Believe it or not, memoirs can be tougher to write as compared to autobiographies. Why? Because unlike autobiographies that cover a wide span of your life experiences, memoirs talk about that one momentous facet of your life which went on to change everything for you. Memoirs talk about those experiences that you can just close your eyes and relive over and over fresh like they happened just yesterday. But when it comes to penning down these moments and experiences, you just might not know where to start. Here’s a template that you can follow to structure your thoughts, ideas, and emotions as you sit down to write your memoir:
Step 1: Share a Story
You know the theme/memory/experience that you’re going to talk about in the memoir. Start your memoir with a story or an anecdote that pertains to the same. It should be interesting with the ability to pull the reader in immediately. There’s no need to explain the context of the anecdote at this step. In fact, a little vagueness can help in raising the reader’s curiosity.
Step 2: Introduce Your Memoir Focus
Now that you’ve piqued the reader with your story, you can share the context behind it, which is actually the focus of your memoir. This is the time to plainly state what you’re going to talk about ahead. Don’t kill the suspense though by revealing a plot twist or something to that effect. Only reveal enough so that the readers can set some expectations out of their reading.
Step 3: Establish Characters, Time and Place
At this step you ought to mention the key characters in your memoir as well as give an idea about the time and place in which the memoir is taking place. Not asking you to bluntly state these informations as facts, but instead present them as a continuum of the story you’ve told so far. Giving out these factual details is important to give the readers a sense of reality amidst the world of perception that you’re creating in your memoir.
Step 4: Set Your Main Plot
The introductions are out of the way now. Your reader has all the tools and information he needs to understand what you’re talking about. So now you are ready to dive into the main plot of your memoir. Carefully lay out your plot with a proper beginning and end to mark it. Use vivid language throughout to keep the reader engaged. Including more anecdotes is only going to make the plot read more compelling.
Step 5: Draw a Conclusion
As your memoir reaches towards its conclusion, you should start talking about what the memoir events and experiences taught you and in what ways they affected your life. Basically, conclusion is where you offer a personal retrospective view of the events and experiences that you’ve written about for the better part of your memoir. This is also a space where you can offer a few words of wisdom, that you’ve gathered from your own experiences, to your reader.
This template was in part inspired by the following template by WriteWell:
https://writewellapp.com/example/memoir-template
