Memoir Inventory
A guide to understanding where you are with your memoir and to keeping the book going.
These questions apply to what you have written or what you will write.
A reminder: A memoir is a narrative, descriptive, or expository form of writing that focuses on the meaning and intensity of a singular relationship in the author’s life.
- How much work have you done on this book?
- What evidence do you have for your book?
- Where does the memoir take place?
- Besides you, who are the main characters?
- Who’s alive, who’s dead?
- Who do you want to read your book?
- What’s the highpoint of the tale? (a plot point or an emotional climax; outer v. inner)
- How much time elapses, that is, the time of the story, not of the life?
- How does your memoir end?
- How does your memoir begin?
- List three big cultural, political, historical events that are part of your memoir. (9/11; women’s movement; invention of email; Tea Party)
- Who is telling the tale? How much of your remembered self is telling this tale, how much of your remembering self is the teller?
- What do you have trouble remembering or what have you possibly misremembered?
- What are the strongest emotions you’ve experienced writing this book?
- What is the emotional growth of the story? How do you change from beginning to end?
- If you’re writing about the living, what sorts of problems or surprises or benefits with them will you encounter or have you encountered? Might this extend to writing about the dead?
- What’s the hardest part?
- How will you practically keep your memoir going? List three things you’ll work on.
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