June Writing Prompt
Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work?
IWSG
Before anyone reads my memoir, they’ll make a snap judgement about my book based on my photo and the design of my book, and my author biography. They’ll only have an impression of me, and won’t know what makes me tick.
But I’m going to have to reveal my secrets and air my dirty laundry, in order to be an authentic author, so that readers can get to know the me I was at the beginning of my memoir, and the me I’ve became by the end.
Story Arc
I’m writing my first memoir and there’s so many things I’m wrestling with. I’ve mapped out my key plot points to make sure I have an engaging story to keep the reader engaged and wanting to hear the end of the story. I struggled with this—going backwards and forwards between different writing structures, like Save the Cat and KM Weiland’s plot structure.
Even though I’m writing a memoir, I don’t just want the content to be a series of events without any story arc. So I’ve been looking to the structure of fiction to make my memoir into a compelling read.
But story arc is only half of the battle.
Character Arc
What will really get readers to care about my story is the character arc. I’m going to have to write about some sort of personal growth or awareness, or else my memoir with just be a flat collections of anecdotes.
I’ve never liked reading flat memoirs. The main character/protagnoist in a memoir is the author, and if they don’t go through some type of personal growth, then there’s no character arc. They’re living a flat life!
And let’s be honest, who around you in your circle of friends and acquaintances has a flat life? Life is messy and unpredictable, and just when you think everything is settled and you’re getting into a groove, something happens. That’s what life does. It throws us curve balls. And for every one of these actions, there’s a reaction.
Those actions and reactions are how we navigate our lives. Sometimes we handle things well, and other times we mess up completely, and have to ask for help, apologize, or escape into solitude to lick our wounds because we’re recovering from the emotional battle scars.
When I read a good memoir, I want an insight into how the author has handled the things that life has thrown in their path. When you read about their actions and reactions, you get a sense of who they are. And if they have life or personal characteristics that are similar to your own, then you can empathize with them. That’s when I find myself connecting with the author, and that’s when I connect with their writing.
As memoir writers, we all want readers to connect with our writing. But they can only connect to what we have to say, if our story resonates with them in some way. Either they’ve been in a similar situation, or they have a fear about experiencing the same things you’re writing about, or they’re just glad their life is different so that they don’t have to worry about going through the same things you’re going through.
The events in our own lives are what define us and drive us. And it’s unlikely that our readers will have had exactly the same experience and events happening in their lives, but what they’ll be able to connect with is the emotional reaction and emotional impact of how we handled or responded to these events.
Universal Theme
In order for our readers to connect with us and our writing, we have to use our experiences to take them to a place they’re familiar with, to feel an emotion they’ve felt before. It may have been in a different situation, but that’s not the important part of the experience, it’s the emotion that’s the hook, and to create that I need to be writing about a universal theme that they can recognize and associate with.
These themes are broad, like loving yourself or others, meeting responsibility, standing up for a cause, betraying other, forgiving yourself, trusting others etc. This is just the beginning of a long list of potential themes.
These universal themes are what we need to use in our memoir so that our readers can connect with us. We want them to read or story, which can be new and unique to them, but there has to be an element of familiarity in what we write.
That familiarity is the universal theme we use in our character arc, and as the story unfolds we reveal the emotional roller coaster ride we went on to deal with the experiences we’re writing about. They’ll either be able to empathize completely with us, because they’ve dealt with a similar universal theme (because by their very description, these are themes that are universally recognized).
Being Revealing
In order to take a reader on a satisfying journey like this, I need to reveal some secrets. I have to reveal things that have happened to me. I have to reveal how I’ve been emotionally scarred. I have to reveal things that I wish I could take back. I have reveal my reaction to events that show I’m not a perfect person.
That’s not a natural state. This warts and all, open kimono style of revealing our true nature.
Some of our emotional hurt from the past makes us do things that on the surface we have no idea why we’re reacting in a specific way. And through the process of writing a memoir, the reaction, and the motivation behind these human behaviors have to become apparent, in order to put the universal theme in context. And this is the hook that is going to get readers invested in finding out how our story ends.
Anyone who say’s writing is easy, has never tried to write a memoir!
What is IWSG?
Each first Wednesday of the month, the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) encourages writers to talk about their doubts and celebrate the fears that have been conquered.
Once you’ve written your blog post, you’re encouraged to visit others in the group and comment on their blog posts. You leave your blog link in the comment and they’ll visit you blog and return the favor of a comment.
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The co-hosts for the June 3 posting of the IWSG are Pat Garcia, J.Q. Rose, Olga Godim, and Natalie Aguirre!
If you’re on the same path, and want to write your memoir and are looking for some inspiration (or can provide some inspiration), please join in the conversation in the comments section below and lets get our memoirs written.
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I can well and truly imagine how tough it must be to write a memoir! I haven’t attempted it yet but many of my raw wounds and emotions often shine through my fictional characters, so I understand what you mean about laying oneself bare.
Thanks Noor – fiction is a great way to lay yourself bare, and still process and embrace those raw emotions, but I’m sure it’s just as difficult to write about those events even if you’re applying them to a fictional character. But writing about those emotions you can create believable characters, and that’s what’s going to keep your reader’s hooked.
I love K.M. Weilland. I struggle with the character arc too. I would think it’s especially important to get that right in a memoir.
If you want to write a compelling and engaging memoir it is. Too many of them just have a series of events tied together, but no character arc or emotional journey that readers can connect too.
when I began as a hobbyist, everyone else was writing their memoir… I grew up in a small-town & rural area in the Midwest, so I had a decidedly ‘white bread’ life… I moved far away to escape the overwhelming trend of the townfolk to gossip.
Ha! Now I fictionalize that small-town & rural life in the Midwest… sort of like writing memoir, me thinks(win-wink)
Memoir … dressed up and disguised as fiction is the safest route to take! Glad you pulling inspiration from real life. That way your fiction has a whiff of authenticity. 🙂
Writing is exhausting. Researching is easy. Rewriting is easy. I remind myself of those things when I’m starting a new book. Right now I’m just unmotivated. It’ll pass. It was nice meeting you, Beth. Good luck on your memoir.
Thanks Joylene … I love the writing, I get exhausted by the the rewriting and editing phases. I feel you on the unmotivated .. it comes at me in waves.
Working through the wounds of the past takes a lot of guts. Good on you for doing it. I hope the whole process brings some healing.
Thanks Matt… I wish the writing about it was as easy as the healing process! Trying to find my writing groove, with so much information and help for memoir writers out there, it’s challenging to balance it all.
I think writing a memoir would be even more difficult than fiction. You have to do all of that with real life stories that you can only alter so much.
Welcome to the IWSG!
At least with a memoir the story is already developed for you, and you just have to craft it into an engaging fiction framework. With fiction, there just seems to be so much work to do. I guess each niche has its own challenges.