Writing For The Reader: How To Know Who Your Memoir is For
Memoir is a unique and special form of nonfiction that explores and reflects on special moments, events, or periods from a writer’s own life. Differing from autobiography, memoir’s purpose is to focus on something specific, instead of your life in its entirety, and unpack it in a critical way that allows you—and your readers—to gain a new meaningful understanding. Memoir storytelling can be powerful, and the nonfiction element arguably makes its relatable quality more intense than some fiction storytelling counterparts.
But what happens when you’ve written a memoir, reflected on something significant and influential in your life, and find that your words aren’t resonating with readers the way you thought they would? And upon that realization, what do you do or change to bridge the gap?
Sometimes personal reflection is just that: personal …
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Writing the Memoir
Notice above how I specifically compared memoir storytelling to fiction storytelling. One of the reasons that memoir is unique from nonfiction, and from biographical writing, is the fact that it employs storytelling. You’re not reporting or documenting in the way nonfiction is usually written. You’re telling a story, and diving into that intangible layer of deeper— usually more metaphorical—meaning that biographical writing doesn’t always touch.
The answer to the question of whether or not you should write a memoir is—in my opinion—always yes. Write it so you can unpack the memory that you feel the need to dive back into. Write it so that your family and descendants can have a piece of you that allows them to be closer to you. And, with all writing, write it so that you can share it with people and indulge in the continuous artistic journey of humans relating to more humans.
The key here is evaluating your manuscript to know whether you are writing for the reader or writing for yourself. Did processing this life event help you in a specific way unique to you, or did processing this life event and understanding the deeper more general meaning behind your experience allow you to draw conclusions that can benefit more than just yourself?
Who is it for?
Here are a few questions that you can ask yourself about your memoir to guide you in assessing whether or not your story is currently written more for you or for readers at large.
Why does this matter? The answer to this is usually linked to the theme of the reflection in your writing. If the answer is more specific to you, that’s probably a good indication of who you were writing for.
Did you go deeper? Memoir takes on a more reflective tone than autobiography. Instead of recounting events from your life, you go an extra step and pull the deeper meaning of those events to the surface and analyze them on the page. You could write a story about getting called a racial slur at your cousin’s tenth birthday party, but the story about how getting called a racial slur at your cousin’s tenth birthday party was your first experience of racism and affected how you then approached the world and your interactions with other people is way more interesting and arguably marketable to a larger/different audience.
Do people get it? Sometimes personal reflections can function like an inside joke. They’re specific enough to you that only you fully comprehend the meaning behind your experience. If you share the story with someone else and it doesn’t click, you have to ask yourself if it doesn’t click because you need to dig deeper or if it doesn’t click because the story is for you and not for the reader.
Writing For The Reader
Now, if you’ve done some soul searching and realized that your memoir currently isn’t for readers, that doesn’t mean you can’t turn it around. Of course, there are always those stories that simply aren’t meant for everyone to hear, but sometimes revision can help bridge the gap between your truth and your audience.
Evaluate the deeper meaning of your experience and what you learned. If the understanding is too narrow to resonate with an audience, consider how it might be applied more broadly. Consider the lesson you learned and the vessel in which you are trying to convey it. In the example above about the cousin’s tenth birthday party, even though the first time the writer experienced racism was in that setting, maybe the more important and impactful story comes from a later memory. The lesson can be the same, but the period of their life that they analyze to understand that lesson might be a different one from what they set out to write about.
If you do find yourself revising so that your memoir is written for readers and not so specific to you, just remember these two things: stick to your truth, and make sure your takeaway is something you believe in and not something you’re trying to spin for marketability.
Do you want to tell a compelling story that resonates with readers? Let author and editor Rhiannon Richardson help you take your writing to the next level. With her expertise in middle grade, young adult, picture book, and memoir, she can guide you to your best story.
