Everybody likes to experience a main character’s energy once in a lifetime. With the advent of creative writing, having told or said a story about your specific life can be an exciting adventure for many. Do you have an unbelievable incident in your life that you’d like to share with people, or is there some advice you’d like to pass on to your grandchildren from your own life experience? Writing memoirs can be the best way to pass your story to future generations and, at the same time, be the main character you always wished you could be.
A memoir can be explained as a non-fictional, first-person account of events or specific memories from the writer’s life that have significant value or emotional connection. This means the story focuses on personal experience, life incidents, and emotions felt by the author at certain points in their life. Memoirs are a great way to leave a piece of yourself to eternity, and this is a great way for future generations to know about the life you’ve lived. In this article, I’ve mentioned five tips for beginners who want to explore memoir writing.
Choose a Theme
Memoir writers have a story to tell the world. However, there are different stories and different experiences for individuals. Would you want to make it feel like it’s pushed with many narratives and sound like an autobiography? No, right? Make sure you choose a theme or focus on a specific moment in life that you feel can be inspiring to others or is an integral part of your life. There also has to be a theme involving the stories that happened to make that emotional connection with the readers. So, the first tip is to choose a theme.
Hire a Ghostwriter
Writing can be an overwhelming experience for many if they feel they don’t have the skill to jot down emotional experiences. So, this is where you can always hire another person to write your story instead. There are memoir ghostwriters who can help you bring your experiences into a written form, neatly capturing the essence of your emotions and crafting moving narratives. Hiring a ghostwriter can also be beneficial because they know how to streamline the process and make suggestions or remove parts that are not needed for the readers.
Use Fiction Techniques
Memoirs are about real-life stories, and they have nothing to do with fiction. But my third tip is that you should make it feel like a compelling fiction story. Make use of techniques used by fiction writers in their stories that make it more engaging for the readers. You can add suspense and thrilling moments in your life and present it in a way where readers should feel like they are living with you. This can help you make a beautiful and lasting memoir for yourself, and others should also be inspired by your story.
Create a Sensory Experience
When writing a memoir, expressing the emotions you felt during a certain period of life can seem difficult. So, you can try translating your emotions to create a sensory experience for the readers. You can do this by seeing yourself from the perspective of the reader and including vivid details to see if the narrative moves you. The first draft can be shared with any of your close relatives or friends to get feedback on how they felt reading your memoir.
Don’t Include Everyone
It’s necessary to mention your friends, family, and loved ones in your memoir. You would have an important life-changing experience with many people involved, so you might feel tempted to mention every character you know in your memoir. Only mention characters who are related to the incidents or memories that you want to share rather than including everyone you know to be part of your story. Focus only on people who impacted the trajectory of your life and are essential when telling a story. Just because you liked your childhood spent with your cousins and want to talk about it, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the actual theme of the story, you can remove mentioning them in your memoir.
Conclusion
Memoir writing is the best way to leave your footprint behind in this world for future generations. But it’s not an easy task, as it may take a year to complete a memoir. By following these five tips, you can create a memoir that inspires readers. One way to have an extraordinary memoir is to write daily and practice telling others your story. You can also hire ghostwriters or seek help from others to finish your story in the most exciting way. Memoirs have the power to evoke nostalgia, so grab your pen and paper and start writing!