Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Use Description to Communicate Opinion in Your Memoirs

Your memoir will engage readers if you report what happened and let them draw their own conclusions.

The whole point of writing a memoir is to tell the story of your life from your unique point of view. But, as with other types of writing, it can be most effective to let readers draw their own conclusions. This subtle difference lies in your style of description.

Let’s say you’re recalling how your met your childhood best friend. He was a teammate in Little League, but you didn’t know each other because you attended different schools. You could write: Tommy was a very good player, much more skilled than I was, so I was surprised when he seemed friendly to me right from the beginning. You’ve evaluated his ability, your ability and his friendliness, and you deliver to the reader no interesting details—just your conclusions.

Try it this way instead, more like a reporter: Tommy hit at least one home run every game, and as a short stop he could catch the wildest throws, then propel the ball like a bullet to the appropriate plate. I was thrilled to get on base at all, and out in center field I just prayed for pop flies to the infield. So I didn’t see it coming when Tommy patted me on the back after the first day of practice and challenged, “Race you to the Good Humor truck!??? Readers still conclude that Tommy was friendly and the better player, but this style engages them and makes them want to continue reading your memoir!

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Then just set up a chapter and start writing your memoir. Don’t worry about rules. There are no rules to writing your memoir; there are only trends. These trends are based on techniques and features identified in current top-selling memoirs. At best, they’re the flavor of the month. If you’re capturing your life in print for your family, for your own gratification or to inspire readers, rather than aiming to set off Hollywood screenplay bidding wars, these trends don’t even apply to you. You’ll write the memoir that suits you best, and it will be timeless, not trend-driven.There are no rules, but there are four steps:

1. Theme/framework
2. Writing
3. Editing/polishing
4. Self-publishing

You’ve researched this, too, and you’ve been shocked at the price for getting help with any one of those steps, much less all four. That’s because most memoir sites promise to commercialize your work. They’ll follow a formula based on current memoir trends, because they want to convince you that they can turn your memoir into a best-seller. These sites overwhelm you with unnecessary information not to help you, the memoir author, but to address Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms so they can sell more.

That’s not what we do at Write My Memoirs. Our small community of coaches, writers and editors are every bit as skilled as any you’ll find, and we charge appropriately for their expertise and the time they’ll spend helping you craft a compelling, enjoyable read. But you won’t pay an upcharge for other websites’ commercialization, the marketing that follows, and the pages of intimidating “advice.” You can sell your book if you like—we have ISBNs available for you—but our organic process of capturing your story takes a noncommercial path.

If you want help with any or all of the four steps above, choose from our services or save money by selecting one of our packages. If you’d like to talk about what’s right for you, schedule a call. One year from now, you can be holding your published memoir in your hand. And at that point, it will be a big deal!