Q: What's the number one problem in writing a memoir?

A: Story

My answer might surprise you. You might think the easiest aspect of writing a memoir would be the story. It's your life, you know what happened. Isn't it obvious what the story is?      

Well, no. It isn't obvious. Because "these things happened to me" isn't a story. A sequence of events isn't a story. A story requires a chain of cause and effect. In a story, something—the main character or the story’s world—is changed by the end. If nothing changes, what's the point of reading the story?

A definition of story which I find useful comes from John Truby's book The Anatomy of Story. He describes a story as the sequence of events that takes a character, or characters, from the disturbance of an equilibrium to the establishment of a new equilibrium. That may sound pretty academic, but you don't have to be analytical about it. You can just ask yourself, when you come to structure your material (which I suggest you do after you generate a lot of it), when was the primary moment when nothing could ever be the same again? When your life changed by force of circumstance (in my memoir Love Child, I am told that my mother is dead); when you realized something was wrong (in The Liar's Club, Mary Karr's mother makes a bonfire of all her things); or when you decided to change your life (in Wild, Cheryl Strayed decides to walk the Pacific Trail)? That's the beginning. Then, when did things fall into place, or peace was restored in your world or in your heart? That's the end.

But you don't need to know this when you start writing! In fact, you can tie yourself up in knots if you spend too much time trying to work out the structure of a story you don't really know yet. Allow yourself to discover your story as you explore its events on the page.

Want to do a bit of exploring today? Join us for the Prompt of the Week on Zoom, starting at 6pm ET for an hour. It’s free! And you don’t need to pre-register: just turn up with paper and pen. Get the Zoom link here.

In working with memoir writers, I commonly find that the writer doesn't really know what their story is. The first question I ask is, what is your transformation? The question doesn't require an immediate answer, but it will guide you in discovering your story. I believe that most, maybe all, powerful memoirs are stories of transformation. The writer is coming to terms with difficult circumstances, or discovering something new in themselves, or changing their judgments of the world, or changing themselves. If you've lived through earth-shattering events you can write a great record of those events, but what will move a reader is the effect those events had on you.

The next question I ask is, what flag are you sailing under? What values are you holding up in telling your story? When I wrote Love Child, my flag was the idea that family is what you make it, and the chains of DNA don't matter. That's really important to me, and that's what kept me going. If you find a value that you want passionately to express, that will give you the energy to keep going too, and your readers will feel your passion. Your memoir will be about something.

That's what makes a memoir different from an autobiography, which is basically the record of the writer's life to date. An autobiography doesn't need a story; readers pick it up because they're curious about that person's life. (Most autobiographies are written by famous people.) Readers pick up a memoir for its story, not because they are interested in its author's life. In other words, they expect from a memoir the same narrative satisfaction they'd get from a novel—but better, because you're saying: This actually happened. To me. I survived this, discovered this, brought this into being. I learned. I grew. I found peace. I was transformed.

This photo was taken (by Richard Avedon, you can see him in the mirror) not long before my mother was killed. This is my world that was shattered by her death. At the end of Love Child, I am the mother, and a newly restored family surround me.