If you want to write a memoir, there are a few things that are really important to keep in mind. The first is that editors always ask, “What about this memoir is going to make somebody who doesn’t know the author willing to spend twenty-five dollars to buy the book.” What about your life is significant? What is going to be interesting to somebody who doesn’t know you? You want to think about that question as you’re writing your memoir. It has to tell your story, but it also has to speak to issues that are bigger than just the lives of you and your family. It has to have universal themes that people identify with. To be successful, a memoir has to make the reader laugh and cry and connect with your story. It’s also important not to get too caught up in the mundane. I’ve seen a lot of memoirs where the writer feels compelled to give the history of his or her great-grandparents and grandparents and the whole family. While that’s going to be a great record for your family, readers who don’t know you aren’t going to be concerned with the whole family history. They also don’t necessarily want the details of what happens every day in life: I got up. I brushed my teeth. I went to work. You have to focus on what’s special, what’s driving the story that makes it something people want to read. Before you include any particular detail, you need to make sure it’s enhancing a character or advancing the plot. If you’re writing a memoir, you need to think about the same things novelists think about, because in order to be commercially successful, you need readers to get swept away by the story and caught up in the lives of the people you’re writing about.
Thank you. This is confirmation that I am on track of where I plan on taking my memoir. I have written a blueprint outlining what I want to achieve for my readers by telling my story but making it about them.
Thank you! This was very helpful!
I am beginning my first effort in this genre but I have written numerous small pieces about family that were received very well. My story about my brother is based on the problems so many boys seem to have when their personality and their disposition is so different from that of the father. I understand that the story is to be about him, but was considering a beginning with the background which is in the 1930's, in rural Oklahoma. The story actually begins in the aftermath of the great depression and the survival that required the entire family. Is some information regarding the family and their work ethic therefore permissible? Thank you for any guidelines regarding this point. I also have a that I wrote some years ago. Could such an insert be out of line?