![]() ![]() Think about your desire line, or what motivates your narrator to tell her story. Your want will drive the food forward and make your story worth reading. But it’s important to focus your memoir on specific need or desire. You will use the first person, “I”, to lead the reader through your story. Instead, memoirs may end with thoughts on a running theme throughout the book, or with reflections on the pivotal event or moment in the writer’s life. ![]() Most memoirs end without any firm conclusions or end of life moments. Were you satisfied with the ending of the memoir? Why or why not? Unlike an autobiography, a memoir does not need to have a linear beginning, middle, and end.But readers often respond to vulnerability in a memoir, and a writer who is not afraid to describe their failures along with their successes. The writer may write in a way that feels truthful, full of moments that may not make the writer look good or conflicted. How did the memoir keep the reader engaged and interested in the story? The best memoirs are honest and unflinching, with details or admissions that the writer may be afraid to make.Consider the motivations of the writer for putting down their story and presenting it to readers. Perhaps the writer was trying to process a year of grieving and loss, as Didion does in The Year of Magical Thinking, or perhaps the writer was trying to describe a childhood in a concentration camp, as Spiegelman does in his memoir Maus. What were the narrator’s desires in the memoir? What was motivating the narrator to share this particular story with the reader? Often, memoirs can be cathartic for the writer.Yet both events have a very strong, and possibly traumatic, effect on the writers. One event is in the recent past while one event is in the very distant past. For example, Didion’s book The Year of Magical Thinking focuses on the recent deaths of her husband and her daughter, while Nabokov’s Speak, Memory focuses on his childhood in Russia. Why did the author choose to highlight certain events in their life in the memoir? Consider why the memoirist chose a certain section of their childhood or a specific life event as the focus of the book.Choose one to two examples and read through them. Another good example of using different writing styles or approaches to write about your own life.Īnalyze the examples. ![]() Kingston’s memoir of growing up as a Chinese immigrant in California combines myth, legend, and memory.
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