murder victims.

The victim, by comparison to the fascinating murderer and dynamic investigator, tends to be the least interesting character in a murder story. She is passive; the main action of the story is something  done to her,  not something she does. And after her death, which is when the majority of the action in true-crime stories takes place, she is offstage—only the looming specter of a snuffed-out smile—while the active characters play out the rest of the story. She is less a character, more an implicit threat: She could be you, or your daughter, or your cousin.

It is important to note, too, that the victim is representative not of just any woman, but almost always specifically a pretty young white woman. A Nancy Clutter or a Sharon Tate. The idea of the young white woman as a symbol of innocence and goodness under constant threat from vague and ever-present danger has been part of America’s social fabric since frontier times and warnings of “Indian scalpers.” White women’s innocence has been an excuse for boundless brutality against Black men since slavery. It remains the easiest commodity to whip white audiences into a protective frenzy over. It is the bread and butter of true crime.

Sabina was mixed-race (white and Filipino), with brown skin, but she still got the Dead White Girl treatment from the Philadelphia media. Cynically, or realistically, I assume the public was so interested in her story at least in part because she had her white Irish American mother’s last name; because it was her mother (my aunt) shown crying on the evening news. But also because the specific circumstance of her murder—a random attack by a stranger on a city street after dark—is one of America’s favorite fears. Most female murder victims are killed by men they know. But a stranger killing is easier to imagine as imminent—lends itself better to dramatic music and goosebumps that might be the chill of the evening air or might be danger itself. In short: It’s more titillating.

St. Germain posits that the shift in  In Cold Blood ’s focus happened because while Capote never met the Clutters, having arrived in Holcomb after their deaths, he interviewed Smith at length over the course of several years. And over the course of those interviews, Capote became fascinated with Smith, came to identify with him, maybe even fell in love with him. In one form or another, I think, the same thing happens to almost everyone who sets out to write true crime. These stories are always written after the fact, when the victim is already gone, making it impossible for a writer to portray her as anything other than a memory, a stand-in for the reader or the reader’s daughter, a symbol of goodness. The killer or the investigator, however, is still there—still active in the story. Still a mystery to unravel, a source to interview. It’s no wonder then that the murder victim is rarely successfully centered in true-crime stories: Ultimately, no matter how fervently authors or producers proclaim otherwise, the story isn’t really about her at all. Not, at least, when told from the perspective of someone who never knew her as anything other than a murder victim.

As I considered the inevitability of this trap, I became convinced that the murder memoirs on my shelves held the promise of the only exception—these were murder stories told by people who knew the victims as people first. Maybe, I thought, only someone who knew the victim could ever write a true-crime story that didn’t get sucked into the black hole of the killer, or fall back on the easy framework of the investigation. Maybe, when I was ready, these books would show me how to pull off the impossible: a murder story that doesn’t further abuse the victim by reducing them to the violence of their death.

In a  2017 essay in Slate ,  culture columnist Laura Miller identified true-crime memoir as a trend and highlighted a pitfall that’s adjacent to, but slightly different from, the old problem with true crime in general: Rather than sidelining the murder victim in favor of a murderer or an investigator, Miller argues that true-crime memoirists center  themselves  too much. I bristled when I first read this accusation four years after it was published—still doing cautious background research for a story I wasn’t quite ready to write. It sounded to me like another version of the tired complaint that memoirists are self-absorbed navel gazers. At the same time, though, I felt a flash of a new apprehension: Would writing about my grief over her death make Sabina’s murder all about me?

I have seen the way people cling to tragedies that are not really theirs: remembering a friendship as much closer than it was with a person who has died, soaking up sympathy like a thirsty houseplant. The cousin relationship is not as clear-cut as sisters or even best friends, and ever since Sabina’s death I’ve struggled to articulate that we weren’t the kind of cousins who barely knew each other and happened to end up in the same place during holidays; that I loved her deep in the pit of my being, and so her death cut that deep too. That I felt as strongly for her when she was alive as I do now that she’s gone. So how to write about her death without the appearance of tragedy-seeking? How to write about my grief for her without claiming it as primary, without overshadowing the grief of her mother, my aunt? I talked to my Aunt Rachel about this concern and she waved it off, assuring me that my own grief is mine to express. But still.

Miller’s essay complicated the ethical hierarchy I’d created in my mind—now I was confronted with the possibility that a memoir about murder could be just as exploitative as any other true-crime story. And I realized that my hierarchies and suspicions and all of the plans and fears about what kind of story I might or might not write would remain theoretical as long as the murder memoirs I’d been collecting for years sat unread on my shelf. That I could ask these questions in the hypothetical forever, but would never figure out whether it was possible to tell a non-exploitative murder story until I took the leap and started reading and writing.

Eleven years after Sabina was killed, five years after my first attempt to read a murder memoir, I read Rose Andersen’s  The Heart and Other Monsters,  about the death of her younger sister Sarah, which appears at first to be an accidental overdose but turns out to be—maybe—murder. Miller’s qualms about true-crime memoir struck a nerve for me, undeniably. But I swung back toward defiance while reading  The Heart and Other Monsters . Yes, Andersen centers herself in the story, I thought; and why shouldn’t she? The book is about what it was like to live with, and lose, her vibrant, troubled baby sister. It feels right that she be the one to write a record of her sister—her life and her death. And Sarah Andersen is so much more multidimensional on the page than any murder victim in a traditional true-crime story. It is a story about  her,  not the man Rose suspects of killing her, not the cops that caught her case.

The book was hard to read. There were moments that called up unwanted mental images of Sabina’s bruised body, and of her smiling face; poignant and painful articulations of the way that every happy memory of a person who was murdered becomes tainted, the shadow of the way they died at the edge of every image. I cried a few times, but I didn’t get that seasick feeling and have to stop this time. So I picked up the next murder memoir on my shelf, and then the next, and then the next.

In  Memorial Drive,  Natasha Trethewey’s memoir about her mother, who was shot by her abusive ex-husband, Trethewey tells the reader right at the start that it took her almost 30 years to return to the house where her mother was killed. It took her that long to be able to face what happened. I felt a little bit of relief, then. Eleven years had felt like a long time to still barely be able to read stories about murder, let alone try to write the story of Sabina’s. It was 10 years after my father’s death that I started writing about him; that felt like the inevitable amount of time. Like a deadline. But maybe it would take longer this time, and maybe that was okay.

The question of who killed Sarah Perry’s mother looms large in her memoir,  After the Eclipse , and isn’t answered until nearly 250 pages in. As I read, identifying with Perry as she tried to make sense of this unfathomable and traumatic loss, I’m a little ashamed to admit, I also became invested in the mystery. I didn’t want to be a voyeur, to be like everyone else, collecting clues and making my own guesses as to who might’ve done it. But also, Sarah Perry is a skilled writer who wove a compelling narrative. I understood, logically, that she knew what she was doing by not revealing the killer’s identity until the point in the story when she learned it herself, 12 years after her mother’s death. She wanted the reader to feel the infuriating empty space, the endless possibilities of danger. She wanted the reader to want to know. But even as I moved through the story in exactly the way I believe the author wanted me to, I also felt complicit. Maybe she wanted that, too.

While reading Maggie Nelson’s  The Red Parts,  about her aunt’s murder and the trial, 36 years later, of the killer, I recognized glimmers of the type of scenes I might have written if I had forced myself to sit through the trial of Sabina’s killer. Nelson describes the “little methods” she develops to be able to look at the autopsy photos: “Each time an image appears I look at it quickly, opening and closing my eyes like a shutter. Then I look a little longer, in increments, until my eyes can stay open.” And the way her mother hunches over in her seat, “her chest hollowed out, her whole body becoming more and more of a husk.”

As I read these memoirs and half a dozen more, I was awed by the authors’ ability to charge ahead into such dark and terrible woods. As I suspected they would be, they were able to avoid the classic true-crime trap of sidelining the victims in favor of the more active characters because, unlike Capote and Bugliosi and every other writer or producer who has told a crime story centered on either the killer or the cops, they didn’t enter the story after the victim was offstage. They were able to bring their loved ones to life on the page through their own memories, and to keep the focus on them, because their investment in the story was genuinely tied to the person they’d lost, not the intrigue or shock value of the crime.

But they also included the details that audiences have come to expect from crime stories. They read police and autopsy reports, painstakingly recreating and describing their loved ones’ terrified last moments; putting into words all of the unspeakable imaginings anyone close to a murder victim lives with, about what they must have thought, and felt, at the end. They walked into police stations and held in their hands articles of clothing stained with the blood of people they loved. They transformed the killers who had marred their lives forever into characters, with backstories and traumas of their own. In my awe, it was very clear to me that I was still not ready to do any of these things.

I still didn’t feel physically capable of looking closely enough at the details of Sabina’s murder to tell this kind of story about it—at least to tell it effectively, with the kind of brazenness of these writers, who don’t let their readers slip into the comforting lull of the traditional true-crime sleuth story. They prevent their loved ones from becoming passive dead girls in entertaining stories about killers and cops by keeping the horror, the too-real reality, brimming on the surface. They force themselves to look, and in turn they don’t let their readers look away. I didn’t have the fortitude to tell a story like that. And, I finally realized, I didn’t want to.

I started to wonder whether there was a different kind of story I could tell instead.

If I’d written the kind of book I initially thought I would write someday, I would have set out at some point to learn about Sabina’s killer. I would go digging into his childhood, looking for what put such violence into him. I would wonder if a grain of hurt had settled deep in his heart, collecting layer upon layer of anger like a hideous pearl until it became too big to contain. I would pose the question of whether he hated women specifically, or was just a coward who liked his odds against a 20-year-old girl better than against another man when the rage in him demanded a target.

But I don’t want to know these things. I don’t care about his childhood or what was going through his mind that June night when he first spotted Sabina and started following her, or during what came next. I don’t ever need to know so much as what his voice sounds like. Don’t need to let him become human for me; a character more defined than a fairy-tale wolf, a personification of evil. Nothing that could have happened in his life would make what he did make any sense, and the idea of searching for a reason feels too close to inviting sympathy for him—in myself or in a reader.

It is possible to write a true-crime memoir without offering undue grace to the killer. In fact, most of the ones I read stand firm in their refusal to do so.  The Heart and Other Monsters  is divided into five parts, and the man who may have killed Andersen’s sister is not given a name until part IV, referred to until then only as “the Man.” He is part of Sarah Andersen’s story, not the other way around. And Perry writes about her decision not to interview her mother’s killer for  After the Eclipse:  “To be in conversation with someone, you must cooperate with them, however briefly, and I have no wish to cooperate with him.” (I felt such immense relief reading that line—I had been bracing for such an interview since she brought up the possibility earlier in the story, and wanting desperately for her to spare herself.) But even these authors’ demonstrations of how to keep the murderer out of the center of a murder story felt like more attention than I was willing to give. I don’t even want to know enough about Sabina’s killer to hate him with more precision than I already do. All I need to know about him is that he will be in prison until he dies.

It’s been 13 years now since Sabina’s death, and I still can’t bring myself to wade all the way into the horror of what happened to her. What’s changed, though, is that I’ve stopped waiting to be able to, stopped anticipating that someday I will have to. I feel instead a self-protective impulse, a stubborn unwillingness to shine a bright light on the most horrible parts of this story.

In all of these murder memoirs I read, there was a sense that the writer felt it was their duty to look directly at the ugly truth. Several state this outright; in others it’s present as an undercurrent, in the way the writers keep pushing forward despite nightmares, nausea, and visceral urges to flee. I felt this sense of duty when I was investigating my father’s life, reading his journals and letters, sitting through tearful conversations with my mother and stilted ones with people who had betrayed and been betrayed by my father during the course of his heroin addiction. I had to keep going because I had convinced myself that if I looked at every detail, including the most painful ones, they would arrange themselves into a constellation of him. Maybe that’s part of why I’m not driven to handle this story in the same way—I’ve already written an investigative memoir, wringing every detail I could out of letters, journals, and interviews, trying to conjure my father back to life. I’ve already reached the end of that road and found myself still alone, my father still dead. So I can’t convince myself it would work if I tried again.

“I have spent years conjuring her body,” Andersen writes of her sister, “have envisioned myself next to her as she died again and again.” I understand this impulse. I have three dried seedpods from a tree in the lot where Sabina died, and sometimes I look at them and hope that in the last moments of her life, she was looking up at this tree, not at the face of a monster. That as she was fading into unconsciousness, she could no longer feel the pain in her body, or the fear—that maybe she felt even just a second of peace. I have looked at these seedpods and tried to transport myself into this final moment through them, to crouch in the dirt beside her and smooth her hair out of her face, wipe the tears from her cheeks, and whisper in her ear,  It’s OK, you’re OK, I’m so sorry. I love you . But for whatever reason, the seedpods are enough for me to do this. I don’t need the autopsy report, the trial transcripts, the sound of a killer’s voice.

I spent years preparing myself to write a crime story, waiting for the desire to know more about Sabina’s murder to bubble up in me. I expected it, but it hasn’t arrived. When I finally sat down to write about Sabina, the story that came out was not about murder at all. It was a love story.

Paul Auster: a great American writer of sophistication, innovation and intellect

PhD Candidate, School of Humanities, University of Hull

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Lucyl Harrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Paul Auster , who has died at the age of 77, grew up in New Jersey in the post-war years of the 1950s, where a bookless household laid the foundations for his obsessional focus on human behaviour and the complexities of the shifting world.

As “a young Jew in New York” with a voracious appetite for literature and a fascination with writing, Auster attended Columbia University, where he studied English Literature, influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Samuel Beckett.

In 1982, Auster planted himself on the literary scene with The New York Trilogy – a genre-bending work that deftly merges elements of hard-boiled detective fiction with an effortless postmodernist style via a classically Austerian lens of existentialism and angst.

City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room – three connected novellas – engross readers with deliciously complex plotlines, enigmatic characters and philosophical thoughts on language and identity. The New York Trilogy established Auster as a literary genius, earning him international acclaim through his masterclass in storytelling. His relationship to his characters is unmatched.

In interviews, he revealed a paternal love for his craft:

The novelist is not a puppeteer. You’re not manipulating your characters. You’ve given birth to them, but then they take on an independent life. I think your greatest requirement in writing fiction is to listen to what they’re telling you and not force anything on them that they wouldn’t do. They call the shots.

When I first read The New York Trilogy I instantly wanted to become a creative writer. I felt inspired by Auster’s unparalleled explorations of chance and coincidence, fact and fiction, and his use of innovative techniques to blur the boundaries between author, narrator and character. In the plot of The New York Trilogy, Daniel Quinn is mistaken for the character/author Paul Auster.

His remarkable sophistication, innovation of genre and embodiment of the city flaneur (someone who wanders observing life) is folded into multi-layered plots that mask as existential invitations to question reality and reflect on the way fate shapes our lives.

Essays, memoirs and films

Alongside his novels, Auster prolifically penned numerous essays and memoirs, showcasing his versatility and intellect. The detailed and cinematic quality of his noir-esque writing also made for sumptuous storytelling on screen. His success as a writer brought opportunities to realise his youthful ambitions to become a film director.

In 1995 he adapted a Christmas story he’d written for The New York Times and, alongside Wayne Wang, co-directed Smoke, a film set in a Brooklyn smoke shop that interweaves the stories of the people who cross paths there. Auster went on to co-direct the follow-up Blue in the Face (1996) – again with Wang – which he wrote about in Smoke & Blue in the Face: Two films (1995). His debut feature as sole director was Lulu on the Bridge (1998), about a saxophonist whose life changes after he is shot on stage.

Autobiographical books such as The Invention of Solitude (1982), Winter Journal (2012) and Report from the Interior (2013) offer poignant reflections on grief, fatherhood and the passage of time.

Written in the second person – a rarity in literature and a publisher’s arch nemesis – the memoirs use of the awkward viewpoint cleverly deny the reader comfort, qualifying them as further examples of Auster’s lessons on how to start living uncomfortably .

Auster’s distinctive authorial voice, characterised by vividly realised gestures, wit, intellect and existential angst, masterfully and universally resonate, leaving the reader spellbound. Permeating popular culture, the author continues to inspire new generations of writers and artists.

The New York Trilogy is now a brilliant series of beautiful graphic novels. It also appears in Ia Genberg’s book, The Details, recently shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, where she perfectly sums up the experience of reading Auster:

The book in my hand is The New York Trilogy: hermetic but nimble, both smooth and twisted, at once paranoid and crystalline, and with an open sky between every word. Auster turned into a true north of mine when it came to both reading and writing, even after I forgot about him … His discerning simplicity became an ideal, initially associated with his name though it endured on its own. Some books stay in your bones long after their titles and details have slipped from memory.

Like Genberg, The New York trilogy moved me in a way that I, too, had never understood until I read her newly translated novella. Auster was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2017 for his novel 4 3 2 1. By then he was the author of a trove of bestselling books such as Sunset Park (2010), Invisible (2009), and The Book of Illusions (2002).

It took him more than three years to write 4 3 2 1 – a book set in the US in the 1950s and 1960s which follows Archibald Isaac Ferguson through a life which takes four simultaneous but entirely different paths. It was his first book for seven years.

‘The story is not in the words; it’s in the struggle’

The last years of Auster’s life were mired by the tragedy of the death of his grandchild, and then his son, Daniel, at 44 years old. He spent the pandemic locked down in his brownstone house in Brooklyn, but continued to write, reflecting in an artistic essay which travelled the borderlands of far Eastern Europe in which he explores the mythical Wolves of Stanislav (a Ukrainian folk story) as a parable for Coronavirus.

In December 2021, Auster’s wife Siri announced his battle with lung cancer while he was penning his last novel, Baumgartner (2023). A most tender book on love, ageing and loss, it describes newly widowed 71-year-old Sy’s reaction to the death of his wife, Anna Blume (who is the narrator of his 1987 post-apocalyptic novel In the Country of Last Things).

Auster’s legacy is not merely confined to the pages of his novels or frames of films that were adaptions of his work. He transcends boundaries of art and literature and defied genre, leaving an indelible print on contemporary literature.

Through unparalleled storytelling – labyrinthine narratives where chance and fate intersect, unravel mysteries and blur identities – Auster’s literary testament bequeaths the power of imagination, the inimitable ability to capture the human experience, and the inexhaustible possibilities of language.

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Anne Lamott City Arts & Lectures

Beloved for her enchanting, lyrical writing, Anne Lamott takes on the most complex, intimate parts of life with grace and precision. Lamott’s novels and memoirs have be awarded some of the most sought-after literary prizes, and her collection of essays on writing, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, has become required reading for all authors. Her new book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love, delves into the struggles of love with her trademark honesty and humor, finding the transformative power of intimate relationships. Lamott’s faith and candor, perfected across her long career in literature, are on display as she discusses finding love late in life, the changing ways we love our children, and the ways love can keep us going in a painful world.  On April 13, 2024, Anne Lamott came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by Barbara Lane, the book columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and the current director of events at Copperfield Books.

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