How to Write a Memoir: Your Complete Guide to Sharing Your Story

Have you ever thought that your life story is worth telling? You’re not imagining things. Each individual has something special to tell and memoir writing is one of the most effective methods to tell.

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However, the point is, it may be daunting to look at a blank page. Where do you even start? What happens when you want to handle decades of memories and come up with a coherent and interesting story? Don’t worry. This instructional guide will take you through all that you want to know about how to write a memoir that appeals to the readers.

What Is a Memoir? (And What It’s Not)

It is important to dispel a myth that is often portrayed by people before plunging into the memoir writing. Memoir is not a fancy term of autobiography.

A memoir is based on particular themes, times, or events of your life. It is very personal, emotional and investigates the purpose of your experiences. Consider it as a photo that defines critical points in your life and what they have taught you.

However, an autobiography is a record of all your life since you were born till the current time. It is thorough, chronological and factual.

When you write a memoir, it is not in the attempt to record all the birthday parties and family holidays. You are choosing the moments that made you the person you are now and putting them in a manner that allows your readers to relate it to their own experiences.

Why Write a Memoir?

Memoirs are written because of a myriad of reasons:

• To maintain family heritage in the coming generations.
• To work through troublesome experiences and get some healing.
• To motivate other people in the same predicament.
• To impart wisdom which one worked so hard to get by means of toil.
• To voice the voices of underrepresentation.

Your story matters. You may have stopped being addicted, may have had complicated family relationship, may have traveled the globe or may have led a very ordinary life with extraordinary experiences somebody out there needs to know it.

Writing a Memoir: 7 Steps to Writing a Memoir.

Step 1: Find Your Central Theme

The greatest error that novice writers of memoirs commit? Attempts to incorporate everything. Your memoir requires having bread, a thread–a theme which holds the loin of your stories. Ask yourself:

• What would be my ultimate message to the readers?
• What feelings do I need to make people feel?
• What was the most influential part or time in my life that has made me what I am today?

Perhaps you have the theme of resiliency through loss, the discovery of self after significant life transitions, or the tricky allure of family dynamics. Whatever it is, leave it to regulate all those stories you are going to add.

Step 2: Choose Your Best Powerful Stories.

After you have chosen your theme, come up with anecdotes that back your theme. Not all memories pass through- and that is fine.

Create a list of moments that:

• Bond well with your main topic.
• Get real feeling (in you and possibly in readers)
• Disclose personality growth or change.
• Include details, vivid, specific, which you recall well.

Filtering yourself in this stage of brainstorming is not a good idea. Note down all that is in mind. You’ll refine the list later.

Step 3: Create a Catchy Introduction.

Your opening page, or rather your very first paragraph must hook the readers.

Begin with an interesting scene that sends the readers plunging into the action. In place of I was born in 1975 in a small town, one can do the following: The day my mother ran away, I was wearing my favorite yellow sundress, the one with the tear that she had sworn to sew.

Strong memoir openings:

• Start in the middle of action or emotion.
• Use vivid sensory details
• Ask questions that will stimulate the readers to respond.
• Make your own voice out of the opening sentence.

Step 4: Build Your Outline

You do not necessarily need to have a strict chapter-by-chapter framework, but having a roadmap is of great help.

Arrange your anecdotes in such a manner that is most appropriate to your story. This may not necessarily be in order of time. Numerous strong memoirs alternate between the times with the help of the past and the present to make sense.

Take the traditional plot of a story:

• Exposition: Scene and introduce major figures.
• Rising Action: Cumulate tension in the course of events.
• Climax: The turning point or the climax point.
• Falling Action: Clean-up of the situation.
• Decision: Demonstrate change and development.

Step 5: Like You Are telling a Story to a Friend.

This is where the writing of memoirs comes in. You have to write sincerely, open-hearted, and graphic.

Show, don’t tell: Rather than saying I was terrified, you can talk about the fact that you had a racing heart, your palms were sweating, and your voice shook. Rather than saying that my grandmother was nice, bake her cookies and give them to neighborhood children every Saturday morning.

Develop your characters: Yes, these are actual people, yet, they are not known to the readers. Write about their idiosyncrasy, mannerism, speech patterns, and what made them individually unique.

Be vulnerable: Memoirs which appeal most to us are the ones in which authors reveal their inclement, bedeviled humanity. Never attempt to be the one that seems like a hero. Express your uncertainties, errors and development.

Write truthfully. Memoir demands honesty. There is no need to embellish events in order to make them more dramatic. That fact is eloquent enough.

If you’re struggling with the actual writing process, professional book writing services can provide the guidance and accountability you need to keep moving forward. Learn more in our complete guide to professional book writing services.

Step 6: Edit With Fresh Eyes

Preliminary versions are expected to be untidy. That’s completely normal.

After you have completed your first draft, put it aside at the very least of two weeks. Such distance assists you to get closer to your work more objectively.

Read, when you get back to it, as a reader rather than the writer. Ask yourself:

• Is it scene to scene of a natural flow?
• Do you find any gratuitous digressions to the subject matter?
• Is my personality shining through?
• Will readers make the sense of the importance of these events?
• Does the book contain any contradictions or ambiguous sections?

Editing the book can also be done by professional book editors who can identify any problems you may overlook and can also serve to enhance your narrative structure, pacing, and emotional appeal.

Step 7: Get Feedback (Yes, Really)

It is very vulnerable to open up to other people and share your personal story, yet it is necessary.

Begin with friends of relatives. Close-ended questions: What did you find interesting? Where did you get confused? What emotions did you feel?

Then, and this is a key point, receive comments of those who do not know you in real life. Not only will they read your memoir like your actual readers will, but without knowing what went on and who was involved.

Lastly, it is advisable to undergo the services of a professional editor who deals with memoir. They know the peculiarities of the genre and could assist you to create a manuscript, which is emotionally correct and professionally accurate.

Memoir Writing Tips to Step up your Story.

Include Multiple Perspectives

Although your memoir revolves around your experience, it is interesting to include the opinions of others. Interviewee family members or friends who were at major events. Their recollection may not be similar to yours–and that is interesting. It reveals how subjective memory can be and enhances your story.

Connect Past to Present

Do not merely tell what has occurred. Demonstrate to the readers how your experiences made you the person you are today. What did you learn? How did you change? What would you advise your younger self?

Create an Emotional Journey

Take readers on a ride. Allow them to rejoice, suffer, be terrified, succeed, and otherwise. The plot is not as significant as the emotional arc.

Find Your Unique Voice

Your memoir must not be written like what you suppose a proper book ought to be written like. In case you are funny by nature, do not suppress it. In case you are reflective and quiet, adopt that tone. Authenticity resonates.

Address Problems That Are Hard to Find Easy.

When covering a trauma or abuse, or any other sensitive topic in writing, make it a point to engage a therapist as you do your writing. It can be an emotionally stressful exercise to revisit painful memories. Take care of yourself.

Memoir Writing Problems: Writers and Memoirs: 

“I have not lived a very exciting life”

Here is the fear most general and seems hardly ever to be true. You do not have to be an Everest climber or a survivor of some dramatic disaster. There are extraordinary moments of ordinary lives. It all depends on being able to discover the generalities of your particular experiences.

“I did not recall enough details”

Not many possess the photographic memory. It is all right to recreate scenes as you recall anything, your conception of the individuals, and the emotional reality of the situation. Just don’t fabricate events.

“I’m afraid of hurting people.”

This is legitimate. You may need to make some choices, in case your story is about other people, particularly in ways that do not flatter them. Other writers of memoirs have composite characters or alter identifying details. Other individuals have candid talks with the involved persons prior to publication.

Think: Is this the story of yours to tell? Is this part of your story or is it superfluous?

“I keep hitting writer’s block.”

Write 10 minutes straight away. Change your environment. Read inspirational memoirs of your genre. Or just allow yourself to write badly. You can always fix it later.

How to Publish Your Memoir

You have written your story, what now? There are two publishing paths. Below are those:

Traditional Publishing

This includes the questioning of literary agents who could get your work published. It is competitive, particularly in the case of first-time memoir writers, however, with a greater distribution and the prestige of a large publishing house.

The reality? The majority of memoirs will not get traditional deals unless you already have some platform or the story has commercial potential.

Self-Publishing

This offers 100 percent of creativity and shorter time lines. You decide everything regarding the cover design of the books, the formatting, the prices, and the marketing.

The standard of self-publishing books has gone up by a great deal. Using professional book publishing services, your memoir can appear as professional as books published in the traditional way- and you have higher royalty percentages.

In The Books Central, we provide all-round services to authors of memoirs, including developmental editing, cover design, formatting, and distribution. We assist you in making your story come true in a manner that gives credit to your vision.

Examples of Memoir to be Inspired.

Looking for inspiration? Read these potent memoirs:

Educated by Tara Westover – Escaping the secluded childhood to achieve education.

Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls – Being raised by dysfunctional parents.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi – A dying doctor who is just a young man.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed – Discovering a way out in the form of a solo hiking trip.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – coping with loss.

You can also see how each of them concentrates on one particular theme, or a particular period instead of attempting to cover an entire life.

Are you about to begin writing your memoir?

It is a brave thing to write a memoir. It entails sincerity, openness, and readiness to explore inside yourself.

However, it is also highly rewarding. By writing a memoir, you do not only get to keep your story alive but you are also in the possibility of altering the life of another person. The reader that tries to cope with the same problems you had. The relative that will know you better. The outsider will be less lonely.

Your story is something worth telling, and you should be helped to tell it right.

The Books Central is known to provide exclusive services to memoir writers regardless of whether you are only beginning to sketch out your memoir or whether you have already finished a rough copy of your work. Book writing coaching, book editing, beautiful book covers design, and the entire book publishing solutions- we are all there to assist your story to reach to the readers who need it.

You are thinking of making your memories a memoir that counts. Let’s bring your story to life.