How To Write Your Memoir: 10 Step Guide

In today’s post, we are going to cover everything you need to know about writing a memoir or an autobiographical book.

How to write a memoir isn’t something most people think about.

That’s because they believe that memoirs are exclusively for famous people. They believe that there’s nothing interesting about their lives that might appeal to others.

But the fact is that only when you start writing will you realize how exciting and stimulating your life has been.

In that sense, famous people don’t write memoirs. Memoirs make people famous.

If you’ve ever wondered about how to write a memoir, read on to find out everything about:

• the concept
• the differences between a memoir and an autobiography
• why people read memoirs
• the best practices for writing a memoir

What is a Memoir?

A memoir is memories put together.

It’s the story of your life, a non-fiction narrative of what you’ve been through.

It could be about a particular part of your life or an autobiography that encapsulates your whole life.

In other words, a memoir is the account of a life from the person with the best view.

Although a memoir is technically a non-fiction account, it has to be treated like fiction for it to resonate with others.

A dry, bland account of an event or phase of your life will feel academic and insipid.

A memoir needs to be conveyed in the form of a story.

A good memoir needs to have a protagonist (that would be you),

• the challenges they face
• the solutions they come up with
• the people they encounter
• the transformations they undergo
• the lessons they learn

Importantly, a memoir needs to have a theme that’s prevalent throughout the story.

Anyone reading it should be able to easily understand the overarching idea.

If it has several themes and a meandering storyline, people will lose interest.

In that sense, a memoir doesn’t – and shouldn’t – answer the question, “Who’s it about?” For the readers, it should answer, “What’s it about?”

Who Can Write a Memoir?

Short answer?

Anyone.

Most people don’t consider writing a memoir because they think it’s only for old people.

Unfortunately, this widespread myth prevents young people from sharing their lives with others.

The truth is that you don’t have to wait until you hit a certain age to write a memoir.

If you’ve had interesting episodes in your life that might be relevant to others, you should think about writing a memoir.

You don’t have to be a business leader, sports star, author, journalist, politician, military officer, or academic expert.

You only have to be interesting and worth listening to.

People are always looking forward to hearing from new voices that can capture their attention.

Had an interesting college life? Went on a southeast Asian tour? Managed a supermarket? Ran a marathon? Hiked the Appalachian?

An interesting story like that is all it takes.

Others would be interested in reading about these. Why deny them the opportunity to be entertained and inspired by your story?

How is a Memoir Different from an Autobiography?

A memoir is about a particular event, series of events, phase, or stage of your life.

It doesn’t span the entire life of an individual unless it’s an autobiography.

Its focus is on a particular phase or event and how that had a significant impact on the person’s life.

An autobiography is the story of an entire life spanning several decades.

It starts at birth and ends at the current life stage of the individual.

An autobiography charts the life of an individual and not any particular part of it.

Whereas a memoir can be written about a personal or professional event or phase, an autobiography is about everything important that happened in an individual’s life.

The other crucial difference is that a person can write more than one memoir but will usually write a single autobiography.

That’s because the memoirs could be about the different stages or experiences of their life.

Put another way, an autobiography is a memoir. But a memoir need not be an autobiography.

Why do People Read Memoirs?

Before getting to how to write a successful memoir, it would be helpful to understand why people read memoirs.

That will reveal the broad dos and don’ts for writing a memoir that will captivate the readers.

So, why are people interested in reading about the lives of others?

Everyone loves a good story: It’s deeply embedded into our psyche.

We all love listening to a captivating, interesting, and engaging story.

And a good memoir is just that.

This means that a memoir is less about the scale of the events or how much the writer has achieved. It’s more about how the events are pieced together as a story.

People feel connected: Every book connects the author to the reader.

By revealing things they may not have privately or publicly revealed earlier, the writer is opening their lives to an external audience.

This encourages people to read memoirs as it creates meaningful and deeply enriching connections between the author and people they may never meet in real life.

They make life relatable: Memoirs confirm that while the circumstances may vary, experiences are universal.

It makes it possible for readers from around the world to relate to your stories.

In other words, memoirs make readers feel less alone.

The story of a student in Toronto missing a semester due to an injury will appeal to students everywhere. Mothers around the globe will empathize with the memoir of a single mom straddling two jobs in Michigan.

They motivate people: A well-written memoir makes its readers realize that others too have their challenges and fears.

What’s important is that it also tells readers that there is a way to overcome them.

That may inspire people who might be going through the same.

Great memoirs are also stories of survival and those themes will always find resonance with readers.

They will inspire people to overcome the challenges in their lives.

They reveal the extraordinary: Memoirs have a special appeal when they’re not about celebrities, politicians, sports stars, or others in the public domain.

Stories that reveal something unique about an ordinary individual tend to be exceptionally successful.

Those stories make readers believe that if the writer can do it, so can they.

That’s the primary difference between a memoir and self-help books.

Those books are about preaching to others to change their lives or try out new methods.

But a memoir is a true story about how someone went ahead and did that.

Truth always outscores sermons.

A 10-Step Guide to Writing a Memoir

Schools and colleges don’t teach their students how to write a memoir.

So, if you’re thinking about writing yours, it may feel intimidating at first.

Do you write an autobiography or about a particular stage of your life?

What event or phase do you choose to write about? Importantly, how do you make it interesting to the reader?

How do you ensure that they empathize with you?

To learn more about how to launch a successful book click HERE

To help you out, here is a ten-step guide that will help you write a memoir.

1.Find your theme

It would be tempting to start listing your achievements.

As a matter of fact, that would be the easiest way to write a memoir.

But nobody would be interested in reading it beyond a few pages.

That’s because nobody’s interested in your extended CV.

Your memoir shouldn’t be a collection of everything that happened to you.

Even if you believe that things have been extraordinary, narrating them one after the other can be dull and devoid of any excitement.

Readers don’t want to read a series of accomplishments.

That will alienate them.

So, listing out events, incidents, and characters isn’t how you go about it.

What you do want is to figure out the theme of the book.

But how do you define the theme?

Imagine someone describing or recommending your book to their friend or colleague.

What are the words they would use?

How would they define the book?

Would they say, “It’s about grit” or “You can feel the tension”?

Would they describe it as “All about family” or “Despite all the problems, it’s really funny”?

Those descriptions will be derived from the theme of the memoir.

You can also quiz yourself to find the theme.

This is admittedly a challenging task as it won’t be visible at first.

It would also be effective if you spend some time writing down the answers.

To begin with, you could pose some of these questions to yourself:

• Define yourself in one word.
• When did you discover your true potential?
• What has been the most impactful place, person, or idea in your life?
• Did something happen that completely changed your worldview?
• Did you lose someone, to be profoundly affected by their absence?
• Did you find someone unexpectedly?
• When you describe yourself, what do you say? Complete “I’m a …” or “I’ve always been a …”
• How would your friends describe you?
• What’s most important to you?
• What has been your biggest learning in life?
• If there’s one thing you could tell your younger self, what would it be?
• What would your epitaph read?

The theme of your life will be found among these answers.

It will take some work but once you find it, everything else will fall in place.

2. Map your Memories

The next step is to recollect events, incidents, and individuals who would have shaped your identity that’s closely associated with your theme.

You won’t have to try hard for this as once you identify your theme, you’ll remember events associated with it.

What you have to answer now is how those memories shaped your identity and set you on a particular path.

While there could be several instances that you easily remember, you may have to dig deep for others.

You could use the following questions to find those identity-shaping events:

• Was there something in your childhood that left a profound impact on you?
• Did your parents believe in something that influenced your thinking?
• Were there any events or individuals in your school that shaped your thinking?
• Did your favourite – or least favourite – teacher say something encouraging or disparaging?
• What did you want to be when you grew up? What or who influenced that?
• Were you particularly fond of any family members, including, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc.?
• Did your siblings influence your thinking?
• Did your love interests have anything to do with your theme?
• Was your college influential in shaping your identity?
• Is there any incident from college that changed your thinking?
• Did your job play a part?
• Were there colleagues or bosses who had a major influence on you?
• What are your biggest achievements?
• What are your most painful regrets?
• What was your last big failure?
• Who helped you the most when you were down?

Any of these questions might lead to memories that will reveal a lot about you.

In some cases, these would be things you may have forgotten.

Some may be joyous to remember and some would be painful to recollect.

But that’s an integral part of writing a memoir.

Don’t just look for happy memories.

The saddest are the ones that usually leave a bigger impact.

3. See it from the point of view of others

With time, we may view past events and incidents in a way that better serves our interests.

When you’re the central character of the story, it’s natural that you might think of only those events that go with your predominant view.

Or you might intentionally forget some instances that don’t gel with your beliefs now.

The solution to that is to involve others.

This might seem counterintuitive when writing your memoir but it’s one of the most fruitful things you can do.

You’re looking for incidents and events that you may have forgotten and for aspects of your personality that may not be obvious to you.

You could reach out to the following people to get a more holistic view of your life, your likes, dislikes, and your effect on others:

• Parents
• Grandparents
• Siblings
• Relatives
• Childhood friends
• School teachers
• Sports coaches
• College friends
• Colleagues
• Spouse/partner

Remember that you don’t have to reach out to all of them. You’re not looking for everyone’s perception of you.

You shouldn’t ask them to narrate everything about you.

You only have to involve those who may have played a part in the events or incidents that shaped you.

What you’re trying to do is answer the following questions:

What led to that event(s)?

How did it shape you?

Who played a part in it?

4. Create a compelling opening

You shouldn’t start at the beginning.

The event, incidents, or stage you’re basing your memoir on shouldn’t be written chronologically.

You need to start with a compelling introduction, one that gets your readers hooked to the book.

Think of your favourite books, films, or series and you’ll notice that they don’t begin by introducing the characters and their backgrounds.

The film or book would start way after the story would have started.

This means that you should find an exciting incident, start there, and then go back to the beginning.

Ideally, where you start should either be a crisis point, a moment of reflection or when you were about to make the decision that would have had a major impact on your life.

So, don’t start with your name, the name of the place you grew up in, details of your family, or your childhood.

All those can come later once the reader is interested in your story and likes your voice, and the pace.

For example, if your memoir is about your visit to Japan and how it shaped your professional and personal life, don’t start by saying how you were always interested in the Japanese culture.

Start on that misty morning in Kyoto when you lost your way and had to walk miles through the countryside.

After narrating that incident and getting your readers interested, you can go back to your childhood.

Or, if you’re writing about how you started a cafe, start at the point where you couldn’t secure the loan or when the lease almost slipped out of your hands.

Write about how you almost decided to quit and go back to your old job.

Then, talk about how opening a cafe was always your dream and even at your previous job, you would always be thinking about it.

Remember that if the opening doesn’t work, everything else will be inconsequential.

5. Use elements of fiction

The “hook” is a literary and cinematic device that you should use at the beginning.

But that isn’t the only element you should use.

Your memoir should be structured like a work of fiction to keep the readers interested.

While it doesn’t have to be formatted as a three-act structure, your memoir should broadly have three stages; the setup, the turning point or inciting incident, and the resolution.

This is a universally comprehensible format followed in films, books, and plays.

This makes it easy for the reader to follow the story arc.

You might think that your event, incident, or stage doesn’t have these three acts.

For e.g., what if your memoir is about losing weight?

You may believe that working out, and going on a diet has nothing to do with elements of fiction.

Not on the surface.

But if you dig deep, you’ll find the classical narrative format.

In this case, you can begin by how being overweight was always an issue and how you were left out of activities and events.

That introduces your life before you decided to do something about it.

In the second act, you can describe your efforts to lose weight, the challenges that came in the way, how difficult it was, and how you almost gave up.

This part will be the longest section of your memoir.

In the final act, you should share the results.

But you shouldn’t end on a victorious note.

You should talk about how it’s a challenge to remain that way and discuss all the temptations that come your way.

6. Tell Your Story Right

Just because you need to have a compelling opening and use elements from fiction doesn’t mean you get to lie.

Your aim isn’t to write the most interesting memoir ever.

Your objective should be to share your story truthfully, and in a way that captivates the reader.

That would involve talking about your most embarrassing incidents related to the story.

It means sharing your humiliations.

Your memoir shouldn’t be a highlights reel of all your victories or incidents that show you in a good light.

This is important because your memoir would also involve other people.

Any deviation from the truth, however minor, will invite backlash.

In the age of digital media, all it takes is one individual to counter your story on a social media platform.

You’ll lose your credibility and because of that minor lie, all the truths in your story will be questioned.

It will also hurt your reputation where you work or who you conduct your business with.

Lying in your memoir isn’t worth anything.

Moreover, remember that if you lie or intentionally defame an individual, group, or organization, there could be legal ramifications.

Litigation is the last thing you want from your memoir.

7. Be vulnerable

Every great memoir or autobiography is relatable because it’s vulnerable.

More than anything else, this should be your top priority as you map your memories and put them into a structure.

Focus on moments that revealed your vulnerabilities.

Being vulnerable means being human.

That’s what helps people identify with you.

They may be from different backgrounds and would have never experienced what you went through.

But being powerless, inadequate, and fragile, are things they will be able to empathize with.

It’s not just your weaknesses that you should reveal.

It’s also the moments when you may have been deceptive or dishonest.

Yes, it’s important to admit to your faults. Your imperfections are what make you relatable and therefore, likeable.

8. Focus on the emotions

What you saw is important.

What you went through is also important.

But the most important bit is how you felt.

That’s what will strike a chord with your readers.

A common mistake found in many memoirs is that they tend to be factual accounts of what the person had to face.

While it’s important to state what you experienced, the focus should be on the emotional impacts of all those incidents and individuals.

The art of writing is making the reader feel what you felt.

That will only happen when you share how it felt to be there, at that particular moment.

The reader may forget everything else but if your memoir captures your feelings, the emotions will stay.

If you’re writing about how you were fired from your job and the impact it had on your professional and personal life, write about how it made you feel rather than elaborate on the facts.

Did you feel humiliated?

Did you feel exposed?

Did you feel betrayed by your colleagues?

Did you feel alone?

Your audience needs to feel your pain, fear, optimism, arrogance, anger, and joy. So, write from the heart.

9. Maintain the Flow

For your memoir to be comprehensible and interesting, it needs to seamlessly lead from one section to another.

It can’t be a collection of disjointed reports or anecdotes.

What it needs is an organic flow.

There is a way to achieve it without having to disturb the content.

What you need to do is connect the sections through any of the following:

Individuals: If some people have been present for more than one incident in your life, you can use those individuals to jump from one section to the next.

Similar responses: Different situations and places can at times evoke similar responses. These could help connect those incidents.

For e.g., watching the night sky while out camping and holding the love of your life for the first time can both leave you speechless.

Contrasting responses: The bridge between content sections could also be the difference in responses two similar incidents might cause.

Your high school reunion and college get-together could evoke different emotions, for example.

You don’t have to choose the same links throughout your memoir. You may not even have to choose any.

The easiest way to know if your content flow makes sense is by creating an outline before you start writing the chapters.

The outline should mention what you’ll cover in the section or chapter, in a sentence or two.

Once you have plotted your book using an outline, you can check if there is a logical order to the content.

Don’t start writing your memoir until you’re satisfied with the content flow in your outline.

10. Make it your Memoir

By that we mean, let it reflect your personality.

This is your story and those who know you should be able to find you easily.

After a couple of pages, they should be able to say, “That sounds exactly like you.” Or, “I could almost hear you speak.”

For that, you’ll have to ensure two things: Your style should reflect your personality traits, and your writing should match your voice.

How do you do that?

By being natural. Just write without wondering about other memoirs or your favourite pieces of fiction.

If it happens smoothly, that means you’re being true to your experiences and that your style is genuinely yours.

If you’ve to repeatedly stop and question the words and syntax you are choosing, then you haven’t found your voice.

If you’re traditional, let the writing reflect that.

If you’re brash or funny, write accordingly.

If you’re playful, go with that.

Find your comfort zone and work from there.

Don’t worry about what an editor or proofreader might think.

This isn’t an academic paper or op-ed column.

This is your memoir and, along with the content, your writing will help define your personality for the audience.

Pro tip: Hire a Ghostwriter

Writing a memoir is one of the most deeply enriching exercises you can ever do.

That doesn’t mean you have to do the writing by yourself.

While all the above tips should help you put it together, it doesn’t mean it will be easy for you.

That’s because long-form writing like books requires professional writers.

Most well-known memoirs and autobiographies are written by ghostwriters.

It may shock you to know that even some of the bestsellers in fiction aren’t written by their authors.

They outsource it to others.

They do it because hiring a ghostwriter for your memoir gives you proven benefits:

• Experience: Professional writers come with adequate experience across genres. They would know what it takes to create the most interesting account of your life.
• Speed: What might take you several months – even years – can be completed in a few months if you hire a ghostwriter since they already have a process and a system.
• Time: It’s understandable that you may get busy with work or family. But the ghostwriter you hire will be focused on the task which will save you time.
• Objectivity: An experienced ghostwriter will be objective in their treatment. They will know how to downplay certain events and how to make you more credible in other instances.
• Research: Your ghostwriter will have several sessions with you where they ask you pointed questions about your life and the events you want to cover. This will bring to light incidents and individuals you may have forgotten. It’s difficult to do this on your own.

If you can handle the pressure and still write a memoir that sticks to all the guidelines mentioned above, you should do it.

But if you’re uncertain and would like a professionally created account of your life, hiring a ghostwriter for your memoir is the smartest thing to do.

Further Reading

Hybrid vs Self-Publishing 

How To Write A Book Proposal That Commands 6 Figures 

Top 10 Podcasts for Writers

The Complete Guide To Self Publishing