How to Start a Memoir
Many people wonder how to start a memoir, and if it’s even worth doing. Yes, it is absolutely worth doing. It will help you turn a critical lens on your life and choices and give you insight into who you have become. Isn’t that reason enough to write it? Your friends, family, and descendants will probably appreciate it, too. A few years ago, a distant relative shared a brief autobiography written by the great-grandmother I was named after. Her life was ordinary, but I loved every word I read about Amy buying a movie ticket with eggs, hiding instead of attending school one day, and having terrible hay fever. It touched my heart to read about her from her own perspective instead of just listening to my mom’s memories. So. Do it.
How to start a memoir: Which memories are the richest, with the most to teach?
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If you want your memoir to be traditionally published, however, you need to find a larger market than your friends and future great-granddaughters. Unless you’re wildly famous with a built-in audience interested in your thoughts and doings, that means tapping into themes that apply to more people than just those who’ve had similar lives. There are lots of people who have overcome addiction, adopted internationally, lived with cancer, or traveled for self-discovery. But you need more than those narrow categories of people to want to read your book.
That means that your memoir needs to be more than the story of your life. You can’t write down everything. Your memoir needs focus. And this is where many writers stumble in figuring out how to start a memoir—it’s so hard to figure out which parts of a busy and interesting life have a place in the manuscript.
How to Start a memoir
I suggest starting with a list. Write down the important moments in your life that come to mind. Not sentences, not paragraphs—just a phrase. Think about childhood, relatives, family dynamics, education, different homes, romantic partners, raising children, important friendships, career, hobbies, guiding principles in your choices, beliefs about the world, world events you experienced, health, religious experiences, experiences with poverty or wealth, becoming a parent or choosing not to, your struggles, and so forth. Or if you already have a topic in mind for your memoir—learning to love nature or growing up in a dysfunctional home, maybe—make your list with that in mind. The list might include fishing with Tom, bombing SATs, dating Annie, move to Oregon. Brief and simple. This is where we generate, not cull, material. There is no one way in how to start a memoir, so your best bet is to simply generate some material and go from there.
Take that list and write a sentence about each entry. Going fishing with step-dad Tom on the Platte River taught me to be methodical and careful in nature. Then take your sentences and write a paragraph about each one. By now, you’re going to see more potential in some items on your list than in others. Some of these paragraphs or sentences won’t make it into your memoir, or might make it in as just a sentence. But you’ll find that you have much more than a paragraph to say about others. Those are the ones you’re going to work with.
Next Steps in How to start a Memoir
Take those most promising paragraphs and think about how they relate to each other. This is the time to narrow in on a theme and subject for your memoir—and it’s time to cut. Just because it happened doesn’t mean you must include it in the memoir. You might not include any stories from elementary school if you’re writing about addiction, but you might have a lot if your theme is friendship. Unify your material around an event that taught you many things or a theme that runs as a thread through your life.
Now you have choices to make about that list of scenes. Is telling them in chronological order most effective? Or should they be grouped by subject instead? Perhaps they should jump forward and backward in time. How much of your life will you cover in your memoir? You don’t need to start with your birth and end with your old age. Many memoirs cover only a small portion of the author’s life. How will you structure your memoir?
Memoir has much in common with fiction, because they’re both storytelling. So use storytelling tools for plotting, building tension by asking questions and revealing information at crucial times, revealing character, adding sensory details, and so forth.
I hope this helps you how to start a memoir that will share the truth of your life with a wider audience. Your story is worth telling. I promise.
We love teaching writing here at Good Story Company, but general articles only go so far. If you like my approach to story, come work with me as your book editor at Good Story Editing. We can dive into your project—from concept to execution to submission strategy—together!
