...Everyone has a book in them, it’s said, but as Martin Amis noted in his memoir Experience (2000), what everyone seems to have in them “is not a novel but a memoir …
Extract
How to write a memoir
1 Grab the reader’s attention from the off You can’t hit us with everything at once. You don’t even need to start with a major episode. But you do have to draw us in, establish a voice and hint at what lies ahead.
2 Put us there Make us see, hear, smell, taste and touch. In general use dialogue rather than reported speech. If the episode is vivid to you, make it vivid to us.
3 Dramatise yourself as the narrator It’s not compulsory to be confessional, but as our guide you should let us get to know you a little. You’re a character too.
4 Be strict about point of view If you’re writing from the vantage point of a child, create a voice that sounds like a child (in tone and perception if not vocabulary).
5 Choose your tense carefully The present tense will create immediacy but can inhibit measured reflection. The past tense is the more obvious choice but can seem too sedate and tidy. You may need both.
6 Remember God is in the detail The stronger our impression of something happening to a particular person at a particular time in a particular place, the greater our sense of recognition.
7 Use the same storytelling devices that novelists use – plot, character, voice, motif and structure There has to be development, a reason to read on. A sense of style, too: just because it’s non-fiction doesn’t mean it can’t be “literary”.
8 Give signposts Find ways to help the reader along, especially if you have a complex plot and a large cast list. You’re our guide and we need to be able to follow you – and to trust you to tell us the truth.
9 Be surprising Work against the material. The reader will bring her own experience to it, so allow for that. Don’t be afraid to find humour round a death-bed, say, or tenderness amid misery and abuse.
10 Pace the story It can’t be all showing and no telling. You may need to spend 30 pages on the events of an hour – then speed through 25 years in two pages. Be bold with chronology. Find ways to keep us interested. We’re in your hands.
An interesting article in the Guardian about Memoir published in 2019 but worth a read…
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/14/the-naked-truth-how-to-write-a-memoir
