How to Write a Memoir: Steps, Structures and Prompts

Memoir teacher Marion Roach Smith, writing after more than 20 years of teaching the form, defines it in one line in her essay on what memoir is: "Memoir is about something you know after something you've been through." That is what separates it from an autobiography, which tells a whole life, and from a family history, which records it for the people who come after you.

Knowing which one you're writing settles most early decisions: where to start, what to leave out and who you're writing for. All three are worth writing.

1. 1

   Decide what it's about

   Write one sentence that names what you learned, not just what happened. Everything else gets measured against it.

2. 2

   List your moments

   Write down every small, specific moment you still remember clearly, in any order. Don't judge them yet.

3. 3

   Choose a structure

   Chronological, opening on the turning point, two timelines, themes or circles. Pick the one that serves your sentence.

4. 4

   Draft one scene at a time

   Put the reader in one room on one day, with what was seen, said and felt then.

5. 5

   Add what you know now

   After the scene, let the older you reflect on what it meant, briefly and honestly.

6. 6

   Check the real people

   Check facts, read each portrait for fairness, and decide on names before you share the book.

7. 7

   Revise, then choose your readers

   Cut what doesn't serve your sentence, get a reader's view, then decide between family copies, self-publishing and agents.

You don't have to do all of this alone. The free memoir outline gives you the sentence, twelve chapter slots ordered by meaning and a real-people check, and the AI memoir writer turns a list of your moments into an outline and an opening chapter, built only from what you tell it.

Roach Smith's test is a fill-in-the-blanks sentence: "It's about x as illustrated by y to be told in a z." The x is a universal idea, never you; the y is the scenes from your life that prove it; the z is the form, from a blog post to a book. Her own example is a book about how closure is a myth, as illustrated by getting back in touch with every old boyfriend.

Your first sentence will be wrong in an interesting way. Write it anyway, then rewrite it as you draft. Many writers only find the real x halfway through.

The writing teacher William Zinsser sums up his last piece of advice in How to Write a Memoir in two words: "think small." Don't hunt for the important events. Look for small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid, because if you still remember them, he says, they hold a truth readers will recognize.

He also tells writers to make "a series of reducing decisions": write about one side of the family, not both, and leave out people who don't need to be there. And he reminds them that it's your story, so you only need to interview relatives who can unlock something you can't.

• Photos, old calendars, letters, emails and journals, for dates and details you've lost.
• The rooms you lived in, drawn as floor plans, with what happened in each.
• Objects you kept, and the moment each one came from.
• Smells, songs and foods that send you straight back to a year.
• Moments you've told aloud for years, and the ones you've never told.

Memoirist Amber Lee Starfire calls structure "the framework around which you build your story" in a guest post on choosing a memoir's structure, and lists the options most writers choose from. Editor Allison K Williams adds two shapes in 2 Methods for Structuring Your Memoir. Starfire adds that you may need to try a few arrangements before one fits.

Williams also notes that most first drafts are written either in order or by theme, and that both work fine for getting words down. You can draft in order and restructure later.

A memoir has two narrators. Sue William Silverman, in Finding Innocence and Experience, calls them the Voice of Innocence and the Voice of Experience: "the Voice of Innocence describes the event. The Voice of Experience interprets and reflects upon it." The first puts the reader in the moment as you lived it. The second is you now, finding what it meant.

Write the scene first, with sights, sounds and words people said. Then add a few lines of reflection. If you explain every scene, the book turns into a lecture; if you never reflect, readers wonder why you're telling them.

If you have notes for a chapter but stall on the prose, the chapter writer drafts it from your notes in your voice, adds no facts, and marks where a detail only you know should go. When a passage tells too much, the story rewriter can rework it to show instead, and switch it to present or past tense.

Don't start at birth. Start with a scene that raises the question your book answers, even if it happened late in the story. Then write your first line last: in her piece on memoir first sentences, Roach Smith says almost none of her published pieces kept the opening line she started with.

If a whole book feels too big, write one essay first. Michelle Zauner's essay "Crying in H Mart" ran in The New Yorker in 2018 and grew into her memoir of the same name.

Zinsser's advice for the first draft: "Don't worry about that problem in advance." Get the story down as you remember it, then deal with privacy. If you're writing only for family, he sees no need to show it to anyone else. For a wider audience, showing relatives the pages they appear in is, in his words, "a basic courtesy."

Before you publish, the risk is real but rare. Writing coach Lisa Cooper Ellison explains in advice on avoiding memoir lawsuits that libel means false statements, presented as fact, that damage someone's reputation. Revealing embarrassing but true facts about a private person can also be an invasion of privacy.

Changing a name is not a shield if readers can still tell who it is. For passages that worry you, a lawyer can vet just those pages; Ellison puts the cost at hundreds to thousands of dollars. The free Authors Alliance guide Writing About Real People explains the rules in plain terms. It covers United States law only, and notes that a defamation claim can only be brought about a living person.

Set a timer for 15 minutes and write one specific day, not a summary of years. Each prompt below was written for this guide. Start with the people who raised you:

• Write the kitchen of the house you grew up in, at dinner time, on one particular night.
• Write a time a parent surprised you, for better or worse.
• Write something an adult said to you that you still hear.
• Write the first time you saw a parent afraid.
• Write a family rule nobody ever said out loud.
• Write a holiday that went wrong.

Turning points:

• Write the day you knew something had to change.
• Write a decision you made in under a minute that changed years.
• Write a phone call that split your life into before and after.
• Write the moment you stopped believing something you'd been taught.
• Write the first night in a new place.
• Write a time you said no and meant it.

People:

• Write someone who taught you something without meaning to.
• Write the last conversation you had with someone you've lost.
• Write a friendship that ended without a goodbye.
• Write someone you misjudged, and the moment you realized it.
• Write a stranger you still think about.
• Write the person who saw you before you saw yourself.

Places and things:

• Write an object you've carried through every move, and where it came from.
• Write a room you were never allowed into.
• Write a car, and one drive in it.
• Write a smell that takes you straight back to one year.
• Write a job, on its hardest day.
• Write a place you can never go back to.

What you know now:

• Write a letter to yourself on the worst day you remember.
• Write what you'd tell your younger self, then what your younger self would say back.
• Write a story your family tells about you that isn't quite true.
• Write something you've forgiven, and something you haven't.
• Write a belief you hold now that would shock you at twenty.
• Write the question you'd most like your book to answer.

Read memoir the way you'd read a map. Draw a timeline, mark where each chapter sits on it, and notice how the writer moves between then and now. Starfire suggests exactly this exercise. These books show the choices above clearly.

For length, see the memoir row in our novel word count guide: 65,000 to 90,000 words is typical, and shorter is fine. Before anyone else reads it, cut every chapter that doesn't serve your sentence. Then get a reader's reaction; the AI beta reader shows where a reader gets hooked, gets lost or starts to skim.

If you're writing for family, you're done when the family has copies. Zinsser's father had his histories typed and bound, with a copy for each grandchild. For bookstores, you can self-publish on Amazon or look for an agent.

Agents treat memoir differently from other nonfiction. Jane Friedman explains in her book proposal guide that published writers can often sell a memoir on a proposal, but new writers may be asked for a complete manuscript, sometimes with a proposal too. Finish the book first, and use the book proposal template if an agent asks for one. Our query letter examples include a memoir query that got its writer an agent.