How to know what to keep and what to cull
Let’s get straight into it. Memoirs are highlight reels, not hefty director’s cuts. Nobody wants to read a day-by-day account of your life. I don’t care if you’re Taylor Swift or Jeff Goldblum (two celebs I’m very curious about, as it happens). If you want that kind of uncurated minutia of someone’s life, buy Jonathan the Tortoise’s autobiography.*
When it comes to writing a memoir, you’re looking back to find the yellow threads of your primary plotline in the multicoloured tapestry of your years. (Bit much? I’m feeling whimsical – join me!) Trace those threads to find out how you got to where you are now. By unravelling them from the rest of your life story, you can see each of them with greater clarity, their significance, and reflect more easily on how they make you feel now.
Be selective
Focus on stand-out moments and events that are key to your life lessons, your downfall, your road to self-discovery, your eurekas. Those are the heartbeats of your book that thrum along, give it pace, keep the reader tuned into your revelations, fears, obstacles, doubts, hard-won victories.
If you include too much other material, your beat will be muffled and your readers will be lost.
So how do you know what makes the cut? Which scenes in the epic of your life should make it into your short film and which should be relegated to the cutting room floor?
Try this… for any scene/event/moment in your life that you’re considering including, ask the following questions. If you answer yes to at least one of them, keep it. If you answer no to any of them, cull it.
Keep or cull?
- Does this scene develop my character?
- Does this scene demonstrate a key pattern of behavior?
- Does this scene spotlight an important relationship or dynamic?
- Does this scene prove to be significant?
- Does this scene share essential facts about my personal journey?
What you end up with is a set of scenes that build a clear picture and make sense of what’s happened to you. Just as with a novel, a memoir should draw the reader into the problem, make them want to go with you to find out your hopes of how you’ll solve it and your fears of how you might not, to ride along the ups and downs into your denouement.
Carefully chosen scenes will give them all of that, along with a pair of pom-poms to cheer you on your way!
For more life writing tips and wellbeing advice for authors, follow us on our socials and check out our other blogs.
*He’s the world’s oldest living land animal at an estimated overripe old age of 192! He’s yet to release a book, sorry.