Likewise, if Madonna was writing a memoir about reinventing herself after 20 years away from the public spotlight, she most likely would include what it felt like to return to the music scene and how she continued to travel and perform while raising her children. She would let us into the intimate moments, including fights she might have had with her husband over the impossible kind of balance women in power who also have families face. 2 – Include more than just your storyĮven as you narrow your focus, we also need to think bigger in our writing pursuits.įor example, if Kamala Harris wrote a memoir about being a wife and stepmother while pursuing her career, she would pull in tidbits about how she juggled these roles when she had such a big job and big ambitions. Angela is his mother, and much of the storyline focuses on the mother-son relationship, and how Frank saw her, as well as the role of outside forces like alcoholism, loss, and trauma on their entire family. This memoir focuses on Frank’s life as a child growing up in Ireland.
Perhaps you are familiar with “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt. You want your readers to walk away knowing you, and a particular experience you lived through, on a much deeper level, but also to apply their own understanding of their own experiences to your story. In the classes I teach, we call these “turning points” and it’s a valuable exercise to discover where the juice is, to sort out where to focus and where you might have the most to extract from your story. Since your memoir is not an autobiography, you can figure out your themes by making a timeline of your life. Consider a pie, where your life represents the whole pie, and you are writing a book about a teeny-tiny sliver. Your memoir should be written as if the entire book is a snapshot of a theme or two from your lived experience.
In this post, we share tips for writing a memoir well, as well as share plenty of memoir examples. If you’re planning to write a memoir, you’ll want to take your readers on a journey they won’t forget. A reader may find themselves wondering what’s the point? If there’s nothing in the story for the reader, the memoir is lacking reflection and takeaway, which are two key elements that are unique to memoir. What draws readers is the subject matter (surviving a trauma, trying to live by the tenets of self-help books, living in prison) or the theme (addiction, parent-child relationships, repeating family patterns, identity).Ī memoir that lacks an author’s effort to extract meaning from their story is usually a slow read. Memoir is not “what happened,” because unless you’re famous, what happened to you in your life is not what will draw readers to the page. Memoir is about creating understanding, making sense of your story so that others can relate. What sense am I trying to make of my story through writing this scene?.How does this scene relate to my theme?.Memoir is often reined in by the writer knowing what her themes are and writing each scene while holding two questions in mind: One way to do that is to get clear about your themes. The scope of memoir will vary depending on the subject matter, but more often than not, aspiring memoirists come to the page with too much story that needs to be pared down. Memoir is a slice of life, a story of part of your life or a story from your life. In other words, it is not the story of your whole life. Let’s review some of those common elements, so you can weave them into your own memoir. Knowing what makes a memoir compelling and riveting is key when sitting down to craft your own. While all memoirs are different, the best memoirs all have certain elements in common.
MEMOIR ESSAY EXAMPLES HOW TO
When I teach people how to write a memoir, we talk about how to tell a compelling story.
Whether you curl up with memoirs on a frequent basis or pick one up every now and again, you know powerful memoirs have the capacity to take readers for an exhilarating ride.
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