7 Reasons to Write Your Memoir
The purpose of an autobiography is to give you a first-hand account into the life of the person you are reading about, and to give you a better insight into how their experiences have shaped them as a person. ... Other literature is autobiographical and can shine a light on an important time in history.
A great memoir pulls you into their lives: what they struggle with, what they are successful at, and what they wonder about. Many of the best memoir writers focus on a few key characteristics of their characters, allowing the reader to get to know each one in depth.
Autobiography usually covers the author's entire life up to the point of writing, while memoir focuses only on a part of the author's life. There are going to be exceptions to every point on this list, but generally speaking, autobiography aims to be comprehensive, while memoir does not.
How to Write an Autobiography in 8 Steps
Here are a few things to do next:
A short memoir is only 2,000 to 5,000 words long, so the story needs to be concise. A good memoir uses anecdotes that are both riveting and also support the central storyline.
A good memoir has universality while being truthfully original. A good memoir is novelistic, with an unfolding story line, or plot, and scenes intermixed with narrative. ... Different from fiction, memoir is a true story, it is your story, not the story of someone you know or characters you have created for the page.
Just as with a great novel, the ending should satisfyingly “wrap up” the story and any loose ends. You may want to skip ahead in time, perhaps many years, to conclude your story and wrap things up for your readers long after the “period” your memoir covers ended.
An autobiography is the story of a person's life, written by that person. And a memoir is a collection of memories written by the person themselves.
Whether for yourself or for others, if you have a clear purpose for writing your memoir, then it's a story worth sharing. If you've reflected on your life and you're passionate about communicating what you've learned with the world, then your memoir is worth writing.
10 Tips for Starting a Memoir
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