A memoir is about your story that talks about some life lessons you can learn through experience. A well-written memoir usually has great plot lines that appeal to many readers. Real-life experiences, such as family, loss, trauma, and love can be powerful when you share them with others. The first step you need to take to write a memoir is to understand your motivation for doing so. Regardless of whether or not your motivation is financial gain, it can be a rewarding experience to write a memoir. This page explains what you should know about writing a memoir.
Types of memoirs
After you figure out your motivations for writing a memoir, the next step is to make sure that you know what you desire to accomplish with your story. A memoir can be your personal processing tool, a way to translate your experience into words of wisdom for other people to read, and many more.
Some life lessons can leave a legacy. It can be an invitation to help other people live their full lives or a cautionary tale. In such cases, a teaching memoir story can provide wisdom while equipping and challenging the audience to overcome their obstacles.
A teaching memoir is a book that offers practical nonfiction. These books can empower your audience to find the right answers, heal, and many. This is because the readers know your life experiences that motivate them to overcome their challenges.
When you decide to focus on telling your experiences during a specific period by using a sequence of events, or overarching themes of your life, then you are writing a personal memoir. A personal memoir can be a powerful invitation to the audience to join you on a journey and experience your unique experiences. You simply retell your experiences as you lived them just to entertain your audience. This helps them to move and honor your life.
It’s worth noting that there is a difference between an autobiography and a memoir. An autobiography is when you recount every detail of your life, meaning you can tell your life experiences from birth to the present. It’s a biographical summary of your life that a person with all the details can write.
On the other hand, memoirs provide a snapshot in time and explains your transformation by using interesting experiences of your life or even a larger life theme that is supported by aligned and specific events.
Choosing a theme
A theme for your memoir can allow your audience to connect strongly with themselves and your words. Therefore, a theme needs to be clearer and stronger to help your memoir to be more satisfying to write and read. In most cases transformative themes can be hard to know from the beginning. This is because you can sometimes be very close to the details to prevent you seeing the bigger picture taking shape.
To create a good theme, you need to list all your life’s best life stories. You can do this by writing down the stories on a card. Then you may add what you think can be a theme for each story. Also, you can find out how each of your stories relate to one another. Lastly, you should look for repeating themes. Quite often, the theme should be the path of your life journey. Therefore, the stories you choose need to move you along this path.
Creating a memoir outline
You have got your reasons for writing a memoir and your theme, so you should now get organized. It’s a good idea to start writing a memoir outline so that the story can have a structure. Many new writers start a memoir and storytelling just to realize that most of their words end up being edited off. This is the reason why you need to start with a plan.
You will find that having a plan is just as beneficial as writing your memoir. This is where a theme can take shape, and it lets you deepen the effect with a purposeful and thoughtful approach. The details are usually not the same when writing a memoir. You need to consider the perspectives of your readers, the details the readers care a lot about, and the events and elements that can keep readers going through your pages.
If a writer fails to begin with a developed outline, then the story can include a lot of details that may slow it down. You can keep your audience engaged by creating the scenes for the most crucial moments of your story. This can save you energy and time that comes by allowing the loose ends to go.
There are several ways you can share your memoir with the public. One of these ways is called self-publishing that gives established and new writers the benefits that you can’t get from a bigger book deal.
As a self-publisher, you can keep all profits, own your intellectual property, maintain control of the direction of your story, and you don’t have to receive rejection letters or meet strict deadlines.
That said, self-publishing requires some associated upfront costs. This is because you need to have professional editing, designing, formatting, proofreading, and many more.
Now you know how to write a memoir, but you should remember that it’s worth investing in good memoir book editors to help you revise your memoir. It makes sense to have someone else take another look at your manuscript before publishing it. In this way, you can rest assured that your writing can inspire and motivate your readers. The good thing is that these editors are affordable, meaning there is nothing that can stop you from hiring one.
Ideally, hiring the best memoir book editor comes down to the usefulness of getting objective and qualified feedback. Many bestselling authors usually spend a fortune on hiring editors. This is because it can be hard to see everything clearly and commit to change. A good editor can help you to see where you need to change your draft to make it more appealing to your readers. This needs objective feedback and coaching.
