What Details Should You Include in a Memoir?
What details should go on the page of your memoir, and what can stay off?
As a ghostwriter, I often help authors determine what belongs in their autobiography (covering someone's life) or memoir (covering specific events in their life). Without professional guidance on what to include, they often suffer from the opposite problem: They want to include the kitchen sink.
Here are some questions I ask clients to help them decide what to include or leave out of their manuscript.
Does It Fit Your Theme?
I’ve probably watched Plains, Trains, and Automobiles two dozen times. (If you haven’t watched it, I don’t think we can be friends.) After John Candy’s character finishes telling a wildly meaningless story, Steve Martin’s character delivers a short master class to storytellers along the lines of:
“Here’s a thought: Have you tried telling stories that have a point?”
The same concept applies in writing. If a detail supports a major theme or event in your story, then it has a point; leave it in. If what you’re sharing resembles the meandering trajectory of a caffeinated squirrel, leave it out.
Is It Compelling?
There’s a second part of Steve Martin’s master class: Is it engaging enough that people want more?
Let’s be honest: We aren’t always the best judge of what’s interesting to another person. That’s why authors need to know their audience and solicit editors and beta readers to help.
A friend of mine found trains fascinating. He could talk endlessly about their history and models, while detailing each stop on the passenger lines near his home. While that topic could be interesting to people who love all-things trains, it’s a niche audience: the tiny subculture of readers who buy all their books at a local Trains-R-Us store. But in a memoir about, say, your experience running an exotic animal sanctuary, most train-related stories would subject readers to torture.
Choose topics that engage your reader, which starts with knowing who your reader is.
Is It Concise?
Repeating yourself is one of the quickest ways to disengage readers. (It’s also a characteristic of AI-generated content; see last week’s post for more on this.)
Readers are not apt to endure the same story told multiple times with only slightly different details. I’ll use the example of someone entering a revolving door. Were you to write a story involving an important business meeting, perhaps the act of walking through a door could serve a purpose—to establish a setting or a character’s mannerisms, for example. But imagine dozens of pages describing the character going in and out of a single door. Mentioning one door might be interesting; thousands of words on the same topic are mind-numbing. (Are you bored yet?)
Is It Moving Your Story Forward?
Some authors argue that if an event happened, it should be included in their manuscript.
Um, no.
Instead of arguing with clients who insist that a true yet distracting detail gets added to their manuscript, I ask, “During the time covered in your autobiography/memoir, did you ever use the restroom?”
“Of course,” they answer, surprised by my absurd question.
“Right. And the reason your manuscript doesn’t include all the details about every bowel movement is that they are off-point, uninteresting, and don’t move your story forward.”
After that exchange, authors rarely argue to include pieces of their story that don’t check these boxes. They learn to evaluate what elements propel their manuscript versus bog it down.
Does It Add Value?
Ultimately, all these points could be encapsulated by this concept: Determine what matters, and decide what is irrelevant. Some actions are just assumed: like before you can go to work, you must get out of bed, sometimes take a shower and feed the cat, and likely reach your workspace. Unless these details are critical to the story (like perhaps you weren’t supposed to get out of bed on a particular day), or they offer some entertainment value, leave them out. Assume your reader has both sufficient intelligence to draw conclusions and insufficient patience to read through unimportant details.
What would you add?
