It's a weird thing to think of yourself as a character, but this is what I want to talk about in this video. It’s something people have noticed a lot in modern memoir. The character in a memoir has trended more and more relatable, more authentic. And I think that’s a good thing, but it is also a challenging thing because it asks a lot more of the writer who's writing the memoir in terms of giving of themselves.

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transcript for relatability in memoir

My name is Mary Kole and I'm with Good Story Company. This is a talk about relatability in memoir and I think this is something that a lot of people have noticed in modern memoir, especially the character, which is, of course, you. It's a weird thing to think of yourself as a character but this is what I want to talk about in this video.

The character in a memoir has trended more and more relatable, more authentic. We're kind of showing ourselves, warts and all, in contemporary memoir over the last couple of years. And I think that is actually a good thing for readers. That's a good thing for writers but it is also a challenging thing because it asks a lot more of the writer who's writing the memoir in terms of giving of themselves.

Usually, we write memoir because something significant, or interesting, or unprecedented has happened in our lives has happened and we want to talk about it, right? So, one thing to consider is how ready you are to write a memoir if that is the benchmark. Readers don't necessarily want to read a nice story where, you know, you've had a nice life and you're basically detailing the events of your life for posterity, maybe something for your kids or your grandkids one day so that they may get to know you. That is a very worthwhile application of the memoir form, but it might not necessarily stack up with the larger trade memoir market where a lot of readers are looking for a more sensational story. They're just two very different things. One generally trends more towards the self-publishing. You issue a couple of copies. You have them around for the family as something that you're doing as part of the, you know, second half of your life where you're thinking about your legacy. If you are aiming for a big, traditionally published memoir that is going to be widely read by an audience, you have to think about that audience. You have to think about what the market is doing because everybody has a life story. So, memoir becomes a very, very competitive field to try and submit into.

Memoirs are also considered like novels are. That means you have to finish the manuscript before you submit it rather than submitting on proposal. It used to be that you could submit a memoir on proposal. Everybody started writing memoir and then the sort of restrictions for what constitutes a complete publishable memoir changed in order to sort of beat back some of the flood of incoming memoir manuscripts. So, you think about modern memoir, you think about the readership.

There are a lot of stories in memoir, a lot of story types. We have quit lit, which is a kind of addiction memoir. We have overcoming illness. We have the really interesting life event or life circumstance memoir, like educated, where we have this upbringing in a fundamentalist, religious environment that not a lot of people will have sort of experienced. So, people are reading memoir with true crime. A lot of people are reading memoir to live vicariously through an interesting or unusual situation, or they're reading it for kind of these aspirational, inspirational reasons where they want to see the story of somebody overcoming events because they might be going through something where there's a divorce, the death of a parent, the death of a child, kind of career change in their lives. They're going through something turbulent and they sort of want to read aspirationally to see the story of somebody else who has encountered something turbulent in their lives, and they have come out a little bit better for wear, maybe a little worse for wear but also better for wear on the other side.

So, one of the things that really hits at that angle of the market is your ability to be transparent, to be authentic, to be vulnerable. These are sort of requirements I would say of modern memoir, especially for that larger memoir readership which tends to be a little bit older, kind of middle-aged and beyond, largely female. Even for memoir for men, women do tend to sort of relate to the life story form of writing, the sort of I overcame X, Y, or Z. The inspirational, aspirational component is something to really, really pay attention to in this form. And that requires the person writing the memoir to do a lot of digging into what they did right, what they maybe didn't do so well, being able to sort of have that self-awareness to convey all of these things to your readership and sort of take something away from the story. It's not just the story. It's something that is also taken away from the story that makes an emotional connection to the readership.

Now, I'm thinking about Jon Krakauer and "Into Thin Air" and his kind of more journalistic approaches to interesting events. Those types of books definitely have a place in the market where it's bolstered by a lot of research and there's more of an impartial approach to the writing where the writer isn't necessarily a character. That is one way to tell an interesting story that is based in fact, based on real life but the market is very much wanting to hear from the person that kind of had their heart cracked open on the page a little bit, that voice, that connection, that idea of speaking directly to the reader. That has become more and more popular, and more and more palatable, and even desirable in the memoir market. So, this idea of relatability, this idea of vulnerability, we really want to know what it was like to be there. We really want to know what it was like to congratulate your ex-husband on their marriage, even if you have some ugly thoughts in that situation, even if you have some challenging thoughts that are difficult to sort of own, that are difficult to share. I think that idea of owning all parts of yourself and being aware and admitting to some of the warts and all of what you've experienced, that really fosters a connection with readers in contemporary memoirs. So, it is this idea of first doing the work on yourself so that you can then put a lot of that work on the page, and that is going to be very appreciated in some of these areas of memoir, especially in today's market.

My name is Mary Kole with Good Story Company and here's to a good life story.

Come to Good Story Editing if you want some one-on-one help with crafting your memoir.