Really, there are only two categories with multiple versions of each.
If you want to write a memoir rather than a full autobiography, what might you focus on that will resonate with readers? When you get down to it, there are really only two categories of common memoir themes.
Category 1: Triumph
Feeling you’ve overcome some adversity can be so life-changing that you want to not only share it with others but use your experience to help the next person facing the same problem. You may even help people avoid falling into the trap of whatever tripped you up.
Within this broad category, there are subsets:
- Illness. A rare illness introduces readers to something new, which always makes for good reading. On the other hand, more people will relate to a common illness. This means that no matter what health challenge you faced, including mental illness and depression, you can write a memoir about it.
- Trauma. From living with an abusive parent or spouse or experiencing extreme bullying to growing up in a country at war, trauma is a frequently explored misery. Escape tends to be the resolution, but there are many directions this can take, and not all tales of trauma are alike.
- Addictions and vices. With all the groups available to help people quit drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, compulsive sex and more, it’s no wonder that former addicts want to write memoirs after believing they’ve kicked the habit. Matthew Perry is a sad example of how difficult this is to achieve, even if at the time you write your memoir you think you’ve gotten there.
- Identity and insecurity. The path to figuring out who you truly are can obviously fill a book. Gender confusion, body shape issues, learning challenges, cultural blurriness, even career indecision—people spend many years on choices and self-acceptance. Once you’ve come to terms with your authentic self, it’s understandable that you want to provide a path of information and encouragement to people just beginning the journey.
- Spiritual awakening. The outcome of any of these challenges can come through a new spiritual awareness, but the awareness itself also can be the main topic of a memoir. Perhaps you just didn’t feel whole until you let God in your life. It’s a common theme, but everyone’s discovery is unique.
Category 2: Time period of your life
While the triumph category may end up covering only certain years of your life, this second category focuses specifically on a slice of time with the theme inherent in how you spent that time. Again, there are sub-categories:
- A geographic location. It can be very interesting to read someone’s “my time in” an unfamiliar culture. Perhaps you lived part of your life in an area that was exotic, isolated, poverty-stricken, dangerous or even privileged. Or maybe you simply took a trip that you describe in an extensive travelogue.
- A relationship. Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie is a well-known example of chronicling time spent with a special person. Albom revealed the myriad topics of discussion during his weekly visits with his dying former professor, opening readers’ minds to life’s richness. If the movie Beaches had been based on a memoir instead of a novel, which of course is fiction, it would be another good example of a friendship memoir. Some relationships last a lifetime, but if you’re writing a memoir about it you probably had a beginning and end.
- Coming of age. Somehow we have a timeless fascination in exploring the bridge between childhood and adulthood. Perhaps it’s because then we remember our own coming-of-age years, when we had our whole lives ahead of us, lots of options and endless new experiences.
- Drastically changed circumstances. Perhaps there were some months or years that, for whatever reason, were completely different from the rest of your life. Joan Didion explored grief and loss in The Year of Magical Thinking. Maybe you spent a couple of years working as a firefighter or fostering dozens of children or running an unusual company. It can be worth writing about.
- A project. Whether you took three years to sail around the world or you set out to visit every major league ballpark in the country, you may have a memoir there. White journalist John Howard Griffin wrote his 1961 best-seller Black Like Me to enlighten people about how race impacts everyday life after he managed to pose as a black man in the segregated South.
Once Again: Autobiography vs. Memoir
If you’re a celebrity, you can get away with writing a full autobiography, cradle to present day, and still call it a memoir, not to mention still get it published. If you’re an ordinary person, only your family will be interested in your autobiography. And that’s fine. In fact, that’s our typical customer at Write My Memoirs.
Just don’t expect, as a non-celebrity, to have high book sales without a theme. Often the theme is the catalyst for writing the memoir. But let’s say the motivation to write about your life comes first, and then you go looking for a theme that will be compelling to readers. You want to write about something, with you as the major player. That’s a memoir.