![]() ![]() She knows they’ve picked up her book on the promise that they’ll get stories of hiking through the wilderness, and she delivers on it instantly, instead of spending the first 100 pages detailing her mundane ‘normal’ life. Strayed hooks her reader right from the prologue. I was barefoot." | Image: Fox Searchlight Pictures It’s a moment of profound helplessness and loneliness, evoking feelings she’s been grappling with since her mother died, ones that she hopes to overcome on her journey. Instead, it begins on day 38 of her hike along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) when Strayed accidentally drops one of her hiking shoes off a cliff. To engage readers from the get-go, open with a powerful moment from the middle or even the end of your story.įor example, Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild (which we’ll reference throughout the rest of this post) doesn’t start with her mother’s death, failing marriage, or struggle with drugs. If the first few pages don’t grab them, they won’t buy it. ![]() When deciding whether your book is worth reading, readers will skim through the opening passages, either in-store or with Amazon’s Look Inside feature. It’s never a bad idea to start your memoir with a moment of high emotion. Let’s dive deeper into your memoir outline and see that your story hits all the right chords. Noah shares a range of poignant and often humorous stories, from going to Church with his mum to selling CDs to his first date, which all grapple with the book’s central themes of resilience and identity. ![]() A good example is Trevor Noah's memoir Born a Crime, which explores his experiences as a mixed-race child growing up in Apartheid South Africa. For memoirs that aren't linked together by a specific timeframe, but rather a common theme, with each story offering a unique perspective into the author's life, yet all coalescing around a central theme. ![]() In Lee Lawrence's The Louder I Will Sing, the author describes his life before and after his mother was wrongly shot by police during a raid on their home, using the contrast to describe the two strikingly different realities he experienced. being sentenced to jail, or surviving a hurricane). For memoirs that revolve around a particular event so central to the story that it makes sense to organize the book in a Before/After format, where the narration keeps cutting before and after that event occurred (e.g. defeating cancer, or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.) For example, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air recounts the 1996 Mount Everest disaster by chronicling the ascent, summit, and descent of the mountain.īefore/After. For memoirs that cover a specific time period or event of the author’s life and have a clear, chronological timeline (e.g. Three, in particular, stand out:Ĭhronological. To help you along, look at some of the most common memoir structures authors use. □ Want to collaborate with a master storyteller to bring your memoir to life? Hire a ghostwriter! They'll handle everything in the background, but your name will be the one on the cover.įilmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said that every story “has a beginning, a middle, and an end - not necessarily in that order.” When it comes to telling your own story, there isn’t a single way to structure them 一 you'll have to figure out what will have the greatest impact. With this bird’s-eye view, it becomes easier to spot patterns and understand what fundamentally connects your stories together, helping you find a suitable structure for your memoir. If Trevor Noah used the Reedy Book Editor for outlining his memoir, Born a Crime. For example, the Reedsy Book Editor offers an outlining board where you can create notes for your stories, then drag and drop them around. You could do this on a whiteboard, a notebook, or within your writing software of choice. The challenge now is to piece them together, with each memory serving as a crucial puzzle piece in an overarching narrative.Ī popular first step is to arrange your stories in chronological order. If you’ve worked through our article on how to write a memoir, you should already have a hand-picked selection of powerful memories. ![]()
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