(6) Writing Memoir Character

You are the main character, the narrator, and the protagonist in your memoir. You have the advantage of knowing the story, the other characters, the time frame, and what happened before your story began. You know if you had a woohoo moment, a moment when the reader claps and shouts because you have found a resolution to your dilemma or problem.

You know the story you want to tell, understand the character, and see how other characters will help to build the story. You don’t have to make things up. Of course, you will have work to do in making characters believable, fresh, and compelling in a way that will make the reader want to keep turning the pages or listening to your memoir.

Perhaps your memoir is filled with fast-paced adventure, social drama, or thoughtful insights. It might be a coming-of-age story, a harrowing escape, a mystery, a story of finding love, social drama, coming out, or a rise to fame and fortune. How will you structure your story and characters to absorb readers, so that they will care about your character and then when finished reading, will recommend your book to all their friends? Readers want to see characters who are triumphant, or wounded, rewarded, or punished. Readers like redemption, bad boys, survival, the underdog, secrets, vulnerability, and more.

To make your memoir believable and engaging, first think about the goal you, as the main character, were pursuing and how you worked to achieve your goal. What was your motivation? What tough decisions did you have to make? How did you overcome your obstacles? Did you grow and learn because of achieving or not achieving your goal? How did your journey, whether it happened in a week or over the course of years change your life? Maybe none of the above possibilities ring true for your story, but in some way, you, as the main character, must be remarkable to capture readers. You must have a goal, quest, or struggle that is relatable, unique, and distinctive for your reader. You, the protagonist, should be believable, and generate empathy and understanding in your reader. But perfection in your character is not the goal. True life characters have imperfections and problems.

As you write your memoir, you will be in the first-person point of view (POV). You can know only what is in your own head, only what you see, hear, and feel. You know about others only from dialogue, their behavior, your own past experience with them, and the conversations you have with others. Your view of the world is the only thing you know about, so you can’t relate any information in the POV of another character. You always must be in your own head.

Your reader will be caught up in your tale if the stakes are high. If the danger is real, all the better. The danger should be positioned in front of the readers’ eyes and let them know what will happen if you don’t overcome your obstacles. Maybe your story is not about danger, but about frustration in reaching your goal. The same idea applies: Keep the frustration in front of readers so they can experience how you were blocked from what you needed. Perhaps you were blocked by anger, parental restrictions, lack of resources such as money, food, or housing, societal or political pressure, fear, addiction, depression, physical illness, or disability. Or, you were thwarted by people, such as parents, mean girls, or by the circumstances in your school, church, town, or your country.

When you write about your situation you will use dialogue, or what others say, to indicate your ethnicity, how you identify, your family background, the region of the country or world where the action takes place, your gender, age, and educational background. Perhaps you will hear radio songs or television news that give your story needed information.

It is difficult to describe your own appearance in first person unless you use a scene in which you are getting dressed, looking in a mirror, or another character is saying something about your appearance. You cannot describe your facial expressions as the action is taking place because you can’t see your own face.

So how do you write about character when you are the main character? The main rule that many authors say is most important is “Show, don’t tell.” This means that dialogue, body language, the character’s thoughts, observations, behavior, and emotions will need to tell the story.

Determine what personality traits, thoughts, and feelings were important in your main character and others. Were you or other characters sad, angry, kind, fearless, selfless, responsible, focused, independent, harsh, difficult, or hostile? These characteristics should be visible in dialogue, body language, and behavior.

Many memoirs will fit into a character arc, a beginning that shows what your character wants, a middle that shows the conflict, what stands in the way of reaching goals, a wow point where your character has an epiphany or achieves the goal, followed by resolution. Some memoirs will have more than one decisive moment, other stories will not follow this pattern. You will use dialogue and other strategies to indicate goals, conflict, moments of truth, and resolution.

Tone of voice is important when writing dialogue. Don’t use adverbs when a stronger verb could replace the adverb. For example: He said that loudly can become: He shouted. Dialogue on the page is different from in real life. For example, if someone you know is injured in a car crash, you might discuss the details of the crash for a long time, but this same dialogue on the page of a manuscript would be much shorter.

Other strategies to use in your memoir so the reader can know you and what is going on in your mind as the story progresses are to write or read a letter, keep, or read a diary, or talk to a pet or other animals.

In addition to the challenge of creating dialogue to tell your story, there are other snags that may get in the way. Possibly the reader will not believe your story because your motivation didn’t make sense, the stakes were not high enough, or the goal was unclear. Maybe you didn’t use language common to the times, culture, or gender. The reader didn’t sense that you were in your own head all the time. Another limitation is that you must be in all the scenes because the POV is only yours.

Backstory can help you tell your story or get in your way. Backstory, in general, should appear as it relates to the story and only in small bits. Backstory can help the reader understand your beliefs, values, and fears, and gain understanding about your friends and family. But, because you are writing a memoir, backstory will be from your perspective written in your thoughts, dialogue, and what you heard others say.

Writing a memoir has specific challenges, however, the beauty of the first person POV is that it is your own story with your own thoughts and feelings. Who could know this story better than you?

Prologue, epilogue, or an interim voice might also give your character dimension and meaning depending on the story in your memoir. The prologue might be a snippet of dialogue that will peak the readers interest in your character. The epilogue might be appropriate if your story doesn’t include what happened to the characters after your memoir is complete. The epilogue explains what happens to the characters whose fates are not sealed in your story. An interim voice throughout might be appropriate if you want another voice to reflect or comment about the story at certain points in the narrative. For example, in a coming-of-age memoir, the child, as an adult, might explain and understand things that the child could not know. These interim voices must be set off clearly from the main narrative.

I hope you are ready to begin putting fingers on the keyboard, or pen to paper to write about the main character in your memoir, you. Try this writing prompt to get started.

Writing Prompt:

Do you ever get frustrated with traffic, with friends, with your computer, with your kids? Think about the last time you were very frustrated and write about it in first person POV in two or three paragraphs. Feel free to use dialogue, gestures, body language, thoughts. Show don’t tell. Have fun!