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How much can you shape your story before it stops being memoir? Every memoirist asks this question sooner or later. Maybe you’re tempted to conflate two friends into one character to streamline your story. Or create more tension by presenting a string of events over one (fictionalized) summer rather than three (lived) years. Or you want to write a conversation you never got to have with someone before they died. So, when should you fictionalize your memoir?

What does it mean to “fictionalize a memoir”?

As the examples above show, fictionalizing your memoir means changing what actually happened. Fictionalization is not a technique; it’s a departure from what actually occurred. And the question it raises is this: When do you stop calling what you’ve written “memoir” and disclose the changes you’ve made. Some well-known memoir writers have handled this question in a variety of ways. Looking at the choices they’ve made can help you decide how to proceed with your own story.

Memoirists who’ve traveled the road before you

Mary Karr
In The Liars’ Club, Karr leans hard on the truth of her Texas childhood, letting real people and real dialogue carry the story without much reshaping. Her approach reminds us that the truest version of events can also be the most compelling one. We don’t necessarily need to invent situations when what actually happened is unforgettable.

Augusten Burroughs
Burroughs’s Dry opens with an author’s note, in which he explains that names were changed, characters combined, and some scenes recreated. Yes, Burroughs used composite characters and reshaped the timeline, but he told readers exactly what he was doing before they invested in his story. That transparency is what keeps his book in memoir territory.

James Frey
Frey has become a poster boy for fictionalizing without disclosing. His A Million Little Pieces was sold as memoir. It even became an Oprah’s Book Club pick. But then large portions were discovered to have been fabricated, rather than reasonably reconstructed. The scandal wasn’t about whether Frey shaped his story—every memoirist does that. It was about the gap between how much he invented and the claim he made that it was all exactly as he’d lived it.

Alice Sebold
Sebold wrote the same story in two different forms. Her memoir, Lucky, recounts her rape in college in unflinching, factual detail. Her novel The Lovely Bones, about a girl who is raped and murdered, draws directly on Sebold’s experience, but it’s presented with a different (and impossible) narrator and a tragically altered outcome.

Sebold has said she wrote Lucky for herself, to get her own story down in plain, truthful terms. She wrote The Lovely Bones for her fictional character Susie Salmon, who she said, needed to go somewhere Sebold’s real life hadn’t.

So, when should you fictionalize your memoir?

Where your own memoir falls depends on, among other considerations,

• craft concerns: what does the story actually need in order to work on the page?
• creative opportunities: how much freedom do you want as a writer?
• and ethical and legal issues: how do you protect the people named in your story—and keep yourself safe as well? (I’ve written a post that looks at some of the ethical and legal aspects of this issue.)

Here are some questions worth sitting with as you decide:

• How many moments do you feel need to be compressed or reshaped to serve the story? At what point do you think you’re crossing into fiction?
• How would writing a novel based on your life experiences serve you differently than writing the lived memoir version?
• Would you be willing to list, specifically, every place you’ve changed something? Or is there a change you’d rather keep vague? And if so, why?
• Are you changing details to protect someone’s privacy? Or are you avoiding a truth that’s just simply hard to write?
• Have you asked, or could you ask, the people involved how they feel about how they’re being portrayed?
• Are the changes you’re making small enough that they would hold up against someone else’s memory of the same events? Or are you more completely rewriting what actually happened?
• Are you fictionalizing—making changes—to reduce legal exposure, or to avoid a conflict you’re not ready to have?
• If you call your book a “memoir,” could you defend every scene it contains if you were challenged about its accuracy?

No hard and fast rules—but reader trust matters

There’s no universal rule about fictionalizing your memoir. What matters is being clear about your choices and being honest with your reader about the book they have in their hands. Writers don’t get in trouble because they’ve reshaped their material; they get caught out when they let their readers believe something other than what actually happened.

Are you wondering whether to fictionalize your memoir? I work with memoir writers—and novelists—at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or have a complete draft, I can help. Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.

If you’re interested in my approach to writing, you might take a look at my books, Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

Should you write your memoir in chronological order? Great question. Maybe—but not necessarily. Below, you’ll find five ways to structure your story, including the dramatic way Cheryl Strayed breaks the “rule” of chronology in her memoir, Wild.

Here are five structural approaches for you to consider as you draft your memoir.

1. Write your memoir in chronological order

Yes, most memoirs are written in chronological order. It’s a classic structure: Your story opens where it actually began, and moves forward from there. This works beautifully when your arc is the point—when the reader wants to see the you change, step by step.

Further, there’s inherent tension in following a person’s story as they lived it, without any foreknowledge or conveniently added hindsight. And tension is what keeps readers turning pages.

2. Open at a moment of high tension, then circle back

On the other hand, Cheryl Strayed starts Wild at the halfway point of her story. Her opening scene drops the reader into her “all is lost” moment on the Pacific Crest Trail. Then Strayed circles back through several years of back story, before returning to the head of the trail where, arguably, her story begins.

To try this method with your own memoir, identify a moment of high drama in your story. Starting there engages your reader emotionally—and likely compels them to keep reading to find out how you arrived at that powerful point. This approach also “earns” whatever backstory you need to support that moment because your reader is already so invested in your journey.

3. Braid two timelines together

Instead of including flashback on an as-needed basis as most narratives do, a braided memoir alternates between two timelines all the way through the book—a present-day chapter, followed by a past chapter, then present-day again—with both threads moving forward and developing on their own until they meet near the end.

Say you’re writing about caring for your father at the end of his life. You might start in the present with a chapter in his hospital room and follow that with a chapter from your childhood, decades ago, then alternating hospital scenes with memories the hospital scenes stir up.

Neither timeline interrupts the other—they’re running in parallel, each with its own arc. While this structure is more complex than a single timeline, it’s probably close to how memory actually works: the present constantly pulling the past to the surface.

Melissa Cistaro’s Pieces of My Mother and Susan Morris’s The Sensitive One are examples of the braided-memoir structure.

4. Let a recurring touchstone anchor every chapter

In Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses, Claire Dederer titles each chapter for a yoga pose, and her actual yoga practice develops chronologically as its own throughline in the book. But while each chapter discusses the pose named, the poses also become doorways into the unfolding story of her life. For example, in her “Child’s Pose” chapters, she revisits moments from her unconventional childhood.

If you have a practice you return to regularly—running, gardening, a weekly phone call, church, therapy—each occasion can become a chapter frame. Open a chapter there, then continue into the scene you’ve prepared for that chapter. You might even close the chapter back where you started, practice still going.

5. Anchor chapters to place instead of time

Mary Cantwell’s Manhattan, When I Was Young takes her through her twenties and thirties by way of five apartments, each one reflecting the experiences she had while she lived there.

This structure invites you to organize chapters by place. It’s a natural fit if you’ve experienced different settings—homes, schools, cities, or periods of travel—and each one came with its own cast of characters and its own version of the self you were becoming.

How do you decide whether you should write your memoir in chronological order?

Any one of these approaches might serve your memoir well. Each one makes a different promise to your reader. Chronological order promises a journey worth taking. Opening at a high-tension moment promises a big payoff. Braiding two timelines promises two stories that rely on each other to create meaning. A recurring practice promises the reader a steady place to stand while the past wavers in and out. And anchoring your story to the places you’ve been promises a varied world your reader can walk through with you (one that also does some of the emotional work for you). Which you choose depends on what you actually want the reader feeling on page one.

Are you wondering if you should write your memoir in chronological order? There may be other options that would serve your story just as well! I work with memoir writers at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or you have a complete draft, I can help. Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.

Writing a memoir can be a deeply rewarding journey—but also a tricky one. This article offers guidance for shaping your story in a way that honors both your truth and your readers: “How to Write a Memoir.”   If you’re interested in my approach to writing, you might also take a look at my books: Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

How to Build an Author Platform Before Your Memoir Is Published

Most memoir writers assume the real work is the writing itself. And there is plenty to do in that regard: remembering, drafting, shaping your life into a story! But many writers miss something that needs to happen at the same time as the writing—creating an audience for your book. This article focuses on that task, showing you how to build an author platform before your memoir is published.

A writer came to me a while back with a finished manuscript—eighteen months of early mornings before work and weekends of missed evenings with friends. She was proud of it, and she should have been. “What do I do next,” she asked.

Start Building Your Audience Early

Had she come to me early in her memoir-writing project, I’d have told her to begin building her audience right away: a blog about her book’s central theme, maybe, or creating a social media presence related her story. Of course, her manuscript was the priority, but an audience takes as long to build as a book does to write—and those are the people who are going to receive your book and give it a home in the world.

Your audience, then, is a group of people who know you’re writing your book and are waiting to read it. They’re people who follow you somewhere on social media, open your emails, and will preorder your book the day it’s available.

If you’re hoping to publish traditionally, agents and editors will look at your audience as evidence that readers will actually buy your book. In fact, a robust platform is often what gets a memoir taken seriously, especially for a first-time author. If you’re planning to self-publish, the effect of an audience is even more direct: It’s the difference between a book that sells a handful of copies to family and friends and one with a wider reach—because those readers are already waiting for your book to come out.

How to Build an Author Platform Before Your Memoir Is Published

1. Speak about your theme: Your memoir has a central theme—perhaps grief, reinvention, addiction, faith, or walking away. Talk about that theme publicly while you’re drafting your memoir.

2. Start a blog: You need a place where the people who will eventually care about your book can find you and see what you have to say. (Take a look at my post on blogging and memoir writing.)

3. Pick a platform: Instagram, Substack, a Facebook group—any one of these might be a good fit for you to share ideas about your memoir theme or topic. What matters most is that you show up to a platform with consistency.

4. Share ideas your topic, not your manuscript, itself: You don’t have to share pages from your memoir to build an audience. Write about your subject, what you’re learning, noticing, and wrestling with. Keep your book private until it’s ready for publication.

5. Find communities interested in your topic: If your memoir is about caregiving, find caregivers online—in forums, Facebook groups, or by following hashtags.

6. Collect emails, not just followers

To build an email list, offer a bonus for signing up: a few pages from your book’s opening, an essay on your theme, even a short checklist based on your subject—something like “5 Things No One Tells You About Coming Home From Deployment” for a memoir about military service.

Invite people to join your email list from the same place every time. For instance, include a single line at the end of your posts, like “Want the first chapter when it’s ready? Join the list.” People need to see the offer more than once before they act on it.

Use a simple tool to collect and hold your list. Mailchimp and ConvertKit are both great. Then, actually write to folks on your list! Even a few lines every month or two—what you’re working on, a small update, a short story—keeps the relationship alive so that when the book is ready, they remember why they’re interested.

7. Tell stories: An audience is built from sharing small, relatable moments—memories, images, insights. Share these regularly so people start to recognize your voice.

8. Show yourself before the book is done: Building an audience may mean sharing before you feel ready. But audience-building doesn’t have to wait until you feel confident. In fact, it might help you develop confidence and your platform at the same time.

9. Talk with your early readers: Answer comments. Ask questions. The relationship that becomes an audience is built in the back-and-forth. Likewise, follow like-minded others and comment on their posts. Engagement builds community—and community = audience.

10. Track what resonates: Which posts get a real response—comments, replies, shared stories of your readers’ own? Those responses tell you what your readers are hungry for.

How to Build an Author Platform Before Your Memoir Is Published—Starting Today

One small step to take today: Write a paragraph about the theme at the heart of your memoir. Then share it where someone who might be interested in the same theme can find it: write a Facebook post, create a Notes app screenshot and share on Instagram, or write an email to five people you already know who’d care that you’re talking about this subject.

It’s a small step, but it will create the foundation of interest (and courage) that you’ll build your audience upon.

Could you use some support as you build your author platform before your memoir is published? I work with memoir writers at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or you have a complete draft, I can help.
Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.

Writing a memoir can be a deeply rewarding journey—but also a tricky one. This article offers guidance for shaping your story in a way that honors both your truth and your readers: “How to Write a Memoir.”   If you’re interested in my approach to writing, you might also take a look at my books: Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

How honest should a memoir be? The answer is more nuanced than you might think. Not because memoir writers are dishonest people—actually, my clients are more deeply honest than many folks I know. But memoir asks something specific of us: to tell our story in a way that invites a reader’s trust. And that trust comes from our readers believing we aren’t hiding from them—or from ourselves.

“Factual” and “Honest” Aren’t the Same Thing

Your memoir does need to be factual. The events in your book have to have actually happened, in the order and manner you say they did. Unlike fiction writers, memoirists can’t invent scenes to add drama or combine two arguments into one because it’s tidier. If it didn’t happen, it doesn’t belong in a memoir. It’s what separates memoir from fiction.

On the other hand, no one expects you to reconstruct dialogue word for word, or to remember exactly what the weather was like the day your father left. Memory doesn’t necessarily store detail in that way, and readers know it. You’re allowed to write, “He said something like …” and render the spirit of the conversation, even if you can’t quote it exactly.

So, factual means the events you share are real. Honest means you’re not shaping those real events to make yourself or anyone else look better or worse than they were. Where writers actually get into trouble isn’t with the fuzzy memory of a detail—it’s when they invent something that didn’t happen, or leave out a part of your story that would complicate how they want to come across to readers.

Writing About Other People

Once you start writing about your own life, other people show up in the pages. It’s unavoidable, and it brings up two very different kinds of worry.

One is a personal issue: Is writing about someone important to you likely to hurt them or jeopardize your relationship with them? Are you willing to face the consequences of that type of honesty? Unfortunately, there’s no formula to help you evaluate the risk. It’s not a legal question; it’s a “what am I willing to live with” question—and only you can answer it.

The other issue is legal. As you write your memoir, questions about privacy, identifiability, and legal risk arise. I’ve written about one aspect of this topic in my post titled “Should You Use Real Names When Writing a Memoir?,” which discusses what changing someone’s name actually does and doesn’t protect you from. But I always advise memoirists to research legalities before publishing.

Writing About Yourself

It’s not especially hard to write honestly about someone who hurt us. What can be hard is writing honestly about choices we’ve made that we’re not proud of. The small cruelty. The moments we weren’t brave. How we hurt other people.

Of course, we don’t have to disclose everything. Privacy is not the same as dishonesty, and we’re allowed to decide what stays out of our book entirely. But we are not perfect—and no one expects us to have been. So, as we write our story, we can ask ourselves gently, “Is this the version of me that I actually displayed at the time—or is it the version I’d feel better showing to someone else?”

A Small Exercise in Facts and Honesty

Pick a moment from your life that you haven’t written about yet. First, write it as plainly as you can, like you’re filing a report. Just tell what happened, in order, without emotion or interpretation.

Next, write about the situation again. This time, add the emotion, saying what you actually felt —including anything you might be tempted to soften, whether that’s your own behavior or someone else’s.

Read both versions back. The first is factual. The second is where honesty lives.

How Honest Should Your Memoir Be?

A memoir where the writer is willing to be seen clearly—flaws included—makes the reader feel they’ve been entrusted with something real. And that, more than any dramatic confession, is what keeps them rooting for you—and turning the page.

Ready to write your story? As you’re considering writing your memoir, you might find my article “How to Write a Memoir” useful. And If you’re interested in my approach to writing, you might also take a look at my books, Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

I work with memoir writers at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or you have a complete draft, I can help. Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.

Memoir Writing Prompts: What Your Stuff Remembers

If you’re looking for memoir writing prompts that are personal and specific to you and your life, you don’t need to look far. What you need is probably sitting on a book shelf or tucked in the back of a closet. The objects you live with every day are quietly holding your memories—you just need to ask them to speak.

After Joan Didion’s husband died, she couldn’t bring herself to give away his shoes. As she says in her memoir, Because somewhere in the back of her grief-stricken mind, she writes in her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, a part of her believed he might still come back—and he would need them.

Objects remember differently than photographs

Photos are wonderful memory triggers. If you’ve ever tried writing snapshot memoir, you know the magic of dropping into a moment captured by an image. But objects can have a different, maybe more immediate, impact.

Your grandmother’s mixing bowl, for instance, can conjure an entire experience:  Sunday mornings, flour on a dark countertop, the sound of your cousins’ laughter. Your father’s old toolbox can carry his whole philosophy of life: Fix what’s broken, make it last, do it yourself.

Objects carry sensory memory: weight, smell, texture, the specific way something felt in your hands. And that kind of memory goes deep.

For memoir writers, this is gold.

Your home is a memoir waiting to be written

Think about the objects around you that you’ve kept, the things that have followed you from apartment to apartment, relationship to relationship, decade to decade. What memories do they hold that you can mine?

Maybe you have a piece of jewelry you never wear but can’t part with. Or a book with someone else’s handwriting in the margins. Or a coffee mug from a place you used to love. These aren’t just things. They’re memoir writing prompts, hiding in plain sight.

You may not even know what an object means to you until you start writing about it. You think you’re writing about a mug, and then suddenly you’re writing about loneliness, or belonging, or a summer that changed everything.

A memoir writing prompt for you

Set a timer for ten minutes. Look around the room—or close your eyes and let an object come to mind. It might be something ordinary. It might be something you’ve stopped seeing because it’s so familiar.

Pick it up or picture it clearly. Now ask it some questions: Where did you come from? Who held you before me? What were you there for? What do you know about my life that I’ve never put into words?

Then write. Don’t edit, don’t overthink. Just follow the object wherever it leads. You may be surprised where you end up.

Ready to write your story?

If you’re feeling the pull toward memoir, toward getting your own story onto the page, I’d love to support you. Sometimes all it takes is the right question, and the right person to help you find your way.

As you’re considering writing your memoir, you might find my article “How to Write a Memoir” useful, as well as my books, Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

I work with memoir writers at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or you have a complete draft, I can help. Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.

First-time memoir writers know they have a story to tell, but they’re not necessarily sure where that story starts, where it ends, or what to include in the telling of it. Most “memoir writing tips for beginners” hand you a bullet list of principles—show, don’t tell; find your theme; write with honesty. These are all important points. But just reading those principles may not help you get your book off the ground.

So instead of another list of principles, the “memoir writing tips for beginners” here are actually given in the form of an exercise with six steps—sort of like a treasure hunt!

Do all the steps over a weekend, or take them one at a time over a few weeks. Either way, when you’ve finished the exercise, you won’t just understand memoir writing better. You’ll have the actual beginnings of your book.

Step One: Exploring What Your Story’s About 

Start by spending some time with this question: What is your memoir actually about? You might think you already know: It’s about what happened to me! Which is true. But your memoir also carries the meaning of what happened.

For instance, maybe your story is about your time as a professional swimmer: the competitions you attended or injuries you may have sustained. But if you dig deeper, you might discover your swimming career was about belonging—or about what happens when your whole identity is built around what your body can do.

Good news: This is only the first part of the exercise! You don’t need to know the answer yet. You just need a thread to start pulling.

Exercise: Finish this sentence ten different ways: My memoir is about…

Step Two: Make a Timeline

Once you have a possible thread—what happened and the possible meaning of it—break your life into five-year chunks: birth to five years old, five to ten, and so on. For each period, jot down the basics: where you lived, the people who mattered to you, what you were doing.

Then ask one more question of each chunk: Do I see any threads of my story here? 

Step Three: Pull the Thread

Go back over what you discovered on your timeline and pull out anything connected to your thread(s). You might end up with a list of moments, conversations, people, events, or turning points. For instance, the swimmer might notice entries that touch on the theme of  belonging: a coach who made the team feel like family; a roommate at a meet who became a lifelong friend; the isolation of training alone before dawn.

This is where the shape of your memoir usually starts to show itself. Not in any single event, but in what the events have in common. One moment is just a memory. A pattern of moments can become a book.

Step Four: Write the Scenes

Pick a few moments from your list and just write them. Not chronologically. Not for a first draft. Just dive into the moment and write. What happened? Who was there? What did you notice? And, getting back to meaning making, what do you understand now that you didn’t then?

Write as many scenes as you like. Don’t worry yet about how they connect.

Step Five: What Got Clearer?

Consider this your book’s discovery phase. After writing those scenes, notice whether anything became clearer while you were writing. Did your sense of focus—the meaning of the scene—shift, sharpen, or get more complicated? What did your scene-writing tell you that your time line didn’t?

Eventually, most memoirists realize they’re not writing exactly the book they originally thought they were. That’s exciting! Allow the process to show you more about the story you’re telling.

Step Six: Write a “Synopsis”

You’ve done a lot already. This step is about consolidating what you’ve accomplished so far—not about creating marketing copy! It might take a few tries, but try to write just one paragraph that describes the version of your story you’ve discovered so far.

Include how you changed because of what happened to you, and what you hope to convey to a reader (the meaning). This is a way to catch up with your own thinking, and it’s a step that can be repeated as your story shifts shape on its way to becoming its truest self.

The Best Memoir Writing Tips for Beginners Are Not Rules

Notice what you learned about writing a memoir by doing this: You didn’t just read a definition of theme—you found your own, by asking what your story means rather than simply what happened. You didn’t just read about how to choose which events matter—you homed in on moments from your life that you feel belong in your book. You didn’t just read the phrase “show, don’t tell”—you wrote fully fleshed, engaging scenes. You didn’t just read about memoirists understanding more of their story as they write—you watched your own theme shift, right there in Step Five.

What a writing guide would hand you as a rule, you arrived at as an experience—that will stick. That’s why what you’ve got now isn’t just a stronger grasp of memoir. It’s the actual start of yours.

A Final Thought on Writing Memoir 

This may be counterintuitive, but “starting” your memoir isn’t really about writing your first chapter. It’s about digging in to discover exactly what story you want to tell. The best “memoir writing tip for beginners” I can offer is this: Give yourself permission to gather all that you’ll need to tell the whole story—events, ideas, remembered moments—before you begin your first draft. Your memoir will be all the richer if you allow your story to reveal itself one scene, one memory, and one honest question at a time.

Writing a memoir can be a deeply rewarding journey—but also a tricky one. Use the memoir writing tips for beginners above to get you started. Then you might find my article “How to Write a Memoir”useful as well. 

If you’re interested in my approach to writing, you might also take a look at my books:
Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

Could you use some support as you write your memoir? I work with memoir writers at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or you have a complete draft, I can help.
Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.

Have you been trying to get some traction on your memoir—or simply find a way into your story? If so, these 10 memoir writing prompts might be just the ticket!

Because they are posed as questions, these 10 memoir writing prompts are designed to evoke a new memory, open a door that you may not even have known was there. Pick one that interests you and see where it takes you.

10 Memoir Writing Prompts: The Questions

Question 1) It seems (mostly) true that difficult passages end. What was the hardest period in your life? How did you make it through? What gave you hope to continue? Did you have help making it to the other side? And what did you find when you got there?

Question 2) We aren’t always in a position—emotionally or otherwise—to respond to even a wonderful opportunity. Have you ever been offered something you didn’t feel able to accept at the time? Has that haunted you? If so, how can you lay it to rest today?

Question 3) Are you a loner or are you a collaborator? Have you ever had to work against your preference? If you’re a loner, have you had to work in a team? If you’re a collaborator, have you had to complete something on your own? What did you learn about yourself from “working against your grain”?

Question 4) Have you ever successfully completed a phase of life or accomplished something hard won and noteworthy? How did you feel? Did you allow yourself to enjoy a sense of satisfaction? If not, why not? What door opened next?

Question 5) Can you recall a time when you were in a significant battle of the wills? Who won? Was it worth the fight?

Question 6) There are times when we need to persevere in the face of adversity or deep disappointment. Remember one of those. What did it take for you to keep going when the way forward seemed nearly impossible? Where did that strength come from?

Question 7) What has your relationship with authority been? Have authority figures helped or hindered you? Do you tend to trust authority? Challenge it? Avoid it? How has your relationship with authority affected the story of your memoir?

Question 8) When have you felt alone or abandoned? What helped you find your way when no one was coming to help? Who or what became your lantern?

Question 9) Do you remember a time when effort you put forth paid off beyond your expectations? When what you set out on the waves of fate returned to you like a ship full of silks and spices from a foreign land? Were you prepared for the abundance when it arrived? What surprised you most about receiving even more than you’d hoped for?

Question 10) What have you accomplished that took longer than felt reasonable? Was it worth it? How did the waiting change you?

And there they are: 10 memoir writing prompts, offered as questions in the spirit of Rainier Maria Rilke, who said, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.”

Writing a memoir can be a deeply rewarding journey—but also a tricky one. This article offers guidance for shaping your story in a way that honors both your truth and your readers: “How to Write a Memoir.”   

If you’re interested in my approach to writing, you might also take a look at my books:
Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

Would you like some support as you write your memoir? I work with memoir writers at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or you have a complete draft, I can help.
Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.

How Did Jane Austen Write a Novel from a Single Question?

It may not be immediately obvious, but Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is predicated on a single question! This post will show you how to write a novel from a single question, too.

At the beginning of the book, the Bennet family faces a problem. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have five unmarried daughters. Because the family estate is entailed away from the female line, the daughters won’t inherit it. That means that when Mr. Bennet dies, the women of the family will find themselves in a precarious financial position.

This creates an immediate question: How will the Bennet daughters secure their future? This is not a romance question (yet). It’s a practical question. A survival question.

Watch the Question Evolve

Almost immediately, Austen introduces a wealthy newcomer, Mr. Bingley, who might be the answer to the family’s problems—and who is promptly drawn to the beautiful oldest sister, Jane. With that, Austen shifts the question slightly: Will Jane and Bingley marry, relieving the uncertainty of the family’s financial future and securing a true love match for sweet Jane?

While the reader is freshly invested in Jane’s story, another marriageable man appears: Mr. Collins, the male heir to the Bennet estate, who could also rescue the family if he married one of the girls. He latches onto witty Elizabeth—but he’s a dullard, and Elizabeth refuses him.

From this, we learn that Elizabeth is not willing to sacrifice her happiness for security—and we invest in a new question: Will Elizabeth find someone worthy of her intelligence, humor, and independent nature?

As the story continues, Mr. Bingley’s sour-faced but wealthy friend, Mr. Darcy, believing the Bennets beneath Bingley’s rank, separates Bingley from Jane—even as Darcy himself begins to show interest in Elizabeth, who dismisses him for what he did to undermine Bingley and Jane.

Then the youngest, wildest Bennet girl, Lydia, elopes with bad boy Wickham, and Austen raises the stakes again: in the social world of the novel, Lydia’s scandal threatens to ruin her sisters’ prospects, too. The original question—can this family secure its future?—comes snapping back, now sharper than before.

Fortunately, Lydia does marry Wickham; Bingley finally returns and proposes to Jane; and the initial question is resolved: the family’s future is secured by Bingley’s fortune.

But the question that has emerged as the emotional heart of the novel still remains: Will Elizabeth and Darcy find their way to one another? That final question carries readers through the last chapters, until the story reaches its satisfying conclusion.

The Single Question Changes Shape

Notice how Austen writes a novel from a single question! Rather than abandoning her original question, with every twist of the plot, she allows that one foundational concern to generate new questions:

• The Bennet family’s uncertain future leads to questions about Jane and Bingley.
• Those questions lead to questions about Elizabeth and Darcy.
• Lydia’s elopement raises the stakes and creates still more uncertainty.

Each development feels surprising, yet each one grows organically from what came before. The story keeps moving in unexpected directions, but the reader never feels as though the writer has changed the subject. Everything remains connected to the original source of tension.

When you’re writing a novel, it can be useful to worry less about adding new complications and, instead, explore the implications of a question you’ve already posed. One good question can contain a whole web of interconnected plot threads.

How to Write a Novel from a Single Question 

1. Identify the Opening Question: Look at the first chapter of your novel. What uncertainty exists? What question do you want the reader asking by the end of that chapter?

2. Follow the Trail: Choose three major turning points in your story. For each one, consider: What question was the reader asking before this event? What question are they asking afterward? Does the question narrow? Deepen? Change direction?

3. The Reader Test: Complete this sentence: “If I were the reader, I’d have to keep reading because I need to know…” Your answer may reveal the question that’s truly driving the story.

Final Thoughts

One reason Pride and Prejudice is so engrossing is that Austen continually gives readers something important to wonder about. But she doesn’t do that by raising a dozen unrelated questions. Instead, she begins with one compelling question and allows it to grow, branch, deepen, and evolve until it carries readers all the way to the final page.

Your novel can do the same. You don’t need a dozen plot threads. You need one question, asked early, that you let twist all the way through your story. One question strong enough to make your reader wonder: What happens next?

Want to discover how you, too, can write a novel from a single question? I work with novelists at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or you have a complete draft, I can help. Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.

If you’re interested in my approach to writing, you might take a look at my books: Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

Are you writing a memoir? If so, is the process stirring things up? You may have thought you’d be ready for what the remembering brought with it. But if your emotions are rising, you could be wondering if writing a memoir is, inherently, a therapeutic process—and what that means for you.

The Early Stages of Memoir Writing Are Likely to Feel “Therapeutic”

In your earliest drafts, your job is to just get your experiences—the raw material of your memoir—on the page. If your writing feels messy and emotional at first, great! Give yourself all the permission you need to explore. Revisit events, re-evaluate relationships, and reconsider the perhaps shadowy aspects of your life in your own way and your own time.

Of course, this process is likely to be a bit of an emotional ride. It may be clarifying—but it can also be unsettling.

When You’re Writing a Memoir, Therapeutic Support Can Make a Real Difference

Writing a memoir can bring things to the surface that might be hard to navigate on your own. So having support—a therapist, a trusted friend, a writing community—can help a lot. Good support means you don’t have to carry everything that comes up all by yourself.

But Is Your Memoir-Writing Just Therapeutic? Or Are You Writing a Book? 

Of course, your writing doesn’t have to become a book. For some people, the experience of writing their memoir is absolutely therapeutic, and that’s enough. (Especially if they’ve had help working through their feelings during the process.)

But if you do want to take it further, if you you want to publish your memoir and have readers travel the life path you’ve written about, eventually you’ll start to shape the material you’ve written. That shift—from personal expression to narrative craft—is what will turn your exploratory, therapeutic writing into a book.

Distance Matters

When you swing the door open between writing for yourself and writing for your readers, you’ll shift from being the person who lived the experience to being the writer who shapes it. You’ll suss out the narrative arc and develop the characters in your story. You’ll refine and define, discovering what you want to include and what’s okay to leave out.

All of that begins with learning to look at your own material with an objective eye. Here’s a simple exercise to practice that skill.

Writing Prompt: From Raw to Cooked

Think of a situation from your life that was difficult: painful, confusing, charged, or just never resolved. Write it out for yourself first. Don’t worry how it sounds. Be awkward, be whiny, be angry, be wobbly, uncertain, inconsistent. This writing isn’t for anyone else’s eyes.

Once you’re done, let that piece cool on the counter of your laptop for a few days.

When you come back to it, see how you can shape the piece into something another person would be engaged by, could relate to. Here are some ways to approach this revision that might help:

• Make it a scene: Put the reader in the room. Where were you? What did you see, hear, feel physically? Sensory details like these make the experience you had available to the reader.
• Add context: What do you know that the reader doesn’t? Is there a detail, an element of backstory, or a relationship dynamic that you could name that would orient the reader? A single sentence can do a lot of work in this regard.
• Find the shape: Even a tiny scene can have an arc! Can you offer the reader a full experience with a beginning, a turn, and an ending? (Our raw writing often spirals; when we shape that writing for a reader, they arrive somewhere.)

The Raw …  

Here’s a raw journal entry, one that you might write in the aftermath of an unexpected, triggering experience:

I can’t. I just can’t. He was THERE and I saw him and he saw me and he just—I don’t even know. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what I felt. I don’t know why I’m writing this. I hate him. No. I don’t hate him. I just want him to know that I—what? That I’m in pain? That it mattered? That I mattered? God. I’m so tired of feeling like this. Why am I still feeling like this?

… And the Cooked

Now here’s that same moment, after a few days on the counter (and some crafting):

We hadn’t spoken in almost a year. I saw him across the lobby. I think he saw me too—but he just kept walking. No nod, no anything. I stood there for a minute, not really sure what to do. I’m still not sure what I was hoping would happen.

In the raw version there was no location, no time, no context—just feeling. In the cooked version, there’s a shape baked in to what we felt:

• Scene:  We’re in a lobby. The reader can see it.
• Context: “We hadn’t spoken in almost a year.” That one sentence that tells the reader enough about the relationship to orient them without dissipating the immediacy of the moment.
• Shape: It has a beginning (the narrator sees him), a turn (he keeps walking), and an ending (the narrator’s still standing there, still not sure what they wanted).

That’s a complete little story. That’s what you’re working toward.

Be Where You Are

But if you’re still in the early stages, still just getting it out, still letting it be hot and wild and unruly, good. That’s the work, the first work. Don’t rush yourself to the next stage. That writing, the words you spill on the page just for yourself, will be the solid foundation of every iteration of your story that comes after it.

Writing a memoir can be a deeply rewarding journey—but also a tricky one. This article offers guidance for shaping your story in a way that honors both your truth and your readers: “How to Write a Memoir.”   

If you’re interested in my approach to writing, you might also take a look at my books:
Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock and Jamie Helps Mel Write a Novel.

Could you use some support as you write your memoir? I work with memoir writers at all stages of the process. Whether you’re just finding your way into your story or you have a complete draft, I can help.
Visit my contact page, and let’s connect.