by Lorilyn Roberts
Recently on a
Linked-In discussion group, someone made this comment: “I’m strongly
biased toward fiction unless you are trading on celebrity or some highly
publicized event. Memoirs put out as imparting the wisdom of the elders or
holding up your past mistakes as object lessons turn me off. The fact you were
a moron yesterday doesn’t make you a genius today. Journals and memoirs
may be great for family but most are less attractive to a general audience and
often convey the message of pleading to be loved or admired. Make it fiction
and you can be more candid and the reader can decide whether your experience
was informative, moving or amusing based on its own merits.”
I strongly disagree with his statement and share the
following thoughts:
Memoirs are some of the most powerful pieces written
today, but people are shortsighted. They don’t always see the value of
first-hand accounts in the present. Without memoirs, we have history written by
partial observers who bring their own worldview into play—maybe at the expense
of writing with accuracy the way the events actually happened. Second-hand
accounts are never as factual as first-hand stories and never as valuable for
historical purposes.
Many people love reading memoirs and will look
for them in libraries and bookstores. Life experiences written by people reveal
more about society than any history book or journalist covering a story. I am
thankful for all the memoirs written today by all sorts of people to give us a
peek into the present and the past.
For example, the world never would have known of
Anne Frank if she had not written her diary. She was an unknown 13-year-old kid
before her father published her diary.
If you have a compelling story to tell, tell it
with passion, revealing your innermost struggles and thoughts. Being “real”
with the reader will make your story come alive. In my memoir Children of Dreams about the international adoption of my daughters, I
was open and vulnerable. That was the right way to tell that story. I could
never have fictionalized it.
I just wrote another book and this one is
fiction, Seventh Dimension - The Door. In contrast to Children
of Dreams, I took certain events from my own life and turned them into
fantasy. I had a story to tell and the only way to tell it was as allegory and
to fictionalize it. The point being, do what the story calls for and write it.
Don’t let naysayers talk you out of writing your story the way you feel it
needs to be told. At the end of the day, you have to live with the result and
be happy with the story and the way you wrote it.
These are some thoughts
I would consider: Who is your target
audience? What is your purpose in writing your story? Can anyone be hurt or
impacted negatively if you write your book as a memoir? If you write your story
as a memoir in hopes of making money, you need to write your book as “creative
nonfiction,” using fictional techniques.
For example, you need
a beginning, a middle, and an end. You need to think in terms of “scenes” and “plot”
and “problems” that need to be solved. The reader needs a takeaway—what can he learn
from your memoir that would be meaningful or cathartic? No one wants to read
someone’s boring biography.
If you decide to write
your book as fiction, you will have more options and won’t run the risk of being
sued or worried about divulging something you might regret later.
However, you
need the skills to write fiction. Writing fiction is harder than writing a memoir
because you have to create “story” out of fiction and make the plot enticing to
read. In a future piece, I will suggest some books for writing fiction that I
used in my Masters in Creative Writing that I found helpful.
I have written an
award-winning piece on writing memoir that is posted on my website. Here is the
link for anyone interested. Some might find it helpful. http://lorilynroberts.com/memoir.html
The most important
thing as a writer is to keep writing and to keep learning—whether your write
fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, and enjoy the journey.
