3 Mistakes of Writing a Memoir
I edit lots of memoirs, so I see lots of common developmental problems. If you can fix these before you get your book to an editor, the editor can focus on other issues, which results in a better book. Maybe after implementing these changes and working with beta readers, you even feel comfortable skipping developmental editing altogether and saving some time and money!
Here’s three common mistakes of memoir writers. Let’s get into it.
1. Missing Main Message
Many memoirs I come across seem to be a series of events that happened in the author’s life—and that’s it. Technically, this is what a memoir is. But a good memoir has something to tie it all together. There’s a reason for telling each story, and the reason is not “because it was important or interesting to me [the author].” That’s not enough.
I wrote a blog post all about finding the main idea of your memoir and choosing which stories to share and how to frame them to support that main idea. Read that here. Yes, falling into a tiger’s enclosure when you were six and living to tell the tale is a super-cool story . . . but if the main idea of your memoir is about what you learned when traveling abroad, maybe it doesn’t belong in this book. (Notice I said “this book.” Nothing says you can’t write more than one book, each with a different main idea and all different stories.)
Note: I even feel weird saying your tiger story can’t go in your travel book because maybe what you learned from traveling was bravery and facing fears—which relates to the tiger story quite a bit. Maybe that tiger story is a recurring theme for your travel book, showing how you gained courage and bravery and faced fears throughout your trip. You can spin the story however you want to make it cohesive, but it has to be cohesive.
2. Convoluted Timeline
Another common problem is that the timeline is confusing. It’s really common for writers to want to separate their chapters into individual stories or themes. “First we’ll talk about childhood, then family life, then education, then college, then getting a job, then meeting a partner, then having a family, and then caring for aging parents.” This is a good starting point for outlining when you’re figuring out everything you want to touch on in the book. But this won’t work as individual chapters. Things in the “family life” chapter will probably overlap with the “childhood” chapter and maybe “education.” And you probably had some overlap between “getting a job” and “college.” Maybe you met your partner sometime in there and considered if you wanted to start a family. You started a family while your parents were aging (because your parents have been aging since chapter 1), so those will overlap too.
See the problem? If we split up the chapters into these easy buckets, it’ll actually complicate the story because we’ll be jumping around in time. It’s confusing for the reader to read in chapter 5 that you got your dream job and bought a house with your partner and then in chapter 6 you meet your partner and go through that entire love story and get married. How did you buy a house with your partner if you hadn’t met them yet? What? It’s giving me whiplash.
Of course, this could be a purposeful technique. Maybe you have well-placed flashbacks. That’s different though, and those have to be well thought out. We’re talking about unintentional confusion.
Tip: When I write, I find it helpful to just write the story continuously, then go through and split it up into chapters after the fact. That way, I know one story always flows to the next, it’s chronological, and that the chapters are of similar length.
3. No Fiction Techniques
Isn’t it so great when you’re reading someone’s memoir and you get lost in the story and feel like you’re really there with the main character? That’s because it feels like fiction.
Memoirs are not fiction; they’re based on your life. But they should read like fiction. We can take some lessons from fiction writers when it comes to writing because they know how to write engaging stories. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.
How do we make it sound like fiction?
One tip is to dive into specific scenes. Don’t just tell us you got grounded for something your sibling did and that was the beginning of your teenage rebellion. Show us what it looked like. What it smelled/sounded/felt/tasted like. Recreate dialogue between you and the parent that grounded you. How were you feeling at the time? Did you stomp all the way to your room and slam the door? Did you give your sibling a dirty look and know you were going to get payback? Make us feel like teenage you. If you were mad at the time, we should be too. If you were scared at the time, we should be too. (See this blog post to learn more about showing instead of telling.)
We tend to use hindsight when recalling a story. For example, you might look at your parent with forgiveness because now you’re thirty years old and realize teenage you was such a pain for absolutely no reason. But you didn’t have that forgiveness in the moment. Your parent was your least-favorite person ever for a minute. That should come across in the writing, and we should be mad at your parent with you. I know it’s hard, but reject hindsight. Put yourself back in your headspace at the very moment of that scene—without reflection—where the most important thing in the world was going to that party this weekend because that guy you have a crush on would be there and this could be your chance for him to finally notice you, but your parent is crushing that reality by grounding you for something you didn’t even do because they’re so unfair. This creates an immersive experience for the reader, and we get to know you as the main character of the story so much better.
Keep these three things in mind as you write your memoir and you’re golden! If you have a main message, a solid timeline, and you use fiction-writing techniques in your storytelling, you are way ahead of most writers. If you need help with any (or all three) of these things, reach out! I’d love to do a developmental edit on your manuscript with specific feedback and examples from your book, showing you exactly how to revise.
