writing biography memoir

How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide

Zining Mok  |  January 29, 2024  |  32 Comments

If you’ve thought about putting your life to the page, you may have wondered how to write a memoir. We start the road to writing a memoir when we realize that a story in our lives demands to be told. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

How to write a memoir? At first glance, it looks easy enough—easier, in any case, than writing fiction. After all, there is no need to make up a story or characters, and the protagonist is none other than you.

Still, memoir writing carries its own unique challenges, as well as unique possibilities that only come from telling your own true story. Let’s dive into how to write a memoir by looking closely at the craft of memoir writing, starting with a key question: exactly what is a memoir?

How to Write a Memoir: Contents

What is a Memoir?

• Memoir vs Autobiography

Memoir Examples

Short memoir examples.

• How to Write a Memoir: A Step-by-Step Guide

A memoir is a branch of creative nonfiction , a genre defined by the writer Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.” The etymology of the word “memoir,” which comes to us from the French, tells us of the human urge to put experience to paper, to remember. Indeed, a memoir is “ something written to be kept in mind .”

A memoir is defined by Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.”

For a piece of writing to be called a memoir, it has to be:

• Nonfictional
• Based on the raw material of your life and your memories
• Written from your personal perspective

At this point, memoirs are beginning to sound an awful lot like autobiographies. However, a quick comparison of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love , and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , for example, tells us that memoirs and autobiographies could not be more distinct.

Next, let’s look at the characteristics of a memoir and what sets memoirs and autobiographies apart. Discussing memoir vs. autobiography will not only reveal crucial insights into the process of writing a memoir, but also help us to refine our answer to the question, “What is a memoir?”

Memoir vs. Autobiography

While both use personal life as writing material, there are five key differences between memoir and autobiography:

1. Structure

Since autobiographies tell the comprehensive story of one’s life, they are more or less chronological. writing a memoir, however, involves carefully curating a list of personal experiences to serve a larger idea or story, such as grief, coming-of-age, and self-discovery. As such, memoirs do not have to unfold in chronological order.

While autobiographies attempt to provide a comprehensive account, memoirs focus only on specific periods in the writer’s life. The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

Autobiographies prioritize events; memoirs prioritize the writer’s personal experience of those events. Experience includes not just the event you might have undergone, but also your feelings, thoughts, and reflections. Memoir’s insistence on experience allows the writer to go beyond the expectations of formal writing. This means that memoirists can also use fiction-writing techniques , such as scene-setting and dialogue , to capture their stories with flair.

4. Philosophy

Another key difference between the two genres stems from the autobiography’s emphasis on facts and the memoir’s reliance on memory. Due to memory’s unreliability, memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth. In addition, memoir writers often work the fallibility of memory into the narrative itself by directly questioning the accuracy of their own memories.

Memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth.

5. Audience

While readers pick up autobiographies to learn about prominent individuals, they read memoirs to experience a story built around specific themes . Memoirs, as such, tend to be more relatable, personal, and intimate. Really, what this means is that memoirs can be written by anybody!

Ready to be inspired yet? Let’s now turn to some memoir examples that have received widespread recognition and captured our imaginations!

If you’re looking to lose yourself in a book, the following memoir examples are great places to begin:

• The Year of Magical Thinking , which chronicles Joan Didion’s year of mourning her husband’s death, is certainly one of the most powerful books on grief. Written in two short months, Didion’s prose is urgent yet lucid, compelling from the first page to the last. A few years later, the writer would publish Blue Nights , another devastating account of grief, only this time she would be mourning her daughter.
• Patti Smith’s Just Kids is a classic coming-of-age memoir that follows the author’s move to New York and her romance and friendship with the artist Robert Maplethorpe. In its pages, Smith captures the energy of downtown New York in the late sixties and seventies effortlessly.
• When Breath Becomes Air begins when Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Exquisite and poignant, this memoir grapples with some of the most difficult human experiences, including fatherhood, mortality, and the search for meaning.
• A memoir of relationship abuse, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is candid and innovative in form. Machado writes about thorny and turbulent subjects with clarity, even wit. While intensely personal, In the Dream House is also one of most insightful pieces of cultural criticism.
• Twenty-five years after leaving for Canada, Michael Ondaatje returns to his native Sri Lanka to sort out his family’s past. The result is Running in the Family , the writer’s dazzling attempt to reconstruct fragments of experiences and family legends into a portrait of his parents’ and grandparents’ lives. (Importantly, Running in the Family was sold to readers as a fictional memoir; its explicit acknowledgement of fictionalization prevented it from encountering the kind of backlash that James Frey would receive for fabricating key facts in A Million Little Pieces , which he had sold as a memoir . )
• Of the many memoirs published in recent years, Tara Westover’s Educated is perhaps one of the most internationally-recognized. A story about the struggle for self-determination, Educated recounts the writer’s childhood in a survivalist family and her subsequent attempts to make a life for herself. All in all, powerful, thought-provoking, and near impossible to put down.

While book-length memoirs are engaging reads, the prospect of writing a whole book can be intimidating. Fortunately, there are plenty of short, essay-length memoir examples that are just as compelling.

While memoirists often write book-length works, you might also consider writing a memoir that’s essay-length. Here are some short memoir examples that tell complete, lived stories, in far fewer words:

• “ The Book of My Life ” offers a portrait of a professor that the writer, Aleksandar Hemon, once had as a child in communist Sarajevo. This memoir was collected into Hemon’s The Book of My Lives , a collection of essays about the writer’s personal history in wartime Yugoslavia and subsequent move to the US.
• “The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.” So begins Cheryl Strayed’s “ The Love of My Life ,” an essay that the writer eventually expanded into the best-selling memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail .
• In “ What We Hunger For ,” Roxane Gay weaves personal experience and a discussion of The Hunger Games into a powerful meditation on strength, trauma, and hope. “What We Hunger For” can also be found in Gay’s essay collection, Bad Feminist .
• A humorous memoir structured around David Sedaris and his family’s memories of pets, “ The Youth in Asia ” is ultimately a story about grief, mortality and loss. This essay is excerpted from the memoir Me Talk Pretty One Day , and a recorded version can be found here .

So far, we’ve 1) answered the question “What is a memoir?” 2) discussed differences between memoirs vs. autobiographies, 3) taken a closer look at book- and essay-length memoir examples. Next, we’ll turn the question of how to write a memoir.

How to Write a Memoir: A-Step-by-Step Guide

1. how to write a memoir: generate memoir ideas.

how to start a memoir? As with anything, starting is the hardest. If you’ve yet to decide what to write about, check out the “ I Remember ” writing prompt. Inspired by Joe Brainard’s memoir I Remember , this prompt is a great way to generate a list of memories. From there, choose one memory that feels the most emotionally charged and begin writing your memoir. It’s that simple! If you’re in need of more prompts, our Facebook group is also a great resource.

2. How to Write a Memoir: Begin drafting

My most effective advice is to resist the urge to start from “the beginning.” Instead, begin with the event that you can’t stop thinking about, or with the detail that, for some reason, just sticks. The key to drafting is gaining momentum . Beginning with an emotionally charged event or detail gives us the drive we need to start writing.

3. How to Write a Memoir: Aim for a “ shitty first draft ”

Now that you have momentum, maintain it. Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write. It can also create self-doubt and writers’ block. Remember that most, if not all, writers, no matter how famous, write shitty first drafts.

Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write.

4. How to Write a Memoir: Set your draft aside

Once you have a first draft, set it aside and fight the urge to read it for at least a week. Stephen King recommends sticking first drafts in your drawer for at least six weeks. This period allows writers to develop the critical distance we need to revise and edit the draft that we’ve worked so hard to write.

5. How to Write a Memoir: Reread your draft

While reading your draft, note what works and what doesn’t, then make a revision plan. While rereading, ask yourself:

• What’s underdeveloped, and what’s superfluous.
• Does the structure work?
• What story are you telling?

6. How to Write a Memoir: Revise your memoir and repeat steps 4 & 5 until satisfied

Every piece of good writing is the product of a series of rigorous revisions. Depending on what kind of writer you are and how you define a draft,” you may need three, seven, or perhaps even ten drafts. There’s no “magic number” of drafts to aim for, so trust your intuition. Many writers say that a story is never, truly done; there only comes a point when they’re finished with it. If you find yourself stuck in the revision process, get a fresh pair of eyes to look at your writing.

7. How to Write a Memoir: Edit, edit, edit!

Once you’re satisfied with the story, begin to edit the finer things (e.g. language, metaphor , and details). Clean up your word choice and omit needless words , and check to make sure you haven’t made any of these common writing mistakes . Be sure to also know the difference between revising and editing —you’ll be doing both. Then, once your memoir is ready, send it out !

Learn How to Write a Memoir at Writers.com

Writing a memoir for the first time can be intimidating. But, keep in mind that anyone can learn how to write a memoir. Trust the value of your own experiences: it’s not about the stories you tell, but how you tell them. Most importantly, don’t give up!

Anyone can learn how to write a memoir.

If you’re looking for additional feedback, as well as additional instruction on how to write a memoir, check out our schedule of nonfiction classes . Now, get started writing your memoir!

32 Comments

Thank you for this website. It’s very engaging. I have been writing a memoir for over three years, somewhat haphazardly, based on the first half of my life and its encounters with ignorance (religious restrictions, alcohol, and inability to reach out for help). Three cities were involved: Boston as a youngster growing up and going to college, then Washington DC and Chicago North Shore as a married woman with four children. I am satisfied with some chapters and not with others. Editing exposes repetition and hopefully discards boring excess. Reaching for something better is always worth the struggle. I am 90, continue to be a recital pianist, a portrait painter, and a writer. Hubby has been dead for nine years. Together we lept a few of life’s chasms and I still miss him. But so far, my occupations keep my brain working fairly well, especially since I don’t smoke or drink (for the past 50 years).

Hi Mary Ellen,

It sounds like a fantastic life for a memoir! Thank you for sharing, and best of luck finishing your book. Let us know when it’s published!

Best, The writers.com Team

Hello Mary Ellen,

I am contacting you because your last name (Lavelle) is my middle name!

Being interested in genealogy I have learned that this was my great grandfathers wife’s name (Mary Lavelle), and that her family emigrated here about 1850 from County Mayo, Ireland. That is also where my fathers family came from.

Is your family background similar?

Hope to hear back from you.

Richard Lavelle Bourke

Hi Mary Ellen: Have you finished your memoir yet? I just came across your post and am seriously impressed that you are still writing. I discovered it again at age 77 and don’t know what I would do with myself if I couldn’t write. All the best to you!! Sharon [email protected]

I am up to my eyeballs with a research project and report for a non-profit. And some paid research for an international organization. But as today is my 90th birthday, it is time to retire and write a memoir.

So I would like to join a list to keep track of future courses related to memoir / creative non-fiction writing.

Hi Frederick,

Happy birthday! And happy retirement as well. I’ve added your name and email to our reminder list for memoir courses–when we post one on our calendar, we’ll send you an email.

We’ll be posting more memoir courses in the near future, likely for the months of January and February 2022. We hope to see you in one!

Very interesting and informative, I am writing memoirs from my long often adventurous and well travelled life, have had one very short story published. Your advice on several topics will be extremely helpful. I write under my schoolboy nickname Barnaby Rudge.

[…] How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide […]

I am writing my memoir from my memory when I was 5 years old and now having left my birthplace I left after graduation as a doctor I moved to UK where I have been living. In between I have spent 1 year in Canada during my training year as paediatrician. I also spent nearly 2 years with British Army in the hospital as paediatrician in Germany. I moved back to UK to work as specialist paediatrician in a very busy general hospital outside London for the next 22 years. Then I retired from NHS in 2012. I worked another 5 years in Canada until 2018. I am fully retired now

I have the whole convoluted story of my loss and horrid aftermath in my head (and heart) but have no clue WHERE, in my story to begin. In the middle of the tragedy? What led up to it? Where my life is now, post-loss, and then write back and forth? Any suggestions?

My friend Laura who referred me to this site said “Start”! I say to you “Start”!

Hi Dee, that has been a challenge for me.i dont know where to start?

What was the most painful? Embarrassing? Delicious? Unexpected? Who helped you? Who hurt you? Pick one story and let that lead you to others.

I really enjoyed this writing about memoir. I ve just finished my own about my journey out of my city then out of my country to Egypt to study, Never Say Can’t, God Can Do It. Infact memoir writing helps to live the life you are writing about again and to appreciate good people you came across during the journey. Many thanks for sharing what memoir is about.

I went to Egypt earlier this year. I aspire for my second book to document and tell the story of my travels of Africa, following the first – a memoir that led me to this post.

I am a survivor of gun violence, having witnessed my adult son being shot 13 times by police in 2014. I have struggled with writing my memoir because I have a grandson who was 18-months old at the time of the tragedy and was also present, as was his biological mother and other family members. We all struggle with PTSD because of this atrocity. My grandson’s biological mother was instrumental in what happened and I am struggling to write the story in such a way as to not cast blame – thus my dilemma in writing the memoir. My grandson was later adopted by a local family in an open adoption and is still a big part of my life. I have considered just writing it and waiting until my grandson is old enough to understand all the family dynamics that were involved. Any advice on how I might handle this challenge in writing would be much appreciated.

I decided to use a ghost writer, and I’m only part way in the process and it’s worth every penny!

Hi. I am 44 years old and have had a roller coaster life .. right as a young kid seeing his father struggle to financial hassles, facing legal battles at a young age and then health issues leading to a recent kidney transplant. I have been working on writing a memoir sharing my life story and titled it “A memoir of growth and gratitude” Is it a good idea to write a memoir and share my story with the world?

Thank you… this was very helpful. I’m writing about the troubling issues of my mental health, and how my life was seriously impacted by that. I am 68 years old.

[…] Writers.com: How to Write a Memoir […]

[…] Writers.com: “How to Write a Memoir” […]

I am so grateful that I found this site! I am inspired and encouraged to start my memoir because of the site’s content and the brave people that have posted in the comments.

Finding this site is going into my gratitude journey 🙂

We’re grateful you found us too, Nichol! 🙂

Firstly, I would like to thank you for all the info pertaining to memoirs. I believe am on the right track, am at the editing stage and really have to use an extra pair of eyes. I’m more motivated now to push it out and complete it. Thanks for the tips it was very helpful, I have a little more confidence it seeing the completion.

Well, I’m super excited to begin my memoir. It’s hard trying to rely on memories alone, but I’m going to give it a shot!

Thanks to everyone who posted comments, all of which have inspired me to get on it.

Best of luck to everyone! Jody V.

I was thrilled to find this material on How to Write A Memoir. When I briefly told someone about some of my past experiences and how I came to the United States in the company of my younger brother in a program with a curious name, I was encouraged by that person and others to write my life history.

Based on the name of that curious program through which our parents sent us to the United States so we could leave the place of our birth, and be away from potentially difficult situations in our country.

As I began to write my history I took as much time as possible to describe all the different steps that were taken. At this time – I have been working on this project for 5 years and am still moving ahead. The information I received through your material has further encouraged me to move along. I am very pleased to have found this important material. Thank you!

Wow! This is such an informative post packed with tangible guidance. I poured my heart into a book. I’ve been a professional creative for years to include as a writer, mainly in the ad game and content. No editor. I wasn’t trying to make it as an author. Looking back, I think it’s all the stuff I needed to say. Therapy. Which does not, in and of itself, make for a coherent book. The level of writing garnering praise, but the book itself was a hot mess. So, this is helpful. I really put myself out there, which I’ve done in many areas, but the crickets response really got to me this time. I bought “Educated” as you recommended. Do you have any blog posts on memoirs that have something to say to the world, finding that “something” to say? It feels like that’s theme, but perhaps something more granular. Thanks for this fantastic post. If I had the moola, I would sign up for a class. Your time is and effort is appreciated. Typos likely on comments! LOL

thanks. God bless

I am a member of the “Reprobates”, a group of seven retired Royal Air Force pilots and navigators which has stayed in intermittent touch since we first met in Germany in 1969. Four of the group (all of whom are in their late seventies or early eighties) play golf together quite frequently, and we all gather for reunions once or twice a year. About a year ago, one of the Reprobates suggested posterity might be glad to hear the stories told at these gatherings, and there have since been two professionally conducted recording sessions, one in London, and one in Tarifa, Spain. The instigator of these recordings forwarded your website to his fellow Reprobates by way of encouragement to put pen to paper. And, I, for one, have found it inspiring. It’s high time I made a start on my Memoirs, thank you.

Thank you for sharing this, Tim! Happy writing!

Hi, I’m Jo. I’m finally jumping in and writing the memoir that has been running alongside me for at least the last 5 years. I’m terrified, of what I’m not 100% sure. The story won’t leave me alone and right now is the time to start my first draft. I’m approaching half way through what nature may call natural life on Earth, mid-life sounds strange to say. It just feels like the right time to document the journey thus far – especially the last decade. It’s been a radical time for transformation, internally and externally. I’m afraid but your post and these comments have helped.

Good luck on your memoir, Jo! I’m excited to hear more.

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Write a Great Memoir: How to Start (and Actually Finish) Your First Draft

by Joe Bunting | 1 comment

When I first started writing my memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , about a real-life adventure I experienced with my wife and ten-month-old son, I thought it was going to be easy.

After all, by that point in my career, I had already written four books, two of which became bestsellers. I’ve got this, I thought. Simple.

It wasn’t. By the time Crowdsourcing Paris was published and became a #1 New Release on Amazon, it was more than five years later. During that time, I made just about every mistake, but I also learned a process that will reliably help anyone to start and finish writing a great memoir.

My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , as a #1 New Release on Amazon!

In this guide, I want to talk about how you can start writing your memoir, how you can actually finish it, and how you can make sure it’s good .

If you read this article from start to finish, it will save you hundreds of hours and result in a much better finished memoir.

Hot tip : Throughout this guide, I will be referencing my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris as an example. To get the most out of this guide and the memoir writing process in general, get a copy of the book to use as an example. Order your copy here »

But Wait! What Is a Memoir? (Memoir Definition)

How do you know if you're writing a memoir? Here's a quick memoir definition:

A memoir is a book length account or autobiography about a real life situation or event. It usually includes a pivotal experience in your life journey.

A key point to make is that memoir is a  true story . You don't have to get every piece of dialogue perfect, but you do have to try to tell the personal story or experience as best as you remember.

If you're looking to fictionalize your real life account you're writing a novel, not a memoir (and specifically a roman à clef novel ).

For more on the difference between a novel and a memoir, check out this coaching video:

How to Get Started With Your Memoir: 10 Steps Before You Start Writing

This guide is broken into sections: what to do before you start writing and how to write your first draft.

When most people decide to write a memoir, they just start writing. They write about the first life experience they can think of.

That’s sort of what I did too. I just started writing about my trip to Paris, beginning with how I first decided to go as a way to become a “real writer.” It turned out to be the biggest mistake I made.

If you want to finish your memoir, and even more, write a good memoir, just starting with the first memory you can think of will make things much harder for you.

Instead, get started with a memoir plan.

What’s a memoir plan? There are ten elements. Let’s break it down.

Get the memoir plan in a downloadable worksheet. Click to download your memoir plan »

1. Write Your Memoir Premise in One Sentence

The first part of a memoir plan is your premise. A premise is a one-sentence summary of your book idea.

You might be wondering, how can I summarize my entire life in a single sentence?

The answer is, you can’t. Memoir isn’t a full autobiography. It’s not meant to be a historical account of your entire life story. Instead, it should share one specific situation and what you learned from that situation.

Every memoir premise should contain three things:

• A Character. For your memoir, that character will always be you . For the purposes of your premise, though, it’s a good idea to practice thinking of yourself as the main character of your story. So describe yourself in third person and use one descriptive adjective, e.g. a cautious writer.
• A Situation. Memoirs are about a specific event, situation, or experience. For example, Marion Roach Smith’s bestselling memoir was about the discovery that her mother had Alzheimer’s, which at the time was a fairly unknown illness. My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , begins on the first day of my trip to Paris and ends on the day I left. You can’t write about everything, at least in this book. But you can write about one thing well, and save all the other ideas for the next book.
• A Lesson. What life lesson did you learn from this situation? How did your life change inexorably after going through this situation? Again, here you can’t write about everything you’ve ever learned. Choose ONE life lesson or emotional truth and focus on it.

Want to see how a premise actually looks? Here’s an example from my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris :

When a Cautious Writer is forced by his audience to do uncomfortable adventures in Paris he learns the best stories come when you get out of your comfort zone.

One thing to note: a premise is not a book description. My book description, which you can see here , is totally different from the premise. It’s more suspenseful and also less detailed in some ways. That’s because the purpose of a premise isn’t to sell books.

What is the premise of your memoir? Share it in the comments below!

2. Set a Deadline to Finish Your First Draft

Or if you’ve already finished a draft, set a deadline to finish your next draft.

This is crucial to do now , before you do anything else. Why? Because there are parts of the memoir plan that you can spend months, even years on. But while planning is helpful, it can easily become a distraction if you don’t get to the writing part of the process.

That’s why you want to put a time limit on your planning by setting a deadline.

How long should the deadline be?

Stephen King says you should write a first draft in no longer than a season. So ninety days.

In my 100 Day Book program, we’ve helped hundreds of memoir writers finish their book in just 100 days. To me, that’s a good amount of time to finish a first draft.

However, I wouldn’t take any longer than 100 days. Writing a book requires a level of focus that’s difficult to achieve over a long period of time. If you set your deadline for longer than 100 days, you might never finish.

Also set weekly milestones.

In addition to your final deadline, I recommend breaking up the writing process into weekly milestones.

If you’re going to write a 65,000-word memoir over 100 days, let’s say, then divide 65,000 by the number of weeks (about 14) to get your weekly word count goal: about 4,600 words per week.

That will give you a sense of how much progress you’re making each week, so you won’t be in a huge rush to finish right at the end of your deadline. After all, no one can pull an all-nighter and finish a book! Create a writing habit that will enable you to actually finish your book.

Keep track of your word count deadlines.

By the way, this is one reason I love Scrivener , my favorite book writing software , because it allows you to set a target deadline and word count. Then Scrivener automatically calculates how much you need to write every day to reach your deadline.

It’s a great way to keep track of your deadline and how much more you have to write. Check out my review of Scrivener to learn more.

3. Create Consequences to Make Quitting Hard

I’ve learned from experience that a deadline alone isn’t enough. You also have to give your deadline teeth .

Writing a book is hard. To make sure that you show up to the page and do the work you need to finish, you need to make it harder to not write.

How? By creating consequences.

I learned this from a friend of mine, writer and book marketing expert Tim Grahl .

“If you really want to finish your book,” he told me, “write a check for $1,000 to a charity you hate. Then give that check to a friend with instructions to send it if you don’t hit your deadline.”

“I don’t need to do that,” I told him. “I’m a pro. I have discipline.” But a month later, after I still hadn’t made any progress on my memoir, I finally decided to take his advice.

This was during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. So I wrote a $1,000 check to the presidential candidate that I most disliked (who shall remain nameless!), and gave it to a friend with instructions to send the check if I didn’t hit my final deadline.

I also created smaller consequences for the weekly deadlines, which I highly recommend. Here’s how it works:

Consequence #1 : Small consequence, preferably related to a guilty pleasure that might keep you from writing. For example, giving up a game on your phone or watching TV until you finish your book.

Consequence #2 : Giving up a guilty pleasure. For example, giving up ice cream, soda, or alcohol until you finish your book.

Consequence #3 : Send the $1,000 check to the charity you hate.

Each of these would happen if I missed three weekly deadlines. If I missed the final deadline, then just the $1,000 check would get sent.

After I put in each of these consequences, I was the most focused and productive I’ve ever been in my life. I finished my book in just nine weeks and never missed a deadline.

If you actually want to finish your memoir, give this process a try. I think you’ll be surprised by how well it works for you.

4. Decide What Kind of Story You’re Telling

Now that you’ve set your deadline, start thinking about what kind of book you’re writing. What is your story really about?

“Memoir is about something you know after something you’ve been through,” says Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project .

I think there are seven types of stories that most memoirs are about.

• Coming of Age. A story about a young person finding their place in the world. A great example is 7 Story Mountain  by Thomas Merton.
• Education. An education story , according to Kim Kessler and Story Grid, is about a naive character who, through the course of the story, comes to a bigger understanding of the world that gives meaning to their existing life. My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , is a great example of an education memoir.
• Love. A love story is about a romantic relationship, either the story of a breakup or of two characters coming together. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a great example of a love story memoir, as it tells the story of her divorce and then re-discovering herself and love as she travels the world.
• Adventure/Action. All adventure stories are about life and death situations. Also, most travel memoirs are adventure stories. Wild by Cheryl Strayed is a great example, and Crowdsourcing Paris is also an adventure story. (You can apply the principles from our How to Write Adventure guide here , too!)
• Performance. Performance memoirs are about a big competition or a competitive pursuit. Julie and Julia , Julie Powell’s memoir about cooking her way through Julia Child’s recipes, is a good example of a performance memoir. Outlaw Platoon , about the longest-serving Ranger platoon in Afghanistan, is another great performance story.
• Thriller. Memoirs about abuse or even an illness could fall into the crime, horror, or thriller arena. (Our full guide on How to Write a Thriller is here .)
• Society. What is wrong with society? And how can you rebel against the status quo? Society stories are very common as memoirs. I would also argue that most humor memoirs are society stories, since they talk about one person’s funny, transgressive view on society. Anything by David Sedaris, for example, is a society memoir.

For more on all of these genres, check out Story Grid’s article How to Use Story Grid to Write a Memoir .

Three Stories

Note that I included my memoir in two categories. That’s because most books, including memoirs, are actually a combination of three stories. You have:

• An external story. For example, Crowdsourcing Paris is an adventure story.
• An internal story . As I said, Crowdsourcing Paris is an education story.
• A subplot . Usually the subplot is another external story, in my case, a love story.

What three stories are you telling in your memoir?

5. Visualize Your Intention

One of the things that I’ve learned as I’ve coached hundreds of writers to finish their books is that if you visualize the following you are much more likely to follow through and accomplish your writing goals:

• Where you're going to write
• When you're going to write
• How much you're going to write

Here I want you to actively visualize yourself at your favorite writing spot accomplishing the word count goal that you set in step two.

For example, when I was writing Crowdsourcing Paris , I would imagine myself sitting at this one café that was eight doors down from my office. I liked it because it had a little bit of a French feel. Then I would imagine myself there from eight in the morning until about ten.

Finally, I would actively visualize myself watching the word count tracker go from 999 to 1,000 words, which was my goal every day. Just that process of imagining my intention was so helpful.

What is your intention? Where, when, and how much will you write? Imagine yourself actually sitting there in the place you’re going to write your memoir.

6. Who Will Be On Your Team?

No one can write a book alone. I learned this the hard way, and the result was that it took me five years to finish my memoir.

For every other book that I had written, I had other people holding me accountable. Without my team, I know that I would never have written those books. But when I tried to write my memoir, I thought, I can do this on my own. I don’t need accountability, encouragement, and support. I’ve got this.

To figure out who you need to help you finish your memoir, create three different lists of people:

• Other writers. These are people who you can process, with who know the process of writing a book. Some will be a little bit ahead of you, so that when you get stuck, they can encourage you and say, “I’ve been there. You’re going to get through it. Keep working.”
• Readers. Or if you don’t have readers, friends and family. These will be the people who give you feedback on your finished book before it’s published, e.g. beta readers.
• Professional editors. But you also need professional feedback. I recommend listing two different editors here, a content editor to give feedback on the book as a whole (for example, I recommend a Write Practice Certified Coach), and a proofreader or line editor to help polish the final draft. (Having professional editing software is smart too. We like ProWritingAid. Check out our ProWritingAid review .)

Just remember: it takes a team to finish a book. Don’t try to do it on your own.

And if you don’t have relationships with other writers who can be on your team, check out The Write Practice Pro. This is the community I post my writing in to get feedback. Many of my best writing friends came directly from this community. You can learn more about The Write Practice Pro here .

7. What Other Books Will Inspire You?

“Books are made from books,” said Cormac McCarthy. Great writers learn how to write great books by reading other great books, and so should you.

I recommend finding three to five other memoirs that can inspire you during the writing process.

I recommend two criteria for the books you choose:

• Commercially successful. If you want your book to be commercially successful, choose other books that have done well in the marketplace.
• Similar story type. Try to find books that are the same story type that you learned in step four.

For my memoir, I had four main sources of inspiration.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain; A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway; and Midnight in Paris , the film by Woody Allen.

I referred back to these sources all the time. For example, when I was stuck on the climactic scene in the memoir, I watched one scene in A Midnight in Paris twenty times until I could quote the dialogue. I still didn’t come up with the solution until the next day, but understanding how other writers solved the problems I was facing helped me figure out my own solutions for my story.

8. Who Is Your Reader Avatar?

Who is your book going to be for? Or who is the one person you’ll think of when you write your book? When the writing gets hard and you want to quit, who will be most disappointed if you never finish your book?

I learned this idea from J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote his novel The Hobbit for his three boys as a bedtime story. Every day he would work on his pages, and every night he would go home and read them to his sons. And this gave him an amazing way to get feedback. He knew whether they laughed at one part or got bored at another.

This helped him make his story better, but I also imagine it gave him a tremendous amount of motivation.

This Can Be You, Sort Of

I don’t think your reader avatar should be you. When it comes to your own writing, you are the least objective person.

There’s one caveat: you can be your own reader avatar IF you’re writing to a version of yourself at a different time. For example, I have friends who have imagined they were writing to a younger version of themselves.

Who will you write your memoir for?

9. Publishing and Marketing

How will you publish your book? Will you go the traditional route or will you self-publish? Who is your target market (check your reader avatar for help)? What will you do to promote and market your book? Do you have an author website ?

It might be strange to start planning for the publishing and marketing of your book before you ever start writing it, but what I’ve discovered is that when you think through the entire writing process, from the initial idea all the way through the publishing and marketing process, you are much more likely to finish your book.

In fact, in my 100 Day Book program, I found that people who finished this planning process were 52 percent more likely to finish their book.

Spend some time thinking about your publishing and marketing plans. Just thinking about it will help you when you start writing.

Start Building Your Audience Before You Need It

In the current publishing climate, most memoir agents and publishers want you to have some kind of relationship with an audience before they will consider your book.

Start building an audience before you need it. The first step to building an audience, and the first step to publishing in general, is building an author website. If you don’t have a website yet, you can find our full author website guide here .

(Building a website doesn’t have to be intimidating or time-consuming if you have the right guide.)

10. Outline Your Memoir

The final step of the planning process is your memoir outline . This could be the subject of a whole article itself. Here, I’ve learned so much from Story Grid, but if you don’t have time to read the book and listen to over 100 podcast episodes, here’s a quick and dirty process for you.

But First, for the Pantsers

There are two types of writers: the plotters and the pansters . Plotters like to outline. Pantsers think outlining crushes their creative freedom and hate it.

If you identify with the pantsers, that’s okay. Don’t worry too much about this step. I would still recommend writing something in this section of your memoir plan, even if you only know a few moments that will happen in the book, even recording a series of events might help as you plan.

And for you plotters, outline to your heart’s content, as long as you’ve already set your deadline!

Outlining Tips

When you’re ready to start outlining, here are a few tips:

• Begin by writing down all the big moments in your life that line up with your premise. Your premise is the foundation of your story. Anything outside of that premise should be cut.
• S eparate your life events into three acts. One of the most common story structures in writing is the three-act story structure. Act 1 should contain about 25 percent of your story, Act 2 about 50 percent of your story, and Act 3 about 25 percent.
• Act 1 should begin as late into the story as possible. In Crowdsourcing Paris , like most travel memoirs, I began the story the day I arrived in Paris.
• Use flashbacks, but carefully. Since I began Crowdsourcing Paris so late into the action, I used flashbacks to provide some details about what happened to lead up to the trip. Flashbacks can be overused, though, so only include full scenes and don’t info dump with flashbacks.
• Start big. The first scene in your book should be a good representation of what your book is about. So if you’re writing an adventure story (see Step 4), then you should have a life or death moment as the first scene. If you’re writing a love story, you should have a moment of love or love lost.
• End Act 1 with a decision. It is you, and specifically your decisions , that drive the action of your memoir. So what important decision did you make that will drive us into Act 2?
• Start Act 2 with your subplot. In Step 4, I said most books are made up of three stories. Your subplot is an important part of your book, and in most great stories, your subplot begins in Act 2.
• Act 2 begins with a period of “fun and games.” Save the Cat , one of my favorite books for writers, says that after the tension you built with the big decision in Act 1, the first few scenes in Act 2 should be fun and feel good, with things going relatively well for the protagonist.
• Center your second act on the “all is lost” moment. Great stories are about a character who comes to the end of him or herself. The all is lost moment is my favorite to write, because it’s where the character (in this case you ) has the most opportunity to grow. What is YOUR “all is lost” moment?
• Act 3 contains your final climactic moment. For Crowdsourcing Paris , this was the moment when I thought I was going to die. In a love story memoir, it might be when you finally work things out and commit to your partner.
• Act 3 is also where you show the big lesson of the memoir. Emphasis on show. Back in Step 1, you identified the lesson of your memoir. Act 3 is when you finally demonstrate what you’ve learned throughout the memoir in one major event.
• A tip for the final scene: end your memoir with the subplot. This gives a sense of completion to your story and works as a great final moment.

Use the tips above to create a rough outline of your memoir. Keep in mind, when you start writing, things might completely change. That’s okay! The point with your plan isn’t to be perfect. It’s to think through your story from beginning to end so that you’ll be prepared when you get to that point in the writing process.

Want to make this process as easy as possible? Get the memoir plan in a downloadable worksheet. Click to download your memoir plan »

That’s the end of the planning stage of this guide. Now let’s talk about how to write your first draft.

How to Write the First Draft of Your Memoir

If you’ve followed the steps above to create a memoir plan, you’ve done the important work. Writing a memoir, like writing any book, is hard. But it will actually be harder to not be successful if you’ve followed all the steps in the memoir plan.

But once you’ve created the “perfect” plan, it’s time to do the dirty work of writing a first draft.

In part two of our guide, you’ll learn how to write and finish a first draft.

1. Forget Perfection and Write Badly.

First drafts are messy. In fact, Anne Lamott calls them “shitty first drafts” because they are almost always terrible.

Even though I know that, though, any time I’m working on a new writing project, I still get it into my head that my first draft should be a masterpiece.

It usually takes me staring at a blank screen for a few hours before I admit defeat and just start writing.

If you’re reading this, don’t do that! Instead, start by writing badly.

Besides, when you’ve done the hard planning work, what you write will probably be a lot better than you think.

2. Willpower Doesn’t Work. Neither Does Inspiration. Instead, Use the “3 Minute Timer Trick.”

My biggest mistake when I began Crowdsourcing Paris was to think I had the willpower I needed as a professional writer and author of four books to finish the book on my own. Even worse, I thought I would be so inspired that the book would basically write itself.

I didn’t. It took not making much progress on my book for more than a year to realize I needed help.

The best thing you can do to help you focus on the writing process for your second draft is what we talked about in Step 4: Creating a Consequence.

But if you still need help, try my “3 Minute Timer Trick.” Here’s how it works:

• Set a timer for three minutes. Why three minutes? Because for me, I’m so distractible I can’t focus for more than three minutes. I think anyone can focus for three minutes though, even me.
• Write as fast as you can. Don’t think, just write!
• When the timer ends, write down your total word count in a separate document (see image below). Then subtract from the previous word count to calculate how many words you wrote during that session.
• Also write down any distractions during those three minutes. Did the phone ring? Did you have a tough urge to scroll through Facebook or play a game on your phone? Write it down.
• Then, repeat the process by starting the timer again. Can you beat your word count?

This process is surprisingly helpful, especially when you don’t feel like writing. After all, you might not have it in you to write for an hour, but anyone can write for three minutes.

And the amazing thing is that once you’ve started, you might find it much easier to keep going.

Other Tools for Writers

By the way, if you’re looking for the tools I use and other pro writers I know use, check out our Best Tools for Creative Writers guide here .

3. Make Your Weekly Deadlines.

You can’t finish your book in an all-nighter. That being said, you can finish a chapter of your book in an all-nighter.

That’s why it’s so important to have the weekly deadlines we talked about in Part 1, Step 2 of this guide.

By breaking up the writing process into a series of weekly deadlines, you give yourself an achievable framework to finish your book. And with the consequences you set in Step 3 of your memoir plan, you give your deadlines the teeth they need to hold you accountable.

And as I mentioned above, Scrivener is especially helpful for keeping track of deadlines (among other things). If you haven’t yet, check out my review of Scrivener here .

4. Keep Your Team Updated.

Having a hard time? It’s normal. Talk to your team about it.

It seems like when you’re writing a book, everything in the universe conspires against you. You get into a car accident, you get sick, you get into a massive fight with your spouse or family member, you get assigned a new project at your day job.

Writing a book would be hard enough on its own, but when you have the rest of your life to deal with, it can become almost impossible.

Without your team, which we talked about in Step 6 of your book plan, it would be.

For me, I would never have been able to finish one book, let alone the twelve that I’ve now finished, without the support, encouragement, and accountability of the other writers whom I call friends, the readers who believe in me, and most of all, my wife.

Remember: No book is finished alone. When things get hard, talk about it with your team.

And if you need a team, consider joining mine. The Write Practice Pro is a supportive encouraging community of writers and editors. It’s where I get feedback on my writing, and you can get it here too. Learn more about the community here.

5. Finally, Trust the Process.

When I walk writers through the first draft writing process, inevitably, around day sixty, they start to lose faith.

• They think their book is the all-time worst book ever written.
• They get a new idea they want to work on instead.
• They decide the dream to write a book and become a writer was foolish.
• They want to quit.

A few do quit at this point.

But the ones who keep going discover that in just a few weeks they’ve figured out most of the problems in their book, they’re on their last pages, and they’re almost finished.

It happens every time, even to me.

If you take nothing else from this post, please hear this: keep going. Never quit. If you follow this process from start to finish, you’re going to make it, and it’s going to be awesome.

I’m so excited for you.

How to Finish Your Memoir

More than half of this guide is about the planning process. That’s because if you start well, you’ll finish well.

If you create the right plan, then all that’s left is doing the hard, messy work of writing.

Without the right plan, it’s SO easy to get lost along the way.

That’s why I hope you’ll download my Memoir Plan Worksheet. Getting lost in the writing process is inevitable. This plan will become your map when it happens. Click to download the Memoir Plan Worksheet.

More than anything, though, I hope you’ll never quit. It took me five years to write Crowdsourcing Paris , but during that time I matured and grew so much as a writer and a person, all because I didn’t quit.

Even if it takes you five years, the life lessons you’ll learn as you write your book will be worth it.

And if you’re interested in a real-life adventure story set in Paris, I’d be honored if you’d read Crowdsourcing Paris . I think you’ll love it.

Good luck and happy writing.

More Writing Resources:

• How to Write a Memoir Outline: 7 Essential Steps For Your Memoir Outline
• 7 Steps to a Powerful Memoir
• The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith
• Crowdsourcing Paris by J.H. Bunting

Are you going to commit to writing a memoir (and never quitting, no matter what)? Let me know in the comments .

Summarize your memoir idea in the form of a one-sentence premise. Make sure it contains all three elements:

• A character
• A situation

Take fifteen minutes to craft your premise. When you’re finished, share your memoir premise in the Pro Practice Workshop for feedback. And if you share, please be sure to give feedback to three other writers. Not a member? Join us .

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

Work with Joe Bunting?

WSJ Bestselling author, founder of The Write Practice, and book coach with 14+ years experience. Joe Bunting specializes in working with Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, How To, Literary Fiction, Memoir, Mystery, Nonfiction, Science Fiction, and Self Help books. Sound like a good fit for you?

One of my book chapters has been accepted for publication, but I lack confidence in the accuracy of what I have written. I have completed the chapter, but I would appreciate your assistance in improving its quality.

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Blogs / Non-fiction / How to Write a Memoir: 10 Tips for Sharing Your Story

Perfect Your Storytelling

How to write a memoir: 10 tips for sharing your story.

What happens when a writer wants to tell a true story about themselves? They become the protagonist and fill the chapters with scenes from their own lives. They share their personal character arc and the life lessons it imparts. That is a memoir.

What is a Personal Memoir?

The term memoir comes from the French word “mémoire,” which means memory or remembrance, reflecting the personal and reflective nature of the genre. 

Memoirs can cover a wide range of topics, from childhood memories to professional accomplishments, and they often include emotional and introspective insights from significant moments, relationships, and events.

Memoir vs. Autobiography

A memoir focuses on a small slice, an event or series of related events, sometimes bound by theme, that have occurred in the writer’s life. They deliver a message. 

An autobiography is the whole pie. It’s a linear, usually chronological accounting of a person’s entire life, typically written by someone with fame or prominence. For example, someone who has a high profile within their realm or beyond like a movie star, a politician, an athlete, or even a criminal.

While we all like to think we’ve led interesting lives, it’s unlikely that interest would prevail beyond our circle of family and friends. But everyday people have tales that can and should be told.

What to Include in a Memoir

When deciding what to write about, consider the 5 W’s: Who/What/Why/Where/When. 

Who Am I Writing About? 

The obvious answer is you. Who makes up your cast of characters?  Friends, enemies, lovers, relatives, co-workers, your favorite teacher from sixth grade, the cop who arrested you, or the doctor who treated your cancer? 

What Statement Am I Making?

Being able to reduce your book’s point to a statement, belief, or argument gives you focus and helps you evaluate it for its potential resonance. If you’re looking for revenge by sharing someone’s dirty laundry, it’s best to rethink your strategy. 

A story about bringing someone else down rarely wins over the hearts of your readers. But if you want to illuminate the biggest life lesson you gleaned from your experiences to help others, by all means, write about it.

Why Am I Writing?

From an external standpoint, your “why” may involve recognition, validation, and income. These are all valid reasons. 

The internal “why” may be harder to pinpoint. It could range from wanting to share what you’ve learned, to spare people from suffering like you did, to telling a story that touches people and helps them understand their own lives better. 

Providing knowledge, comfort, encouragement, and inspiration to others appeals to our human need of finding meaning in the things that happen to us.

External Reasons:

• Gain notoriety
• Document family history
• Capture memories
• Establish my writing presence

Internal Reasons:

• Tell a personal story
• Discover the meaning of life
• Share knowledge
• Provide inspiration
• Validate myself as a writer
• Get healing through telling my story

Where Did My Story Take Place?

Even if you grew up in Chicago, you can’t take for granted that everyone knows what it’s like to experience life in the Windy City. 

A small town in Texas or a quaint village in the English countryside also require enough description for your reader to feel like they’re experiencing it with you, the beauty, the horror, and the quirks.

When Did This Happen?

Anchoring your story in a time frame is important for your reader. Whether you’re a child of the 70s or Generation Z, when your story takes place is important and you need to place your readers in that time. Were you a child, a college student, or about to retire? 

Writing a memoir does not involve inventing a world or characters out of thin air. It should be based on truth. However, truth is the eye of the beholder. 

Picture a crime scene. Police interview the witnesses. Each gives a different account. Why? They might be standing in different locations so what they could see varied from the others. Their perspectives may differ because one witness thinks the victim resembles the neighborhood bully from their childhood. Another thinks every stranger is a criminal. Their life experiences shape the way they view everyday occurrences. 

As we recall the events of our life, many things can color our memories like trauma, illness, prejudices, and even the simple passage of time. What did our memory choose to keep and why? This doesn’t mean we are being untruthful, rather, it is simply our version of the truth that we’re telling. Don’t feel constrained by your perspective. Embrace it.

How to Start a Memoir

Write what comes to mind. You can decide later what you’ll keep and what you’ll cut. Try to keep it related to the specific event, situation, or experience. Many memoir writing coaches suggest simply tapping into memories and writing them down. 

Some people like to write a long, detailed account of events while others jot down a few lines. Some like to produce snippets in chronological order while others write whatever comes to mind. What’s most important is to have enough content to choose from when forming your story. This doesn’t mean writing your life story. (Save that for when you’re making the talk show circuit celebrating your worldwide success.) 

Once you’re ready to write your first draft, begin by writing a simple summation of your story, just like you would for a novel. Develop a one-sentence premise of your memoir. Remember, make it about one specific situation and what you learned from it. 

If you’re having trouble, imagine writing a skeleton blurb for a novel. Who is the protagonist? You! What shook your world up? How did you respond? In what ways did your life change after going through this situation? 

Different Types of Memoirs

Now that you’ve gotten started, decide what kind of story you’re telling. Here are the more common types of memoirs:

• Traditional Memoirs: These are retrospective, recounting significant life events and providing a comprehensive exploration of the author’s experiences and emotions.
• Childhood Memoirs: These transport readers back to the author’s formative years, capturing innocence, challenges, and the profound impact of early experiences, tapping into the universal human longing to understand one’s roots.
• Coming-of-Age Memoirs: These navigate the tumultuous waters of adolescence, exploring themes of self-discovery, forming one’s identity, and the trials of growing up.
• Transformative Journey Memoirs: These delve into pivotal moments or journeys that changed the author’s life, resulting in personal transformation through travel, self-discovery, or overcoming adversity.
• Historical Memoirs: These intertwine personal experiences with historical events. Using a backdrop of wars, revolutions, cultural shifts, or other significant periods, authors share their perspectives using a unique lens through which readers can understand historical events.
• Confessional Memoirs: These are deeply personal and often raw stories revealing intimate details, vulnerabilities, and struggles, inviting readers into their emotional landscapes.
• Educational Memoirs: These combine personal stories with lessons learned. Authors share wisdom and insights gained from their experiences, aiming to offer inspiration or guidance to others.
• Retrospective Memoirs: These look back on a specific time or event in the author’s life, offering reflections, insights, and a sense of newfound understanding and closure.
• Thematic Memoirs: These memoirs weave together different stories and events from the author’s life to illustrate a central theme, such as love, loss, or betrayal. 
• Chronological Memoirs: These tell the story from start to finish, providing a linear narrative of the author’s journey for that portion of their life.

Within each of these types of memoirs, there is an external story and an internal story. The external story focuses on the events themselves, such as surviving war, abuse, or tragedy. The internal story reflects the growth of the character in response to those events.

What to Write a Memoir About

Consider these things when writing your memoir:

• Who is your book for: Having a target audience will help you focus on the message you want to share.
• Write with honesty and authenticity : Being vulnerable can make your story more relatable and compelling. Only you know what it was like to take your journey. Tell it with the emotion of the triumphs and challenges you experienced.
• Show, Don’t Tell : Though it might tempt you to merely lay out the events in a journalistic way, strive to show what happened with dialogue, vivid descriptions, and sensory details. Bring to life the people, places, and events as you experienced them.
• Character Development : Even if you are the only character in your story, you need to show who you are to your readers. Develop yourself and others in your memoir with depth, showing motivations, strengths, weaknesses, and growth.
• Prose : Pay attention to the craft of writing. Most memoirs are written from a first-person point of view in order to establish a connection with readers. It is possible to write from a third-person point of view, but it may create a more objective or detached perspective. It may be suitable if your story involves more than just you as the protagonist, such as siblings whose experiences are intertwined. You’ll also decide which tense to use. Be consistent. Watch your pacing and narrative flow.

What Is Good Memoir Structure?

While a memoir involves writing about personal events and recollections, the story still requires the same solid story structure as a novel. 

It’s true that in a novel there can be three points of view—the author, the perspective from which the story is told, and the main character or protagonist who lives the story. 

In memoirs, these three are one and the same. This presents a critical lesson: a memoirist must determine what they know and how they should reveal it to the reader.

Another important point to consider is that of truth. Remember that one person’s account may vary from another and yet remain truthful due to varying perceptions. You may not remember the exact words exchanged in a conversation, but the gist of the message should remain.

Memoir Writing Tips

Before getting to the structure, consider these tips:

• Narrow your focus: Remember, you’re not writing an autobiography. You’re focusing on one moment or series of moments around a theme.
• Write about more than the story: Yes, the focus is on an event or related events, but consider the other players—the characters, the time, and the setting. Share interesting facts about them in your writing to bring vivid details to life.
• Use fictional elements: While your memoir is a true story, you can and may need to embellish it, depending on how vivid your memory is. When focusing on other characters, locations, and dialogue, create intriguing details about them to evoke emotions in your readers. This will not compromise the integrity of your story; it will keep your reader mesmerized.
• Be careful with pacing: Determine the rhythm of your story. Some events may need more detailed exploration, while others can be summarized to maintain the flow.
• Have a narrative arc: Your memoir should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Memoir Structure

It makes sense to approach your memoir’s structure like that of a novel. It needs the following components:

• Opening Image: Start with a compelling hook or scene that establishes the setting, time, and key characters.
• Setup/Exposition: These scenes show what your ordinary world is like, setting the tone before changes come. It helps to establish what’s at stake for you.
• Inciting Incident: Introduce the main conflict that sets your story into motion. What happens that shakes up your world and causes you to react?
• Plot Point 1: At this stage, you know what your goal is, but you’re not thrilled about chasing it. Since you’re in reactionary mode, your actions may not be related to achieving the goal.
• Middle: The middle marks the point where you become proactive to the goal. This means you’ve learned the rules, and you can now make plans to go after the goal. No longer just accepting your fate, you’re finding the strength to deal with the obstacles in your path. How do you grapple with the challenges, make decisions, and demonstrate personal growth?
• Plot Point 2: It is the low point in your story where it seems all is lost. Have your efforts to reach your goal resulted in failure or brought more hardship? Were you lacking knowledge or had incorrect information that led you to make unwise choices?
• Climax: This is where you achieve (or fail to achieve) your story’s goal. The tension, conflict, and emotional upheaval reach their peak in this scene and offer your reader the payoff to the story’s promise. This is your moment of triumph, crisis, self-realization, or transformation.
• Resolution: Wrap up by reflecting on lessons learned, personal growth achieved, and the impact of the events on your life. You may offer insights or wisdom gained from your experiences.

Memoir Examples

Here are some highly regarded books which offer guidance on writing memoirs:

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Mary Karr, a celebrated memoirist, shares her wisdom and experience in this book, offering theoretical insights and practical advice on crafting compelling memoirs while reflecting on her writing journey.

Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art by Judith Barrington

This book provides a comprehensive guide to writing memoirs, covering topics such as memory, structure, voice, and revision.

Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir by Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman draws upon her own personal and professional experience to provide a practical guide for transforming life into words that matter. 

The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life by Marion Roach Smith

This concise and engaging book emphasizes the importance of storytelling and personal voice in memoir writing.

Your Life As Story by Tristine Rainer

Tristine Rainer fills her book with examples from renowned writers and demonstrates techniques for crafting character portraits, remembering forgotten memories, unifying a story with thematic conflict, and employing fictional devices such as dialogue and humor.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

A classic offering advice on writing and life, encouraging writers to take it one step at a time and to find humor in the process. It’s a valuable resource for writers of all genres.

Naked, Drunk, and Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay by Adair Lara

Lara guides writers through the process of writing their stories with authenticity and courage, helping them to craft a narrative that resonates with readers.

Great Memoirs to Read

If you want to be inspired, here are some critically acclaimed memoirs to read:

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Walls’ memoir chronicles her unconventional upbringing by deeply dysfunctional parents, exploring themes of resilience, family, and forgiveness.

Educated by Tara Westover

This memoir tells the story of Westover’s self-transformation from growing up in a strict, isolated household in rural Idaho to eventually pursuing higher education at Cambridge and Harvard.

The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr

Karr’s memoir offers a candid and often humorous account of her turbulent childhood in East Texas, marked by her dysfunctional family and her own struggles with addiction.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

This memoir is a touching tale of growing up Korean-American, dealing with family bonds, cultural identity, and grief.

H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald

Part memoir, part nature writing, MacDonald’s book explores her experience of grief and healing following her father’s death, intertwined with her journey of training a goshawk.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier 

A testament to the resilience of the human spirit, Beah’s story of his transformation from an innocent child to a child soldier during Sierra Leone’s civil war recounts his harrowing experiences.

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp

A powerful narrative of Knapp’s love affair with alcohol, her struggle with addiction, and her courageous path to recovery.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Gilbert explores themes of spirituality, love, and the quest for inner peace on a year-long journey of self-discovery following a divorce.

Conclusion on Writing a Memoir

Writers are passionate about telling the stories they’ve created in their minds. Memoir writers have lived their stories and want to share their messages of hope and inspiration or perhaps experience a catharsis of their own. In any case, memoir is a valuable genre worth considering for any writer.

How to Write Your Memoir: A 5-Step Guide

Memoir is not just a fancy literary term for an autobiography. I say that from the start, because I so often hear the terms incorrectly interchanged.

Your memoir will be autobiographical, of course, but it can’t be about you.

Confused yet? Stay with me.

You may have heard both of these genres associated with creative nonfiction .

• What is Creative Nonfiction?

The term can seem confusing, but it’s all about telling a compelling true story while using the same kinds of elements found in good fiction to make it sing.

Creative Nonfiction is a term that can be applied to a wide array of genres,  including memoir, autobiography, biography, travel writing, personal essays, interviews, blogs, and more. Actually, it should be characteristic of almost any form of nonfiction.

In many ways, Creative Nonfiction reads like fiction while sticking to the facts. It allows you to tell a true story in a most compelling way by employing narrative elements like foreshadowing, backstory, dialog, conflict, tension, description, and more.

Such elements aren’t in themselves fictional. Your story remains absolutely true, but such tools enhance the reading experience.

Some nonfiction is designed primarily to educate and inform (think textbooks, how-to books, or self-help books), but would argue that even these can benefit from Creative Nonfiction techniques. Why not build a narrative that helps readers best relate to the content and become immersed in it?

Memoirs (from the French and Latin for “memory” or “remembrance”) by definition focus on your personal experience, intimacy with the reader, and reflecting both transferable principles and universal emotional truth.

That’s why, ironic as it may sound, a memoir should be as much about the reader as the writer. Yes, it’s your story, based on your experience, but unless readers see a bit of themselves in it, what’s the point? You will have written a book that is merely about something, rather than for the purpose of something.

So what can Creative Nonfiction bring to your memoir? Resonance. Relatability. Accessibility.

And how will it manifest itself? By triggering the theater of the readers’ minds so they can feel the story, imagine themselves in it, experience it with you.

Most importantly, convey your emotional truth . Show how your experiences, challenges, and lessons learned made you feel, how you coped, and the impact they had on your personal or spiritual growth.

• Autobiography vs. Memoir: What’s the Difference?

An autobiography is your life story from birth to the present.

A memoir is theme-oriented with anecdotes from your life that buttress a specific theme .

Too many authors write a memoir because they believe their lives are so interesting that even strangers would enjoy a detailed account .

Don’t misunderstand — maybe you are interesting.

All of us are, to some degree. I know hardly anyone who doesn’t have a story.

But unless you’re a celebrity, sorry but most people beyond your family and close friends aren’t likely to care.

They care about themselves and how your personal story might somehow benefit them.

So your theme must be reader-oriented, offering universal truth, transferable principles that will help them become a better person or get them through whatever crisis they might be facing.

The closest I have come to writing my own memoir, Writing for the Soul , uses selected anecdotes about famous and interesting people I’ve met to illustrate points I make about writing.

Had I merely written an autobiography and not offered writing instruction, it would’ve been largely ignored.

• Should You Write a Memoir?

While you don’t have to be famous to write a great memoir, you must tell a story that educates, entertains, and emotionally moves the reader.

You may write a memoir without intending to traditionally publish it. You might write it for only your family and friends.

I’m here to help, regardless your reason for writing your memoir.

• What Should Your Memoir Be About?

Your memoir should draw on anecdotes from your life to show how you progressed from some unlikely place to where you are today.

In that way, it’s about you, but it’s for the benefit of the reader.

Maybe you’re:

• From the other side of the tracks
• From a broken home
• A victim of abuse
• A recovered addict

Yet you have achieved:

• Financial security

You might start with how bad things once were for you and how unlikely it was that you would escape your situation.

Then you would show pivotal experiences and people important to your transformation, what you learned, and how your life changed.

Naturally, the better your stories and the more significant your change (in fiction, we call this a character arc ), the better your memoir.

However, great stories are not the point — and frankly, neither is the memoir writer (you).

The point is reader takeaway.

Readers should be able to apply to themselves and their own situations the larger truths and principles your theme imparts.

That way, you don’t have to awkwardly try to apply your message to them. Ideally, they’ll do that for themselves.

They may be enduring something entirely different from what you did, yet your story gives them hope.

• What Publishers Look For

Don’t buy into the idea that only famous people can sell a memoir. Sure, they might be able to get away with a recitation of their daily routines, because people are interested in the minutiae of the famous.

But memoirs by the largely unknown succeed for one reason: they resonate because readers identify with them.

Truth, especially the hard, gritty, painful stuff, bears that universal truth and those transferable principles I mentioned above.

Candor and self-revelation attracts readers, and readers are what publishers want .

Astute agents or publishers’ acquisitions editors recognize how relatable a memoir will be.

Agents and editors tell me they love to discover such gems — the same way they love discovering the next great novelist.

The key is a compelling story told with creative writing.

So, when writing your memoir…

Remember, you’re the subject, but it’s not really about you.

It may seem counterintuitive to think reader-first while writing in first person about yourself, but readers long to be changed by your story.

Give them insight about life through your experiences. Give them the tools they need to overcome their own struggles, even if they’re not at all like yours. Give them a model for overcoming.

Couch it in entertaining, educational, and emotional stories, and they’ll not only stay with you till the last page, but they’ll also recommend your memoir to their friends.

• How to Write a Memoir
• Settle On Your Theme
• Select Your Anecdotes
• Outline Your Book
• Write It Like a Novel
• Avoid Throwing People Under the Bus

Step 1. Settle On Your Theme

Your unstated theme must be, “You’re not alone. If I overcame this, you can overcome anything.”

That’s what appeals to readers. Even if they do come away from your memoir impressed with you, it won’t be because you’re so special — even if you are. Whether they admit it or not, readers care most about themselves.

They’re reading your memoir wondering, What’s in this for me? The more transferable principles you offer in a story well told, the more successful your book will be .

Cosmic Commonalities

All people, regardless of age, ethnicity, location, and social status, share certain felt needs: food, shelter, and love. They fear abandonment, loneliness, and the loss of loved ones. Regardless of your theme, if it touches on any of those needs and fears, readers can identify.

I can read the memoir of someone of my opposite gender, for whom English is not her first language, of a different race and religion, who lives halfway around the world from me — and if she writes of her love for her child or grandchild, it reaches me.

Knowing or understanding or relating to nothing else about her, I understand the love of family.

How to Write a Memoir Without Preaching

Trust your narrative to convey your message. Too many memoir writers feel the need to eventually turn the spotlight on the reader with a sort of “So, how about you…?”

Let your experiences and how they impacted you make their own points, and trust the reader to get it. Beat him over the head with your theme and you run him off.

You can avoid being preachy by using what I call the Come Alongside Method. Show what happened to you and what you learned, and if the principles apply to your readers, give them credit for being smart enough to get it.

Step 2. Select Your Anecdotes

The best memoirs let readers see themselves in your story so they can identify with your experiences and apply the lessons you’ve learned to their own lives.

If you’re afraid to mine your pain deeply enough to tell the whole truth, you may not be ready to write your memoir. There’s nothing a little less helpful — or marketable — than a memoir that glosses over the truth.

So, feature the anecdotes from your life that support your theme, regardless how painful it is to resurrect the memories. The more introspective and vulnerable you are, the more effective your memoir will be.

Create a list of events in your life and their impact on you. These may be major events like a war, your parents’ divorce, a graduation, a wedding, or the loss of a dear friend or relative.

But they may also be seemingly mundane life events that for some reason affected you deeply. Just make sure they support your theme.

Who is unforgettable and what role did they play in making you the person you’ve become?

Interview family and friends for different perspectives. Peruse photographs, revisit meaningful places, research dates, the weather, and relevant history.

Step 3. Outline Your Book

Without a clear vision, trying to write a memoir will likely end in disaster. There’s no substitute for an outline .

Potential agents or publishers require in your proposal a synopsis of where you’re going, and they also need to know that you know.

One that changed the course of my writing career is novelist Dean Koontz ’s Classic Story Structure, spelled out in his classic How to Write Bestselling Fiction . Though obviously intended as a framework for a novel , I discovered it applies perfectly to almost any genre (including TV sitcoms, if you can believe it).

And fortunately, for the purposes of my subject today, Koontz’s classic story structure serves a memoir beautifully too.

Here it is in a nutshell:

• Plunge your main character into terrible trouble as soon as possible
• Everything he does to try to get out of it makes it only progressively worse until…
• His situation appears hopeless
• But in the end, because of what he’s learned and how he’s grown through all those setbacks, he rises to the challenge and wins the day.

You might be able to structure your memoir the same way merely by how you choose to tell the story. As I say, don’t force things, but the closer you can get to that structure , the more engaging your memoir will be.

For your memoir, naturally, you’re the main character.

And the Terrible Trouble would be the nadir of your life . (If nadir is a new word for you, it’s the opposite of zenith .)

Take the reader with you to your lowest point, and show what you did to try to remedy things.

But what about that “as soon as possible” caveat?

Maybe your terrible trouble didn’t manifest itself until later in life.

Fine, start there. The backstory can emerge as you progress, but you’ll find his structure and sequencing will make for the most compelling read.

Important in fiction as well as in a memoir is to be sure your reader is invested in the main character enough to care when he is plunged into terrible trouble.

While in fiction that means some hint of the stakes — he’s a husband, a father, has suffered some loss, etc. If that’s also true of you, subtly inject it.

Also in a memoir, you want to promise a good outcome, some form of your own wonder at who you are now compared to who you once were or destined to be. That way, readers can take from your story that things can dramatically change for the better in their lives too.

One of the reasons this structure works so well in fiction is because it’s often true in real life.

If you’ve become a successful, happy person despite an unfortunate background, it’s likely that you tried many times to fix things, only to see them deteriorate until you developed the ability to break through.

All Koontz and I are saying is to emphasize that .

Keep your outline to a single page for now.

Then develop a synopsis with a sentence or two of what each chapter will cover.

Write this in the present tense. “I enroll in college only to find that…”

And don’t worry if you’ve forgotten the basics of classic outlining or have never felt comfortable with the concept.

It doesn’t have to be rendered in Roman numerals and capital and lowercase letters and then numerals, unless that serves you best.

Just a list of sentences that synopsize your idea works fine, too.

And remember, it’s a fluid document meant to serve you and your book. Play with it, rearrange it as you see fit — even during the writing.

Step 4. Write It Like a Novel

It’s as important in a memoir as it is in a novel to show and not just tell .

My father was a drunk who abused my mother and me. I was scared to death every time I heard him come in late at night.

As soon as I heard the gravel crunch beneath the tires, I dove under my bed.

I could tell by his footsteps whether Dad was sober and tired or loaded and looking for a fight.

I prayed God would magically make me big enough to jump between him and my mom, because she was always his first target…

Use every tool in the novelist’s arsenal to make each anecdote come to life: dialogue , description, conflict , tension , pacing, everything.

These will make sure you grab your readers’ attention and keep it — because these tools ensure that they’ll become engrossed in your story.

Worry less about chronology than theme.

You’re not married to the autobiographer’s progressive timeline.

Tell whatever anecdote fits your point for each chapter, regardless where they fall on the calendar.

Just make the details clear so the reader knows where you are in the story .

You might begin with the most significant memory of your life, even from childhood.

Then you can segue into something like, “Only now do I understand what was really happening.” Your current-day voice can always drop in to tie things together.

Character Arc

As in a novel, how the protagonist (in this case, you) grows is critical to a successful story. Your memoir should make clear the difference between who you are today and who you once were. What you learn along the way becomes your character arc .

Point of View

It should go without saying that you write a memoir in the first person . And just as in a novel, the point-of-view character is the one with the problem, the challenge, something he’s after. Tell both your outer story (what happens) and your inner story (its impact on you).

Setups and Payoffs

Great novels carry a book-length setup that demands a payoff in the end, plus chapter-length setups and payoffs, and sometimes even the same within scenes. The more of these the better.

The same is true for your memoir. Virtually anything that makes the reader stay with you to find out what happens is a setup that demands a payoff. Even something as seemingly innocuous as your saying that you hoped high school would deliver you from the torment of junior high makes the reader want to find out if that proved true.

Make ‘em Wait

Avoid using narrative summary to give away too much information too early. I’ve seen memoir manuscripts where the author tells in the first paragraph how they went from abject poverty to independent wealth in 20 years, “…and I want to tell you how that happened.”

To me, that takes the air right out of the tension balloon.

Many readers would agree and see no reason to continue reading.

Better to set them up for a payoff and let them wait.

Not so long that you lose them to frustration, but long enough to build tension.

Step 5. Avoid Throwing People Under the Bus

If you’re brave enough to expose your own weaknesses, foibles, embarrassments, and yes, even your failures to the world, what about your friends, enemies, loved ones, teachers, bosses, and coworkers?

If you tell the truth, are you allowed to throw them under the bus?

In some cases, yes.

But should you?

Even if they gave you permission in writing, what’s the upside?

Usually a person painted in a negative light — even if the story is true — would not sign a release allowing you to expose them publicly.

But even if they did, would it be the right, ethical, kind thing to do?

All I can tell you is that I wouldn’t do it. And I wouldn’t want it done to me.

If the Golden Rule alone isn’t reason enough not to do it, the risk of being sued certainly ought to be.

So, What to Do?

On one hand, I’m telling you your memoir is worthless without the grit. On the other, I’m telling you not to expose the evildoers.

Stalemate? No.

Here’s the solution:

Changing names to protect the guilty is not enough. Too many people in your family and social orbit will know the person, making your writing legally actionable.

So change more than just the name.

Change the location. Change the year. Change their gender. You could even change the offense .

If your own father verbally abused you so painfully when you were thirteen that you still suffer from the memory decades later, attribute it to a teacher and have it happen at an entirely different age.

Is that lying in a nonfiction book? Not if you include a disclaimer upfront that stipulates: “Some names and details have been changed to protect identities.”

So, no, don’t throw anyone under the bus. But don’t stop that bus!

• Common Memoir Mistakes

Making it too much like an autobiography

Memoirs aren’t a chronological history of everything that’s happened in your life. Make sure your theme is strong, compelling, and reader-focused. If the stories you include don’t speak to your theme, cut them.

Including minutiae

Use only the details that matter. Have a large family or circle of friends, only a few of whom were critical to your outcome? Leave most of them out. Avoid describing day-to-day experiences or descriptions unless they directly relate to your theme.

Your memoir isn’t the place for touting your achievements. You’ll turn readers off. Describe your challenges and emotional truths authentically. Own your successes but stay humble. Memoir is about the journey more than the destination.

Glossing over the truth

Writing a memoir will challenge you emotionally. It can be hard to revisit tough times or traumatic experiences — but unless you tell the whole truth, your readers won’t be able to relate and your story will fall flat.

How can you avoid sounding preachy or overbearing in your writing? Look for any time you use the words “must,” “should,” “ought,” or “have to,” and then find ways to reword your sentences using the Come Alongside Method to encourage, inspire, or suggest instead.

Affecting the wrong tone

Your memoir isn’t a place to be flippant, sarcastic, or condescending. You can be lighthearted at times, but use humor judiciously. Don’t try to cover up your emotional truth with lame jokes. Your story won’t feel authentic and your readers will lose interest.

• How to Start Your Memoir

Start slowly by setting the stage or explaining family dynamics and you’ll soon lose your reader’s attention.

Hook your reader from page one by beginning in medias res — in the middle of things. That doesn’t mean it has to be slam-bang action, but something must be happening.

Not sure exactly where to start ? No problem.

You don’t have to know the best beginning for your book in order to start writing — and you shouldn’t procrastinate indefinitely until you figure it out.

Instead, many memoir writers only discover their strongest potential opening as a last step. Decide what stories you’ll include, write those, and choose the best one once you see what you have to work with.

• Memoir Examples

Thoroughly immerse yourself in this genre before attempting to write in it. I read nearly 50 memoirs before I wrote mine ( Writing for the Soul ). Here’s a list to get you started:

• All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg (my favorite book ever)

The Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter tells the story of growing up dirt poor in Alabama with a father who had a “murderous temper” and a mother who went 18 years without a new dress to make sure her kids had a better life.

• Cultivate by Lara Casey

Part inspiration and part practical guide, Lara’s insight helps women who feel “inadequate, overwhelmed, and exhausted” to find grace through cultivating what matters most.

• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

One of Hemingway’s most beloved books, this memoir provides a fascinating snapshot of his life as a writer in 1920s Paris.

• Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

Modern Library named this classic book, written in 1937, as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time. In it, Karen describes her experiences running a coffee farm with her husband in Kenya in 1914.

• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

The history of Frank McCourt’s “miserable Irish Catholic childhood” and how stories helped him to survive slums and starvation and ultimately thrive as a professional storyteller.

• Still Woman Enough by Loretta Lynn

In a much anticipated follow-up to her first memoir, Coal Miner’s Daughter , Loretta tells the story of the second half of her life. She writes about the stresses of fame and candidly discusses her often turbulent relationship with the husband she married at age 13.

• Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

A moving and insightful look into one of the greatest comedians ever — including Steve’s creative process, his incredible work ethic, and why he walked away during the height of his career.

• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Didion’s story of marriage, family life, and unexpected tragedy will touch anyone who’s ever loved and lost a spouse or child.

• This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff

After divorce splits his family, a young Toby Woolf runs away to Alaska, forges checks, and steals cars — then redefines his life.

• Molina by Benjie Molina and Joan Ryan

The story of a father who raised 3 famous major league baseball catchers and left a legacy of “loyalty, humility, courage, and the true meaning of success.”

• Undone by Michele Cushatt

Michele’s story of divorce, cancer, and integrating a new family shows readers how embracing faith and letting go of the need to control can lead to a vibrant life despite chaos and messiness.

• Will the Circle Be Unbroken? By Sean Dietrich

Sean’s story of love, loss, and the unthinkable gives readers hope for a future that breaks the destructive cycles of previous generations.

• Turn Your Life Story Into a Captivating Memoir

If you’ve ever thought about writing a memoir (or wondered if you should even try), you now have everything you need.

Think about your theme. What have you learned that could help others? How will you tell your stories to inspire your readers and change lives?

Brush up on the 7 essential story elements to make sure your memoir is as relatable as possible.

And once you’re ready to get started, head over to How to Outline a Nonfiction Book in 5 Steps .

Are You Making This #1 Amateur Writing Mistake?

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What You and I Can Learn From Patricia Raybon

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Guides • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Feb 17, 2023

What is a Memoir? An Inside Look at Life Stories

A memoir is a narrative written from the author's perspective about a particular facet of their own life. As a type of nonfiction , memoirs are generally understood to be factual accounts — though it is accepted that they needn't be objective, merely a version of events as the author remembers them.

The term comes from the French word “mémoire,” which means “memory,” or “reminiscence.” To give you a touchstone before we go any further, here are a couple of famous memoir examples , some of which you might recognize:

• Walden by Henry David Thoreau;
• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt;
• Becoming by Michelle Obama;
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; and
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

You’d be forgiven for mistaking any of these popular memoirs for a novel — since, just like novels, they have a plot, characters, themes, imagery, and dialogue . We like to think of memoirs as nonfiction by name and fiction by nature.  

A quick biography of the memoir

To trace the memoir back to its origins, we’ll need to don our best togas and hitch a chariot ride back to ancient Rome. That’s right, memoirs have been around since at least the first century BC when Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars offered not only a play-by-play of each battle but a peek into the mind of one of Rome’s most dynamic leaders. 

“I came, I saw, I conquered, my dudes!”

During the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, memoirs continued to be written by the ruling classes, who interpreted historical events they played a role in or closely observed. The gentry — who had the luxuries of free time, literacy, and spare funds — would document the events and machinations of court, as well as the many military crusades. It was the French who particularly excelled, with diplomats, knights, and historians, such as Philippe de Comminnes and Blaise de Montluc, seizing the opportunity to cement their legacy. 

From the 17th century, memoirs began to revolve around people rather than events, though typically, the focus was not on the author’s own life but on the people around him. Once again, the French took the lead — namely, Duc de Saint-Simon, who has received literary fame for his penetrating character sketches of the court of Louis XIV. (Think diary entries packed with petty intrigue and rumor-mongering.)

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From Julius Caesar to Julia Roberts

As time wore on, this elite posse of memoirists came to include noted professionals, such as politicians and businessmen (it was still always men), who wanted to publish accounts of their own public exploits. The exception to this model was Henry David Thoreau's 1854 memoir Walden — an account of his two years in a Massachusetts cabin, finding fulfillment in the wilderness. 

In his book Memoir: A History , Ben Yagoda sketches a family tree pinning Walden as a precursor to the modern success of spiritual and “schtick lit” memoirs like Eat, Pray, Love and Gretchen Ruben’s The Happiness Project , as well as the long literary tradition of “My year of…” memoirs that gave us Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking . Yagoda also traces the roots of these spiritual memoirs back even further to The Confessions of St Augustine written in A.D. 397, in which Augustine admits to a sinful youth spent munching stolen pears ( gasp)  before finding the path to Christianity.

“I ate, I prayed, I loved, my dudes!” (image: Sony Pictures)

Yagoda’s point? Once a memoir type emerges, it’ll keep spawning subgenres. For example, traces of the professional memoir and the fragmentary diary can be found in Adam Kay’s medical bestseller This is Going to Hurt. One thing that all memoirs have in common, however, is that they allow us to get to know a stranger on an intimate level — a prospect that appeals to our nosy side and will likely never get old.

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Is a memoir the same as an autobiography?

Memoirs and autobiographies are usually found on the same shelves of the bookstore, and so are often conflated in the minds of authors. But we’re here to tell you they’re not the same thing. While both are accounts of the writer's experiences, autobiographies span their entire life, providing the who-what-where-when-why of each stage, in chronological order. 

Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom is an example of an autobiography: it details his childhood, his years as a freedom fighter, as well as those spent in prison, and finally, the complex negotiations that led to his release and the beginning of the end of apartheid. 

A memoir, on the other hand, is more selective with its timeline. The constraints of the autobiography are loosened, and authors can intimately explore a pivotal moment or a particular facet of their life, allowing their thoughts and feelings to take control of the narrative. For example, journalist Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill chronicles his investigation leading up to the #MeToo movement, while William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days is a soaring ode to his one great love and obsession — surfing. 

Memoir’s emphasis on storytelling is sometimes said to differentiate it from autobiography, but there are much more important differences to be aware of. After all, a good autobiography ought to weave a narrative, too. 

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They’re not just for celebrities

These days, most bestselling memoirs tend to be written by celebrities (or their ghostwriters ). Naturally, publishers are keen to capitalize on a well-known person's platform and existing fanbase to sell books — but that doesn't mean you need to be a reality star or a newsmaking criminal to tell your story. 

"You have to give people a reason to care about you," says Paul Carr, the author of three published traditionally published memoirs . "They need a reason to relate to your story — for your story to resonate with them."

While most people reading this article are probably not household names, there may be some aspects of your life that can be told in a way that touches on universal human experiences. Or perhaps your story is something that can help people improve their lives in big and small ways.

Even if your memoir doesn't have broad commercial potential, there can be other reasons for writing one:

• To recall and cement the memory of a certain time in your life;
• To leave behind an important story or lesson for your family;
• To document your travels or a once-in-a-lifetime trip;
• To open up about something painful or difficult; or simply,
• To tell a powerful story that will resonate with readers.

If there's someone out there who will benefit from reading your story — whether it's millions of fans or your immediate family — you may find that to be enough of a reason to pick up your pen and start to write.

In the next article in our series about memoirs, we offer up 21 examples of memoirs that might inspire you to write your own. 

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January 5, 2021

How to Write a Memoir: 7 Creative Ways to Tell a Powerful Story

by Brooke Warner

Originally published in The Write Life

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 you, as a reader, for an exhilarating ride.

When I teach people how to write and sell memoir, we talk about how to tell a compelling story. While all memoirs are different, the best memoirs all have certain elements in common.

My goal with this piece is to review some of those common elements, so you can weave them into your own memoir.

How to write a memoir

If you’re planning to write a memoir, you’ll want to take your readers on a journey they won’t forget. In this post, we share tips for writing a memoir well, as well as plenty of memoir examples.

Here’s how to write a memoir.

1. Narrow your focus

Your memoir should be written as if the entire book is a snapshot of one theme of your life. Or consider it a pie, where your life represents the whole pie, and you are writing a book about a teeny-tiny sliver.

Your memoir is not an autobiography. The difference is that an autobiography spans your entire life, and a memoir focuses on one particular moment or series of moments around a theme. You want your readers to walk away knowing you, and that one experience, on a much deeper level.

Perhaps you are familiar with Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. This memoir focuses on Frank’s life as a first-generation immigrant child in Brooklyn. Angela is his mother, and much of the storyline focuses on her and how Frank saw her, as well as the role she played in trying to hold the entire family together.

2. Include more than just your story

Even as you narrow your focus, we also need to think bigger in our writing pursuits.

For example, if Hillary Clinton wrote a memoir about raising a child in the White House, she would be pulling in tidbits about how she handled the media, who she let visit her daughter during sleepovers and how she navigated the politics of parenting during her time in the White House.

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.

How does this apply to you? Imagine you are writing a memoir about your three-week trek through the Himalayan Mountains. While the focus is on your trip, as well as what you learned about yourself along the way, it would be wise to also include other details about the place, your experience and your thoughts.

You could describe the geography and history of the area, share interesting snippets about the people and donkeys you interacted with, and discuss your exploration of life-and-death questions as you progressed along your arduous journey.

Your readers want to know about you, but it’s the backstory and vivid details that make for a powerful memoir.

3. Tell the truth

One of the best tips for how to write a memoir that’s powerful is to be honest and genuine. This is often tricky, because we don’t want to hurt or upset the people (our family and friends!) we’ve written into our books. But it’s important that you tell the truth — even if it makes your journey as an author more difficult.

When Shannon Hernandez wrote her memoir, Breaking the Silence: My Final Forty Days as a Public School Teacher, she knew she had a major dilemma: “If I opted to tell the whole truth, I would pretty much ensure I would never get a job with New York City Public Schools again.”

But she also knew teachers, parents and administrators needed to hear why great teachers are leaving education in droves and why the current educational system is not doing what’s right for our nation’s kids.

“I wrote my book with brutal honesty,” she said, “and it has paid off with my readers. It’s bringing national attention to what is happening behind closed school doors.”

One more note on honesty: Memoirs explore the concept of truth as seen through your eyes. Don’t write in a snarky manner or with a bitter tone. The motivation for writing a memoir shouldn’t be to exact revenge or whine or seek forgiveness; it should simply be to share your experience.

Don’t exaggerate or bend the truth in your memoir. Your story, the unique one that you hold and cherish, is enough. There is no need to fabricate or embellish.

4. Put your readers in your shoes

Powerful writers show, not tell. And for a memoir writer, this is essential to your success, because you must invite your reader into your perspective so she can draw her own conclusions.

The best way to do this is to unfold the story before your reader’s eyes by using vivid language that helps him visualize each scene.

Perhaps you want to explain that your aunt was a “raging alcoholic.” If you say this directly, your description will likely come across as judgmental and critical.

Instead, paint a picture for your audience so they come to this conclusion on their own. You might write something like this:

“Vodka bottles littered her bedroom, and I had learned, the hard way, not to knock on her door until well after noon. Most days she didn’t emerge into our living quarters until closer to sunset, and I would read her facial expression to gauge whether or not I should inquire about money — just so I could eat one meal before bedtime.”

5. Employ elements of fiction to bring your story to life

Think of the people in memoirs as characters. A great memoir pulls you into their lives: what they struggle with, what they are successful at and what they wonder about.

Many of the best memoir writers focus on a few key characteristics of their characters, allowing the reader to get to know each one in depth. Your readers must be able to love your characters or hate them, and you can’t do that by providing too much detail.

Introduce intriguing setting details and develop a captivating plot from your story. Show your readers the locations you describe and evoke emotions within them. They need to experience your story, almost as if it was their own.

While your memoir is a true story, employing these elements of fiction will make it far more powerful and enjoyable for your readers.

6. Create an emotional journey

Don’t aim to knock your readers’ socks off. Knock off their pants, shirt, shoes and underwear too! Leave your readers with their mouths open in awe, or laughing hysterically, or crying tears of sympathy and sadness — or all three.

Take them on an emotional journey that motivates them to read the next chapter, wonder about you well after they finish the last page, and tell their friends and colleagues about your book. The best way to evoke these feelings in your readers is to connect your emotions, as the protagonist, with pivotal events happening throughout your narrative arc.

Most of us are familiar with the narrative arc. In school, our teachers used to draw a “mountain” and once we reached the precipice, we were to fill in the climatic point of the book or story. Your memoir is no different: You need to create enough tension to shape your overall story, as well as each individual chapter, with that narrative arc.

That moment when you realized your husband had an affair? Don’t just say you were sad, angry or devastated. Instead, you might say something like:

“I learned of my husband’s affair when the February bank statements arrived and I realized that in one month’s time, he had purchased a ring and two massages at a high-end spa.

Those gifts weren’t mine. He was using our money to woo another lady and build a new life. I curled up in a ball and wept for three hours — I had been demoted to the other woman.”

7. Showcase your personal growth

Speaking of narrative arc, the best way to accomplish that in a memoir is by showing how you, the main character, grew and changed as a person.

That experience you had carries more weight when you show how it affected not just that point in time, but the weeks, months and even years after. How did it change your approach to life? Did it change how you thought about others or yourself? Did it help you become a better or wiser person in some way?

This can be the hardest part of writing a memoir because it requires so much introspection. It’s also the reason why most writers can’t effectively write a memoir immediately after their life-changing experience; they need the passage of time to reflect on what that experience meant to them.

If you do this well, your readers will want to wrap themselves around you, root for you, help you get wherever you’re going on the life journey.

Read the rest of the article

And here's another helpful article on writing memoir from our friends at WriterUnboxed

Back to Write City Blog

Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What's Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (of “Write-minded” with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former Executive Editor of Seal Press. She writes a monthly column for Publishers Weekly.

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63 Best Memoir Writing Prompts To Stoke Your Ideas

You’re writing a memoir. But you’re not sure what questions or life lessons you want to focus on.

Even if only family members and friends will read the finished book, you want to make it worth their time. 

This isn’t just a whimsical collection of anecdotes from your life.

You want to convey something to your readers that will stay with them. 

And maybe you want your memoir’s impact to serve as your legacy — a testament to how you made a small (or large) difference. 

The collection of memoir questions in this post can help you create a legacy worth sharing.

So, if you don’t already have enough ideas for a memoir, read on. 

A Strong Theme

Overcoming obstacles, emotional storytelling, satisfying ending, examples of good starting sentences for a memoir , 63 memoir writing prompts , what are the primary parts of a memoir.

Though similar to autobiographies, memoirs are less chronological and more impressionable – less historical and more relatable.

Resultantly, they’re structured differently. 

With that in mind, let’s look at five elements that tie a memoir together, rendering it more enjoyable.

Biographies are histories that may not hew to a cohesive theme. But memoirs focus on inspiring and enlightening experiences and events.

As such, books in the genre promote a theme or idea that binds the highlighted happenings to an overarching reflection point or lesson.

Many people are super at sniffing out insincerity, and most folks prefer candidness.

So while exact dates and logistical facts may be off in a memoir, being raw and real with emotions, revelations, and relational impacts is vital. To put it colloquially: The best personal accounts let it all hang out. 

People prefer inspiring stories. They want to read about people overcoming obstacles, standing as testaments to the tenacious nature of the human spirit. Why?

Because it engenders hope. If this person was able to achieve “x,” there’s a possibility I could, too. Furthermore, people find it comforting that they’re not the only ones who’ve faced seemingly insurmountable impediments.

Readers crave emotion. And for many of the stoic masses, books, plays, television shows, and films are their primary sources of sentimentality.

Historically, the best-performing memoirs are built on emotional frameworks that resonate with readers. The goal is to touch hearts, not just heads.

In a not-so-small way, memoirs are like romance books: Readers want a “happy” ending. So close strongly. Ensure the finale touches on the book’s central themes and emotional highlights.

End it with a smile and note of encouragement, leaving the audience satisfied and optimistic.

Use the following questions as memoir writing exercises . Choose those that immediately evoke memories that have stayed with you over the years.

Group them by theme — family, career, beliefs, etc. — and address at least one question a day. 

For each question, write freely for around 300 to 400 words. You can always edit it later to tighten it up or add more content. 

1. What is your earliest memory?

2. What have your parents told you about your birth that was unusual?

3. How well did you get along with your siblings, if you have any?

4. Which parent were you closest to growing up and why?

5. What parent or parental figure had the biggest influence on you growing up?

6. What is your happiest childhood memory?

7. What is your saddest or most painful childhood memory?

8. Did you have good parents? How did they show their love for you?

9. What words of theirs from your childhood do you remember most, and why?

10. What do you remember most about your parents’ relationship? 

11. Were your parents together, or did they live apart? Did they get along? 

12. How has your relationship with your parents affected your own love relationships?

13. Who or what did you want to be when you grew up? 

14. What shows or movies influenced you most during your childhood?

15. What were your favorite books to read, and how did they influence you?

16. If you grew up in a religious household, how did you see “God”? 

17. How did you think “God” saw you? Who influenced those beliefs?

18. Describe your spiritual journey from adolescence to the present?

19. Who was your first best friend? How did you become friends? 

20. Who was your favorite teacher in elementary school, and why?

21. Did you fit in with any social group or clique in school? Describe your social life?

22. What were your biggest learning challenges in school (academic or social)? 

23. Who was your first crush, and what drew you to them? How long did it last?

24. What was your favorite subject in school, and what did you love about it?

25. What do you wish you would have learned more about growing up?

26. What did you learn about yourself in high school? What was your biggest mistake?

27. What seemed normal to you growing up that now strikes you as messed up?

28. How old were you when you first moved away from home?

29. Who gave you your first kiss? And what do you remember most about it?

30. Who was your first love ? What do you remember most about them?

31. Was there ever a time in your life when you realized you weren’t straight? 

32. Describe a memorable argument you had with one of your parents? How did it end?

33. Have you lost a parent? How did it happen, and how did their death affect you?

34. What was your first real job? What do you remember most about it?

35. How did you spend the money you earned with that job? 

36. At what moment in your life did you feel most loved? 

37. At what moment in your life did you feel most alone?

38. What do you remember most about your high school graduation? Did it matter?

39. What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you would do?

40. What has been the greatest challenge of your life up to this point?

41. What did you learn in college that has had a powerful influence on you?

42. How has your family’s financial situation growing up influenced you?

43. How has someone’s harsh criticism of you led you to an important realization? 

44. Do you consider yourself a “good person”? Why or why not?

45. Who was the first person who considered you worth standing up for?

46. If you have children, whom did you trust with them when they were babies?

47. Did you have pets growing up? Did you feel close or attached to any of them?

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48. Describe someone from your past whom you’d love to see again. 

49. Do you have a lost love? If yes, describe them, how you met, and how you lost them. 

50. Describe a moment when you made a fool of yourself and what it cost you. 

51. What is something you learned later in life that you wish you’d learned as a child?

52. How do you want others to see you? What words come to mind? 

53. What do you still believe now that you believed even as a child or as a teenager?

54. What do you no longer believe that you did believe as a child or teenager?

55. When have you alienated people by being vocal about your beliefs? 

56. Are you as vocal about your beliefs as you were when you were a young adult ?

57. Are you haunted by the consequences of beliefs you’ve since abandoned? 

58. How have your political beliefs changed since you were a teenager? 

59. Have you ever joined a protest for a cause you believe in? Would you still? 

60. How has technology shaped your life for the past 10 years? 

61.Has your chosen career made you happy — or cost you and your family too much?

62. What comes to mind if someone asks you what you’re good at? Why does it matter?

63. How is your family unique? What makes you proudest when you think about them?

We’ve looked at the elements that make memoirs shine. Now, let’s turn our attention to one of the most important parts of a personal account: the opening sentence.

We’ve scoured some of the most successful, moving memoirs of all time to curate a list of memorable starting sentences. Notice how all of them hint at the theme of the book.

Let’s jump in.

1. “They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.” From Night, a first-hand account of the WWII Holocaust by Elie Wiesel

2. “My mother is scraping a piece of burned toast out of the kitchen window, a crease of annoyance across her forehead.” From Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger, foodie Nigel Slater’s account of culinary events that shaped his life.

3. “Then there was the bad weather.” From A Moveable Feast , Ernest Hemingway’s telling of his years as an young expat in Paris

4. “You know those plants always trying to find the light?” From Over the Top: A Raw Journey of Self-Love by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s beloved star, Jonathan Van Ness

5. “What are you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay.” From Maya Angelou’s masterpiece, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , the story of persevering in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles

6. “I’m on Kauai, in Hawaii, today, August 5, 2005. It’s unbelievably clear and sunny, not a cloud in the sky.” From What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, a memoir about the fluidity of running and writing

7. “The soil in Leitrim is poor, in places no more than an inch deep. ” From All Will be Well , Irish writer John McGahern’s recounting of his troubled childhood 

8. “The past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time.” From Educated , Tara Westover’s engrossing account of her path from growing up in an uneducated survivalist family to earning a doctorate in intellectual history from Cambridge University 

9. “I flipped through the CT scan images, the diagnosis obvious.” From When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, the now-deceased doctor’s journey toward mortality after discovering he had terminal cancer

10. “Romantic love is the most important and exciting thing in the entire world.” From Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton, a funny, light-hearted memoir about one woman’s amorous journey from teenager to twentysomething

Final Thoughts

These memoir topics should get ideas flooding into your mind. All you have to do, then, is let them out onto the page. The more you write, the easier it will be to choose the primary focus for your memoir. And the more fun you’ll have writing it. 

That’s not to say it’ll be easy to create a powerful memoir. It won’t be. But the more clarity you have about its overall mission, the more easily the words will flow. 

Enjoy these memoir writing exercises. And apply the same clarity of focus during the editing process. Your readers will thank you. 

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Home » Writing » Autobiography vs. Biography vs. Memoir

What is a Biography?

A biography, also called a bio, is a non-fiction piece of work giving an objective account of a person’s life. The main difference between a biography vs. an autobiography is that the author of a biography is not the subject. A biography could be someone still living today, or it could be the subject of a person who lived years ago.

Biographies include details of key events that shaped the subject’s life, and information about their birthplace, education, work, and relationships. Biographers use a number of research sources, including interviews, letters, diaries, photographs, essays, reference books, and newspapers. While a biography is usually in the written form, it can be produced in other formats such as music composition or film.

If the target person of the biography is not alive, then the storytelling requires an immense amount of research. Interviews might be required to collect information from historical experts, people who knew the person (e.g., friends and family), or reading other older accounts from other people who wrote about the person in previous years. In biographies where the person is still alive, the writer can conduct several interviews with the target person to gain insight on their life.

The goal of a biography is to take the reader through the life story of the person, including their childhood into adolescence and teenage years, and then their early adult life into the rest of their years. The biography tells a story of how the person learned life’s lessons and the ways the person navigated the world. It should give the reader a clear picture of the person’s personality, traits, and their interaction in the world.

Biographies can also be focused on groups of people and not just one person. For example, a biography can be a historical account of a group of people from hundreds of years ago. This group could have the main person who was a part of the group, and the author writes about the group to tell a story of how they shaped the world.

Fictional biographies mix some true historical accounts with events to help improve the story. Think of fictional biographies as movies that display a warning that the story is made of real characters, but some events are fictional to add to the storyline and entertainment value. A lot of research still goes into a fictional biography, but the author has more room to create a storyline instead of sticking to factual events.

Examples of famous biographies include:

• His Excellency: George Washington  by Joseph J. Ellis
• Einstein: The Life and Times  by Ronald William Clark
• Princess Diana – A Biography of The Princess of Wales  by Drew L. Crichton

What is an Autobiography?

An autobiography is the story of a person’s life written by that person. Because the author is also the main character of the story, autobiographies are written in the first person. Usually, an autobiography is written by the person who is the subject of the book, but sometimes the autobiography is written by another person. Because an autobiography is usually a life story for the author, the theme can be anything from religious to a personal account to pass on to children.

The purpose of an autobiography is to portray the life experiences and achievements of the author. Therefore, most autobiographies are typically written later in the subject’s life. It’s written from the point of view of the author, so it typically uses first person accounts to describe the story.

An autobiography often begins during early childhood and chronologically details key events throughout the author’s life. Autobiographies usually include information about where a person was born and brought up, their education, career, life experiences, the challenges they faced, and their key achievements.

On rare occasions, an autobiography is created from a person’s diary or memoirs. When diaries are used, the author must organize them to create a chronological and cohesive story. The story might have flashbacks or flashforwards to describe a specific event, but the main storyline should follow chronological order from the author’s early life to their current events.

One of the main differences between an autobiography vs. a biography is that autobiographies tend to be more subjective. That’s because they are written by the subject, and present the facts based on their own memories of a specific situation, which can be biased. The story covers the author’s opinions on specific subjects and provides an account of their feelings as they navigate certain situations. These stories are also very personal because it’s a personal account of the author’s life rather than a biography where a third party writes about a specific person.

Examples of famous autobiographies include:

• The Story of My Life  by Helen Keller
• The Diary of a Young Girl  by Anne Frank
• Losing My Virginity  by Richard Branson

What is a Memoir?

Memoir comes from the French word  mémoire , meaning memory or reminiscence. Similar to an autobiography, a memoir is the story of a person’s life written by that person. These life stories are often from diary entries either from a first-person account or from a close family member or friend with access to personal diaries.

The difference between a memoir vs. an autobiography is that a memoir focuses on reflection and establishing an emotional connection, rather than simply presenting the facts about their life. The author uses their personal knowledge to tell an intimate and emotional story about the private or public happenings in their life. The author could be the person in the story, or it can be written by a close family member or friend who knew the subject person intimately. The topic is intentionally focused and does not include biographical or chronological aspects of the author’s life unless they are meaningful and relevant to the story.

Memoirs come in several types, all of which are written as an emotional account of the target person. They usually tell a story of a person who went through great struggles or faced challenges in a unique way. They can also cover confessionals where the memoir tells the story of the author’s account that contradicts another’s account.

This genre of writing is often stories covering famous people’s lives, such as celebrities. In many memoir projects, the celebrity or person of interest needs help with organization, writing the story, and fleshing out ideas from the person’s diaries. It might take several interviews before the story can be fully outlined and written, so it’s not uncommon for a memoir project to last several months.

Memoirs do not usually require as much research as biographies and autobiographies, because you have the personal accounts in diary entries and documents with the person’s thoughts. It might require several interviews, however, before the diary entries can be organized to give an accurate account on the person’s thoughts and emotions. The story does not necessarily need to be in chronological order compared to an autobiography, but it might be to tell a better story.

Examples of famous memoirs include:

• Angela’s Ashes  by Frank McCourt
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings  by Maya Angelou
• Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S.  Grant by Ulysses S. Grant

Autobiography vs. Biography vs. Memoir Comparison Chart

Check out some of our blogs to learn more about memoirs:

• What is a memoir?
• 5 tips for writing a memoir
• Your memoir is your legacy

Ready to get started on your own memoir, autobiography, or biography? Download our free desktop book-making software, BookWright .

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The Differences between Memoir, Autobiography, and Biography - article

Creative nonfiction: memoir vs. autobiography vs. biography.

Writing any type of nonfiction story can be a daunting task. As the author, you have the responsibility to tell a true story and share the facts as accurately as you can—while also making the experience enjoyable for the reader.

There are three primary formats to tell a creative nonfiction story: memoir, autobiography, and biography. Each has its own distinct characteristics, so it’s important to understand the differences between them to ensure you’re writing within the correct scope.

A memoir is a collection of personal memories related to specific moments or experiences in the author’s life. Told from the perspective of the author, memoirs are written in first person point of view.

The defining characteristic that sets memoirs apart from autobiographies and biographies is its scope. While the other genres focus on the entire timeline of a person’s life, memoirs structure themselves on one aspect, such as addiction, parenting, adolescence, disease, faith, etc.

They may tell stories from various moments in the author’s life, but they should read like a cohesive story—not just a re-telling of facts.

“You don’t want a voice that simply relates facts to the reader. You want a voice that shows the reader what’s going on and puts him or her in the room with the people you’re writing about.” – Kevan Lyon in Writing a Memoir

Unlike autobiographies and biographies, memoirs focus more on the author’s relationship to and feelings about his or her own memories. Memoirs tend to read more like a fiction novel than a factual account, and should include things like dialogue , setting, character descriptions, and more.

Authors looking to write a memoir can glean insight from both fiction and nonfiction genres. Although memoirs tell a true story, they focus on telling an engaging narrative, just like a novel. This gives memoir authors a little more flexibility to improve upon the story slightly for narrative effect.

However, you should represent dialogue and scenarios as accurately as you can, especially if you’re worried about libel and defamation lawsuits .

Examples of popular memoirs include Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Key traits of a memoir:

- Written in 1 st person POV from the perspective of the author - Less formal compared to autobiographies and biographies - Narrow in scope or timeline - Focused more on feelings and memories than facts - More flexibility to change the story for effect

Autobiography

Like a memoir, an autobiography is the author’s retelling of his or her life and told in first person point of view, making the author the main character of the story.

Autobiographies are also narrative nonfiction, so the stories are true but also include storytelling elements such as a protagonist (the author), a central conflict, and a cast of intriguing characters.

Unlike memoirs, autobiographies focus more on facts than emotions. Because of this, a collaborator often joins the project to help the author tell the most factual, objective story possible.

While a memoir is limited in scope, an autobiography details the author’s entire life up to the present. An autobiography often begins when the author is young and includes detailed chronology, events, places, reactions, movements and other relevant happenings throughout the author’s life.

“In many people’s memoir, they do start when they’re younger, but it isn’t an, ‘I got a dog, then we got a fish, and then I learned to tie my shoes’…it isn’t that kind of detail.” – Linda Joy Meyers in Memoir vs. Autobiography

The chronology of an autobiography is organized but not necessarily in date order. For instance, the author may start from current time and employ flashbacks or he/she may organize events thematically.

Autobiographers use many sources of information to develop the story such as letters, photographs, and other personal memorabilia. However, like a memoir, the author’s personal memory is the primary resource. Any other sources simply enrich the story and relay accurate and engaging experiences.

A good autobiography includes specific details that only the author knows and provides context by connecting those details to larger issues, themes, or events. This allows the reader to relate more personally to the author’s experience. 

Examples of popular autobiographies include The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

Key traits of an autobiography:

- Written in 1 st person POV from the perspective of the author, occasionally with the help of a collaborator - More formal and objective than memoirs, but more subjective than biographies - Broad in scope or timeline, often covering the author’s entire life up to the present - Focused more on facts than emotions - Requires more extensive fact-checking and research than memoirs, but less than biographies

A biography is the story of events and circumstances of a person’s life, written by someone other than that person. Usually, people write biographies about a  historical  or  public figure . They can be written with or without the subject’s authorization.

Since the author is telling the account of someone else, biographies are always in third person point of view and carry a more formal and objective tone than both memoirs and autobiographies.

Like an autobiography, biographies cover the entire scope of the subject’s life, so it should include details about his or her birthplace, educational background, work history, relationships, death and more.

Good biographers will research and study a person’s life to collect facts and present the most historically accurate, multi-faceted picture of an individual’s experiences as possible. A biography should include intricate details—so in-depth research is necessary to ensure accuracy.

“If you’re dealing principally with historical figures who are long dead, there are very few legal problems…if you’re dealing with a more sensitive issue…then the lawyers will be crawling all over the story.” – David Margolick in Legal Issues with Biographies

However, biographies are still considered creative nonfiction, so the author has the ability to analyze and interpret events in the subject’s life, looking for meaning in their actions, uncovering mistakes, solving mysteries, connecting details, and highlighting the significance of the person's accomplishments or life activities.

Authors often organize events in chronological order, but can sometimes organize by themes or specific accomplishments or topics, depending on their book’s key idea.

Examples of popular biographies include Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Key traits of a biography:

- Written about another person, often a celebrity or public figure, and told in 3 rd person point of view - More formal and objective than both memoirs and autobiographies - Broad in scope or timeline, often covering the subject’s entire life up to the present - Focused solely on facts - Requires meticulous research and fact-checking to ensure accuracy

• Biographies and Memoirs
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Met you this morning briefly and just bought your book on Amazon. Congratulations. 

Very helpful. I think I am heading down the path of a memoir.

Thank you explaining the differences between the three writing styles!

Very useful article. Well done. Please can we have more. Doctor's Orders !!!

My first book, "Tales of a Meandering Medic" is definitely a Memoir.

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Autobiography vs. Biography vs. Memoir: Differences of Each Type

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Do you ever get confused when trying to differentiate between an autobiography, biography, and memoir? If so, you’re not alone—these three genres are often used interchangeably, but each one actually requires its own unique approach. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the differences of each type and provide some handy tips on how best to write them all!

Introducing the different genres of writing—autobiography, biography, and memoir 

Three genres that often get jumbled together are autobiography, biography, and memoir. While they may seem similar at first glance, each genre has its own unique characteristics. An autobiography, for example, is a first-person account of someone’s life, typically written by the subject themselves. A biography, by contrast, is a third-person account of someone’s life, written by someone else. And a memoir is a focused, often thematic account of a particular period or experience in someone’s life. Knowing the distinctions between these genres can help you decide which approach is best for telling your own story or for crafting a compelling biography or memoir.

Understanding the differences between autobiography, biography and memoir

Autobiography, biography, and memoir are often confused with each other. An autobiography is a book written by the author about their own life experiences. In contrast, a biography is a book written by someone else about another person’s life experiences. Finally, a memoir is a book written about a specific time or event in the author’s life. These three genres require different approaches to writing and reading. Autobiographies are generally more personal, while biographies generally intend to provide a more objective view of a person’s life. Memoirs allow for a deeper exploration of a specific period of time or event.

Exploring the benefits of writing an autobiography

Writing an autobiography can serve as a time capsule for one’s life experiences and also act as a vehicle for personal growth and self-reflection. Through the process of writing, individuals have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of themselves. Additionally, an autobiography can be an invaluable resource for future generations by providing them with a window into the past and the inner workings of their ancestors. If you’re looking for a way to capture your life story and leave a meaningful legacy, writing an autobiography might be a good idea.

Discovering the advantages of writing a biography

A biography records the life and accomplishments of a person. A biography can provide insight into the individual’s beliefs, accomplishments, and experiences that shaped their life. Writing a biography requires research , attention to detail, and a thorough understanding of the individual’s life. It takes time and effort. By capturing a person’s story in writing, we can learn from their life experiences and be inspired to pursue our own passions and dreams. Writing a biography can be challenging, but the end result is a rewarding tribute to a person.

Examining the unique aspects of writing a memoir

Writing a memoir is an incredible way to tell your story and leave a lasting legacy. What makes a memoir unique is that it is not just about recounting facts or events. It is more so about exploring the deeper meaning and emotions behind those experiences. It requires a delicate balance of vulnerability and objectivity, as you must be willing to share personal details while also maintaining a sense of clarity and purpose. To truly connect with your audience, it is important to infuse your writing with your own voice and personality, making the story feel authentic and relatable.

Making efficient use of resources when writing your story

Making an efficient use of resources will help create a compelling story that resonates with readers. Whether it’s time management, research, or even word choice, every decision plays an integral role in crafting a well-structured narrative. One useful tool for maximizing your efficiency is outlining your story beforehand, allowing you to flesh out characters and plot points in a clear and concise manner. Additionally, don’t be afraid to take advantage of resources such as writing groups, online tutorials, and feedback from industry professionals who can provide valuable perspective and insight into your work.

As you now know, autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs each have their own unique focus, purpose, and advantages. Writing your life story can be rewarding and fulfilling. Having a writing partner experienced with these genres to guide you on your journey can be invaluable in producing the story you want to tell. If it is time to tell your story―whether fact or fiction―contact Elite Authors today! We will help you choose the genre that best fits your project goals while helping you craft a stunning personal account that is sure to capture the imagination of readers everywhere.

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Autobiography vs Memoir: Which One Should You Write?

There is often a lot of confusion when it comes an autobiography vs memoir. While both are true stories about an individual, they share different story arcs and structures.

If you want to write a story about your life, it's important to understand the difference between memoir and autobiography, which is what we will delve into today. After you read our article on autobiography vs memoir, you'll be able to write your life story with clarity and confidence.

Maybe your life story is unique. You want to share it and leave a lasting legacy behind. Well, it’s time to start the process. It’s time to write your story. 

Before sitting down to write, it’s important to articulate to yourself what you specifically want to share and why. Just as writing a fiction book demands planning and deciding exactly where to start and what theme to write about, so does writing your life story. 

Whatever your story is, it will likely fall under the category of memoir or autobiography. 

The most important choice to make prior to writing your opening sentence is deciding which genre (in the giant list of book genres ) you are going to share your story through.

It’s crucial to choose the correct genre in which to tell your story. Autobiographies vs memoirs each have different purposes. 

Using an autobiography when you want to communicate your memoir is similar to filming a documentary when you want to film a drama. 

Documentaries usually cover many details of a specific time period and are told through a linear fashion. They start at a single point in time and work their way to the end of a time period or to the present day.

Dramas focus on a theme and use specific aspects of a person’s life to articulate and highlight this theme. 

Autobiographies vs memoirs are much the same. 

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This autobiography vs memoir guide will cover:

Autobiography vs memoir: the difference explained.

While both genres are personal stories, the difference between memoir and autobiography is distinct.

According to Merriam-Webster, a memoir is, “A narrative composed from personal experience” and an autobiography is, “The biography of a person narrated by that person, a usually written account of a person's life in their own words.” 

In the publishing world, a memoir is a book about you that is focused on the reader. In other words, it’s pieces of your life story written with the intention of communicating a specific message to a specific audience. 

An autobiography is your life story from birth to present day, including all major events, without too much thought for theme. 

The purpose of an autobiography is simply to communicate your life story . 

The purpose of a memoir is to communicate a theme, and use stories from your life to do so.

This is the main difference between memoir and autobiography.

Both memoirs and autobiographies should be written with the focus on the reader, however. Writing succeeds because of readers. Whether you’re covering your life from birth to now, or sharing specific stories, keep the reader at the forefront of your mind at all times. 

The more you think “reader first” the better your writing will be, regardless of whether you are writing an autobiography vs memoir. 

When should I write an autobiography vs memoir?

Celebrities and well-known figures often communicate their life stories through autobiographies, while lesser known individuals communicate a theme through specific stories from their lives. 

The public wants to know the details of celebrities’ lives and is willing and eager to read through all the details of their growing up years, young adult successes and failures, and all the way to the present day.

Individuals with less of a public presence who still have valuable stories, information, or an important theme to share, may want to do so through memoirs. This way they can still communicate their message, but use life stories that directly apply to this message to do so.

Learning how to write a memoir allows you to use anecdotes from your life to communicate your theme. Remember, if you aren’t a household name, readers are unlikely to be interested in your stories if they don’t provide some type of value.

Always think reader-first with these questions:

• Is your theme focused on helping the reader?
• What stories contribute to the power of your theme?
• What stories distract from your theme and shift the focus to you? 
• Will your reader walk away feeling empowered or inspired? 

When writing an autobiography, it’s still important to think of the reader first. But readers are more likely to expect stories that focus on your life and the interesting things you’ve done in an autobiography vs memoir.

If you are a celebrity or household name, writing your autobiography is likely the way to go. Otherwise, you should use creative nonfiction writing skills to make your memoir as interesting and impactful as possible.

Two things to remember when writing your life story

Whether you are writing an autobiography vs memoir, here are two important things to consider:

1. Portray the basic essence of life events

While autobiographies and memoirs are about your life and your interactions, achievements, goals, failures, etc., it’s impossible to remember every word of dialogue you and others have spoken. Readers understand that exact wording has been written to the best of your memory, but is not exact.

Be careful to write in a way that reflects the attitudes and intentions of the dialogue in that moment, however many years ago it took place, but rest assured the dialogue in memoirs and autobiographies cannot be completely accurate. 

Sharing your story with the world is a bold step. It’s brave to think through your life and write it all down for hundreds (if not millions) to read.

As you plunge into your story, whether it be autobiography vs memoir, writing, editing, and eventually self-publishing it will take time. Don’t get discouraged if you need to rearrange parts, chop large portions, or add stories when you think you are finished. 

Writing your story takes time . It’s your life, after all! Just make sure you capture the basic essence of your life events in an authentic manner.

2. Change names of people and locations

While I just said to be authentic, it's also important to have some protections in place.

Whether you write an autobiography vs memoir, protect yourself and others by changing names, locations, and any other detail as you see fit. You can make a simple note at the front of your book explaining that some details have been changed to protect individuals. The last thing you want is to be accused of libel or slander the week your book comes out. 

As you work towards your book launch , enjoy the process. Writing your story is something many dream of, few start, and even less complete. You didn’t just have the dream, you saw it through to its completion. 

You took a big step. Whether you chose to embark on an autobiography vs memoir, you are writing your story and putting it out into the world. Your legacy will have the possibility of impacting countless individuals around the world for years to come – and that's extremely exciting!

If you're still not certain on the difference between an autobiography vs memoir (or if what you are writing is an autobiography vs memoir) let's take a look at some examples of each.

Examples of memoirs

If you plan to write your memoir, reading other successful memoirs is a great place to start.

Here are some examples to get you started:

• O n Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , by Stephen King
• The Glass Castle , by Jeannette Walls
• Writing For the Soul , by Jerry B. Jenkins
• All Over but the Shoutin’ , by Rick Bragg
• Running for My Life , by Lopez Lomong

As you read, focus on what the theme is, what stories the author uses to illustrate this theme, and how the story isn’t focused just on the author, but on you, the reader.

Again, think reader first.

It may be helpful to take notes so that when it’s time to write your own memoir, you have examples to refer back to as needed. This will help you when you feel stuck or unsure of which stories to use. 

You can also reference our memoir outline to help you in your writing process.

Examples of autobiographies 

If, on the other hand, you decide to write your autobiography vs memoir, you’ll want to brush up on autobiographies and biographies instead. 

Whether you pick up an autobiography or a biography, the same lessons can be learned: 

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , by Frederick Douglass
• Autobiography of Mark Twain , Samuel Clemmons 
• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , by James Agee
• Churchill: A Life , by Martin Gilbert

As you write your autobiography, remember that although it is about you, you should still think reader first. Write in a way that readers will be able to easily understand and follow. Starting at birth and moving forward chronologically will likely work well when writing an autobiography vs memoir.

Share your story with the world

Now that you know the difference between an autobiography vs memoir, it’s time to start the writing process. 

Regardless of which you decide to write, take some time to think back over your life, years or weeks that affected you in a particularly positive or negative way, people who influenced you, the themes you see tracing through your story, and dreams or goals you worked for. 

Once you have the big moments at the forefront of your mind you can start planning your creative autobiography or memoir ideas . If you need more inspiration on how to share your story, you can use our nonfiction book outline below.

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The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Devour in 2024

From celebrated Oscar winners to influential first ladies.

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From Oscar-winning actors to lauded singers and former first ladies , some of the best celebrity memoirs are more intimate and revelatory than you'd ever expect. We've selected 10 memoirs by celebrities whose stories are life-changing, heartbreaking, hilarious, devastating, unexpected, and truly inspirational. Our list spans a variety of life experiences, including Elliot Page's very public journey affirming his identity as a trans man and Leslie Jones' hilarious and heartfelt retrospective.

Check out the 10 best celebrity memoirs you should add to your reading list right now.

Harper 'Inside Out' by Demi Moore

Demi Moore has truly experienced the heady heights and devastating lows of life as a public figure. Once crowned the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, Moore faced intense backlash and incredibly toxic negative reviews, which were difficult to recover from.

With Inside Out, Moore gets candid about her marriages to fellow superstars Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher , her approach to being a mother, and the insecurities she struggled with at the height of her fame. It's a candid and extremely easy read, making it one of the best celebrity memoirs to put on your reading list.

Simon & Schuster 'I'm Glad My Mom Died' by Jennette McCurdy

Former child star turned filmmaker and writer Jennette McCurdy developed a one-woman show, which later formed the basis of her book, I'm Glad My Mom Died . The memoir explores the difficulties she faced filming Sam & Cat with Ariana Grande , to the harassment she experienced at Nickelodeon at the hands of "The Creator," as well as her complicated relationship with her abusive mom.

McCurdy's honesty was a hit with fans, and the memoir sold out at all major bookstores upon its release, becoming a regular fixture on the New York Times Bestseller List .

Scribner 'Making a Scene' by Constance Wu

As an actor, Constance Wu found mainstream success starring on the sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and in hit movies Hustlers and Crazy Rich Asians . In Making a Scene , Wu reveals her journey to becoming an actor while exploring the personal relationships that shaped her in her twenties.

Importantly, she discusses the immense challenges she faced as an Asian American in an industry lacking true representation. Wu also emotionally details the sexual harassment she experienced while working on Fresh Off the Boat, explaining why she was relieved when the sitcom finally ended.

Grand Central Publishing 'Leslie F*cking Jones' by Leslie Jones

Leslie Jones has already had an incredible career, with her tenure on Saturday Night Live continuing to entertain viewers on YouTube. The Ghostbusters star and Supermarket Sweep host was encouraged to tell her story by multiple people in her life. The result is a raw and honest exploration of her life, with a plethora of chapters dedicated to her experiences as an up-and-coming comedian and subsequent recognizable star.

Jones also writes about the abuse she endured as a child, giving readers unprecedented access to her personal life. The award-winning audiobook version is a must.

Viking 'My Name Is Barbra' by Barbra Streisand

As a singer, songwriter, actor, and director, Barbra Streisand has crafted an incomparable career. Having spent more than six decades as a public figure, Streisand certainly has a lot of tales to tell, all of which she includes in her incredible autobiography.

Totaling almost 1000 pages, the two-time Oscar winner shares intimate details from every stage of her career. Regaling readers with celebrity anecdotes, personal feelings, and behind-the-scenes moments from her entire life, Streisand's memoir is well-worth the wait.

Crown 'Becoming' by Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama is one of the most recognizable women in the world following her role as first lady during her husband Barack Obama's presidency. Since then, she's proven to be a force to be reckoned with all on her own. Becoming explores every aspect of Michelle's life, from her youthful aspirations to entering the White House and her journey as a mother.

The personal book also explores Michelle's identity as a Black woman and how she grappled with her very public role in the Obama presidency. Unsurprisingly, the memoir became the fastest-selling book of 2018 .

Flatiron Books 'Pageboy' by Elliot Page

Academy Award nominee Elliot Page became a Hollywood star at a young age, appearing in movies like 2007's Juno and 2009's Whip It . High-profile roles in 2010's Inception and Netflix series The Umbrella Academy followed. Pageboy explores Page's identity as a trans man, the difficulties he faced working in the heavily sexualized entertainment industry as a young person, and how he finally embraced his true self.

As a public figure, Page was forced to grapple with his gender and sexuality in front of the world, and his book is proof that living authentically is more important than anything else.

37 Ink 'I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons' by Kevin Hart

While most of us know Kevin Hart as a vastly funny comedian who often stars alongside Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson , his rise to the top was far from simple. In I Can't Make This Up , Hart shares the darkest moments of his life with readers, from his challenging, strict childhood as the son of a drug addict to the difficult details of his first marriage.

Hart's exhaustive hard work is also evident, with the comedian explaining the sacrifices required to develop his passionate fan base. Seriously funny and heartfelt.

Little, Brown Spark 'Thicker Than Water' by Kerry Washington

In 2018, Kerry Washington learned that her dad, Earl, wasn't her biological father and that her parents had conceived her with the help of a sperm donor. With her memoir, Washington explores her childhood, the detachment she sometimes felt within her family, and how her identity shifted upon learning such a huge secret.

Scandal 's iconic star also gives readers a glimpse at an otherwise private life, exploring everything from her identity as a Black woman and mother to the advocacy she strives for as a public figure.

HarperOne 'Finding Me' by Viola Davis

In 2023, Viola Davis's autobiography Finding Me won a Grammy award, elevating the actor to the coveted EGOT status. The How to Get Away With Murder star examines her life in Finding Me , starting with her youth in Central Falls, Rhode Island, and ending with her discovery of success as an actor, first in New York and then in Hollywood.

The heartfelt and deeply personal book is also a call to action for readers to reflect on their own identities and uncover what they hope to achieve in the future. It's a truly inspiring read and one of the most moving celebrity memoirs one can read.

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Anthony Fauci, a Hero to Some and a Villain to Others, Keeps His Cool

In a frank but measured memoir, “On Call,” the physician looks back at a career bookended by two public health crises: AIDS and Covid-19.

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ON CALL: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service , by Anthony Fauci, M.D.

In his new memoir, Dr. Anthony Fauci bares all. After he’s unthinkingly opened a typewritten letter containing a mysterious white powder that could be anthrax (treatable with Cipro), ricin (almost certainly fatal in an Agatha Christie kind of way) or perhaps confectioner’s sugar, guys in hazmat suits arrive and order him to strip.

Following a “Silkwood” shower, Fauci has a few tense if resigned hours with his wife, Christine Grady, a nurse and bioethicist, and adult daughters before getting the all-clear. Having personally eased many patients’ passage into the Great Beyond over his almost six-decade career, he writes, “I do not fear death.”

Aside from this episode, “On Call” is a well-pressed gray flannel suit of a book with a white coat buttoned over it: a calm reply to deranged calls for this distinguished public servant’s head on a pike . Is it measured and methodical in sections? Sure. So is science.

These days, Fauci is most closely associated with Covid-19, hero or rogue depending on your political persuasion, under repeated and heated scrutiny for his messaging about masks, vaccines and the lab-leak theory . (“We must keep an open mind to the origin of Covid,” he writes with seeming weariness. “As I do.”) People blame him for their bad pandemic experience, as if he’s a waiter who served them the wrong meal and might be hiding what is going on in the kitchen.

Gently, “On Call” reminds us that Fauci oversaw an entire Seder plateful of plagues, from AIDS to Zika, as the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Washington, D.C., saving millions of lives around the world before stepping down in 2022.

He speeds through his early background. Born on Christmas Eve 1940, to first-generation Italian immigrants living in Bensonhurst, with a sister three years older, Fauci recalls the “extraordinarily soothing” sounds of foghorns in Gravesend Bay and his mother crying over photos of the mushroom cloud on the front page of the New York Daily News after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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A writing room: the new marketplace of writer classes, retreats, and collectives.

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A Writing Room is one of the fast-growing writer collectives. The four co-founders (left to right): ... [+] Reese Zecchin, Director of Production; Jacob Nordby, Director of Writer Development; A. Ashe, Creative Director; Claire Giovino, Community Director.

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What has changed dramatically has been the number of books published. Steve Piersanti of Berrett-Koehler Publishers estimates that three million books were published in the US, up 10 times from the number only 16 years ago . Other estimates put the number of published books annually at closer to four million .

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Fueling growth also is the level of affluence and discretionary income that an increasing segment of American society is reaching. For centuries, theorists across the political spectrum have envisioned a society, freed from basic economic needs, pursuing creative activities, with writing as a primary activity. In The German Ideology , Karl Marx could write about the economy of abundance in which individuals pursue writing as one of a series of daily activities—hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, write criticism in the evening. John Maynard Keynes in a 1930 essay, “ Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” , envisions a time a hundred years forward (2030) in which writing is no longer the province of the upper classes. Contemporary theorists on the future of work, such as John Tamny, similarly see a blooming of creative and artistic activities by the average citizen.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, a writing room, and the emerging marketplace of writer training.

A marketplace of writing coaches, classes and retreats expanded throughout the late twentieth century and first years of the twentieth century. Published authors and even recently-minted graduates of MFA programs hung out shingles for individual coaching and small classes. Colleges expanded their writing programs and certifications, and writer retreats multiplied. Co-working and literary event spaces were established in major cities ( The Writers Room in New York, The Writers Grotto in San Francisco). But the marketplace continued to bump up against geographic and logistical limitations.

Then, along the came the internet, and its evolution.

Today, hundreds of businesses throughout the country offer assistance to aspiring writers. Many continue to offer some in-person assistance through coaching, classes or retreats. But as in other fields, the internet has allowed for a nationwide (worldwide) reach that these businesses are taking advantage of to scale. The major pre-internet writer assistance companies, such as The Writers Studio , added online courses and instruction, and the early internet-based companies from the 1990s, such as Writers.com (a pioneer in the internet field), steadily expanded their offerings. New enterprises are springing up on a regular basis, including the writer collectives.

A Writing Room is one of the fastest growing of the writer collectives, and its suite of services illustrate the how the field is evolving.

A Writing Room has its roots in the writing classes that novelist Anne Lamott had been teaching for some years, and her interest by the early 2020s in creating a larger on-going community of writers. Lamott connected with a team of four entrepreneurs who had experience with previous start-ups and expertise in online tools. In early 2023 they set out to develop A Writing Room.

Novelist Anne Lamott, one of the partners in A Writing Room.

A Writing Room launched in June 2023, and followed a few months later with an inaugural writers retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Though hastily arranged, the retreat attracted more than 400 in person attendees and over 1600 attendees online. In the first half of 2024, the company set up a membership structure of monthly and annual memberships. Within months, over 550 writers had joined.

The products that members can access are aimed in part at teaching the craft of writing. In a recent author discussion (with close to 400 participants joining online) Lamott discussed the craft of writing with novelist Donna Levin . Both started publishing in the 1980s. They noted how much publishing and the role of the writer have changed, but emphasized the fundamentals that have remained over their forty years, related to craft and the responsibility of the writer: the daily commitment, the careful development of plot and characters, the numerous rewrites (as many as you think you need, and one more).

A Writing Room offers a series of on-demand courses, online discussions with authors and publishing professionals, and daily writing prompts, built around writing as craft. It further offers instruction on the paths to and options for publication, building a following of readers.

At its center, A Writing Room is about being part of a community of writers, giving and receiving regular feedback from other members, as well as feedback from writing mentors and coaches. In an interview earlier this year, Lamott explained:

The great myth about writing is that it's an entirely solitary activity. This really isn't true. Every book I've ever written has been with a lot of help from my community. I wouldn't be the writer I am today — and wouldn't even want to write — without people to share the process and finished work. Writing is a process, but it doesn't have to (and really shouldn't be) done in total isolation.

The writing process can feel overwhelming. It often does for me. Believe me, a trusted writing friend is a secret to life.

Other emerging writing collectives also emphasize community and cooperation. Levin underscored this point in the recent online discussion: “Writing can be such an isolated activity, and to some extent needs to be. You want to seek out a community that can give you the support you need and also the honest feedback.”

How the New Marketplace Is Evolving And Jobs Created

The founders of A Writing Room know that the marketplace for writer assistance is fast changing, and they need to be quick to adapt to increased competition. Already, several developments are driving change in the field:

· The entrance of major online education companies (i.e. Masters Class , Coursera, Udemy ).

· Faculty recruitment of writers with built-in audiences of sizable twitter and other social media followings.

· Partnerships with the major publishers and agencies, who hold out the promise of publication to participants of the classes, retreats and collectives.

· Specializations by race and ethnicity, gender, geography and genre.

· Market segmentation, and attention to higher income consumers.

A number of these developments reflect the changes in the broader publishing world and are likely to continue. Overall, the marketplace itself will be expanding, as publishing technology advances, along with discretionary income.

The jobs being generated by this new marketplace are a mix of tech, administrative, and writing coach positions. At A Writing Room, recent hires include a community liaison, video editor, customer support, and a “beta reader” providing feedback to writers on their drafts. The hiring process is sweeping up into jobs not only workers who have been in the regular economy, but also residents of America’s bohemia: writers and artists who previously were outside of (and often scornful of) the market system. What can be better than that.

In his 2023 book, The Novel, Who Needs It , Joseph Epstein, former editor of American Scholar , offers a paean to fiction as above all other intellectual endeavors that seek to understand human behavior. But what he says of fiction is true of other writing (memoir, history, even forms of self-help) that arouses the mind.

Yes, there are way too many books published each year, and yes only a very small percentage of writers will earn any significant income from their writing. But who knows what individual book will succeed commercially or critically, or add to our shared knowledge or wisdom. And really, why not encourage the craft of writing. How much does America benefit from most of the paper-pushing, meetings and e-mails that now pass for work in our economy of affluence.

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Dean Butler Reveals What It Was Like Writing About Little House : 'I've Lived a Very Fortunate Life' (Exclusive)

The actor who played Almanzo Wilder shares why he loves meeting fans, what kissing Melissa Gilbert was like and his favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder book

Bobby Bank/Getty Images; Kensington Publishing Corp.

When Dean Butler looks back at playing Almanzo Wilder in the The Little House on the Prairie series, he sees a lot to be grateful for. The actor, writer and producer, 68, has a memoir coming out June 25 about his life and experience on the show, Prairie Man: My Little House Life and Beyond . In recounting his journey so far, he tried to do so with the authenticity and honesty that governs the way he shows up in the world. 

“I wanted to be honest about what my life was, and particularly where Little House was concerned, because so much has been said about it, so much has been written about it,” he told PEOPLE. “It's an iconic program. Little House is a part of people's lives, and it has been for a long time.”

While he does share stories about co-stars Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert , he said his intention was never to write “a tell-all memoir.”

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“Even when something may not feel great in the moment, or the initial memory of it isn't perhaps great in the moment,  in the context of things, I feel like there's mostly good,” he says. “ I feel very fortunate. There are things that maybe weren't what they could have been or what we'd hoped they'd be, and I've tried to share those moments with a balance.”

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Ever since he was a shy high school sophomore stepping in front of a microphone for the first time to announce the varsity basketball lineup on a November night in 1971, Butler has found a home onstage. While the sense of being listened to resonated with him, so does the human connection that comes with being part of a production.

“You become part of something that's bigger than you in that moment, and you're all contributing to it,” he says. “That really lit me up and started me down this path.” 

That path has led him straight into the hearts of many, especially as love interest Almanzo Wilder on Little House , which legions of fans (of all genders) have confessed as their first crush.

Butler considers that position an honored one. “I think what's really beautiful is so many of these women walk up to me with their husbands and children in tow and will tell me that I'm their first crush, and their husband is standing there just like, ‘Okay,’ ” he says, with a laugh, “I always say to husbands. ‘Thank you for being such a good sport.’ ” 

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He says he was always raised to be transparent, and keeps that in mind when meeting fans, as well. “I want them to feel like they're dealing with the real thing that they liked, admired, fell in love with, enjoyed, laughed with, you know, whatever I brought to them [back then], I want them to feel like they're getting something that's authentic,” he explains.

That sensibility was present when shooting some of Little House ’s most memorable scenes, Butler says, including the iconic first kiss between Almanzo and Laura, played by Gilbert. At the time, Butler was in his early 20s and Gilbert had not yet had her first kiss, on or off the screen. And both actors approached it with the gravity the moment required.

“It was an important moment for the show. It was a big moment in her life as a young actress. It was a big moment for me, as someone who is going to be now cemented into this,” Butler explains. “This had to be a very pure, equal kiss. You watch the kiss and it's a very chaste, sweet, simple little kiss.”

Looking back, Butler has to laugh about the furor that moment inspired, even earning a TV Land award for greatest kiss. “When I look at the kiss now, I think, ‘Oh, God, you were so geeky in this,’ ” he laughs. "It's like, 'What are you doing?’ This is the most uncool thing in the world, but what it is it may not be cool, but it's very sweet.”

Butler’s feelings about that moment mirror his gratitude for everything the show has brought into his life and the people it has affected. For that matter, he has a similar feeling to people reading his book, and sharing the stories that make up his life.

“If I've been able to be a part of that idyllic moment, that's something that honors me forever,” he says. “I am blown away by that. I'm touched by it. I am humbled by it. It’s special for me to feel like so many people have been positively impacted by a piece of work that I did. It is very important to me to do it well.” 

Prairie Man: My Little House Life and Beyond is out June 25 from Kensington Books and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.