Your Memoir Should Not Read Like a Diary: The Basics of Memoir Structure

As a writing teacher, one of the most common errors I come across is the attempt to make a memoir resemble a diary. On the surface, this seems like a smart decision to make. After all, a memoir and a diary both recount true events from your life.

However, a diary has one huge flaw that prevents it from holding a reader’s attention for very long: A diary is a collection of disjointed stories pasted together. And telling someone a bunch of random things that happened to you does not create plot.

One of the hardest aspects of writing a memoir is getting your structure right. (Structure is basically synonymous with plot.) If your structure is off, your book won’t work — even if you have stellar prose and good stories. Memoirs with structural problems tend to be boring and often confusing. Most importantly, without the right structure, you won’t create that key ingredient that’s necessary for a reader to keep turning the pages: suspense.

Connect Your Scenes to Create Plot

Memoir structure can be distilled down to a very simple concept: “connected events.”

In other words, the key to creating plot is to take your scenes and link them together for your reader. When you do this, you’ve created a cohesive story — in short, you’ve crafted a memoir and not a diary. However, actually achieving this is one of the most challenging aspects of writing a great book.

One way to connect your events, to link one scene to the next, is to use causality. This is how novelists and screenwriters create plot. When one event brings about the next one — voilà! — you have structure.

Let me give you an example that should illustrate how causality works. Below are four events that you might write about in your memoir:

• I get in a car wreck.
• I go to the hospital.
• My sister comes to visit me.
• We reconcile after not talking for seven years.

Here, each of these four events has a causal relationship. One event causes the next one to occur. One event can’t exist without the previous one.

For instance, my sister would not have visited me had I not wound up in the hospital. And I would not be in the hospital had I not gotten into a car crash in the first place.

If you have causality in your book, you have structure. You have created a single storyline.

Another Way of Creating Structure

While causality is a fabulous way of creating plot, it can sometimes be tough to achieve in memoir, mostly because of the fact that so many of the experiences you’ve lived through will not be connected in this way. It’s much easier to rely on causality in fiction, where you can simply invent your plot.

Fortunately, there exists another option for connecting your stories: using a chapter premise. In this case, you come up with a single idea that all of your events have in common.

Let’s say you’re working with these events:

• My sister calls to tell me she’s getting a divorce.
• My brother visits and informs me he’s lost 80 pounds.
• My dog goes missing.
• I take a trip to the Bahamas.

Here you have four different scenes, which on the surface are completely unrelated. So how do you combine these disconnected scenes so that they tell a single story in your memoir?

Start by thinking of a concept that all of these events share. In this example, the idea of separation comes to mind.

If I decide that separation is the premise I’ll use to structure my chapter, I’ll refer to this idea time and time again as a way of connecting my scenes.

I might start the chapter by talking about the impact of separation in my own life, mentioning the sense of separation I’ve sometimes felt from my family members. Then I include my first scene: My sister calls and it turns out she’s going through a divorce. So I conclude the scene with new reflections: My sister is going through her own separation, one that actually winds up bringing us closer together.

When I see my brother and realize he’s lost 80 pounds, I see both integration and separation going on in his life. He’s achieved something huge, separating himself from a weight that held him down for decades. At the same time, his identity is in flux and he sometimes feels distant from the person he’s always thought himself to be.

Then my dog goes missing. Suddenly, I’m separated from the companion that’s been with me for the past seven years. In order to recover from the loss, I decide to escape to the Bahamas. There I take a break from the routine of daily life, a separation from the worries that define my day to day existence.

What have I just done there? I took four events that had nothing to do with one another and used an idea to connect them, to turn them into a single story.

The key to keeping a reader’s attention is to create plot. And the key to creating plot is by connecting your events. Keep this important concept in mind and you’ll craft a memoir that works, a story that compels a reader to keep turning the pages.

Wendy Dale is the author of Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals and the creator of Memoir Writing for Geniuses. To receive her free video class “Seven Steps to Structure,” visit www.geniusmemoirwriting.com/free-class.html