Memoir or Fiction? What’s best for telling your own story?
by Anne R. Allen
Some people say all writing is autobiographical, and to a certain extent that’s true. I always say writers ought to Mirandize everybody we meet — “I’m a novelist. Anything you say can be taken down and used against you in a work of fiction.”
There certainly is a fine line between fiction and autobiography. All novelists use their own life experiences to bring realism to their stories and characters.
I certainly do.
Fictionalizing a Real Event
During a recent lunch with my friend Catherine Ryan Hyde, I told her about taking a fall when leaving an outdoor concert nearby. (I’ve since discovered I have spinal stenosis, which explains why my legs sometimes give way.)
I asked a muscular young man passing by to help me with the chair I was carrying so I could get up. He refused. He called me fat and told me to go to the gym. (Keep in mind I’m a senior citizen.)
“So what did you do?” Catherine asked.
“I killed him,” I said. “He’s a murder victim in my latest Camilla mystery.”
We had a good laugh, although she reminded me we were in public and somebody might overhear and think I was actually confessing to murder.
I thought about how my anger at that idiotic young man sparked the opening scene of The Queen of Staves, (Launching TODAY!!) So in a way he had actually done me a favor.
But is there anything wrong with using a real life character or situation in a novel?
No, but there are some major caveats.
You need to take that character and situation into the realm of fiction. Changing a few letters of a name or giving the character a different hair color won’t be enough. Don’t make the characters recognizable to themselves or anybody else. Especially if you’re going to portray them as less than saintly.
For more specifics about using real people in your fiction, check out this helpful article at Writer’s Boon from Australian lawyer Carol Vorvain.
Are You Writing Memoir or Fiction?
Many writers who set out to write a memoir find themselves slipping into fiction. This isn’t because they’re trying to “cheat.”
It’s because all memoir has to contain some made-up bits. Unless you’ve spent your entire life wearing a body-cam and a recording device, you are not going to perfectly recreate your first date or that conversation with Great-Aunt Sadie when you were twelve.
But you don’t want to veer too far into fiction, or you’ll end up with a jumble of half-truths—like James Frey’s infamous memoir, A Million Little Pieces.
If you’re writing memoir because you want an accurate chronicle of things that really happened to you, keep in as much historical detail as you can, but you can switch things around a little in order to tell a compelling story. You also want to change the names of people who might be hurt. (Just say something like, “my first bad boyfriend, I’ll call him Fernando.”)
And be very careful nothing you say could be considered libel, even if you’re using a pen name. Lawsuits aren’t fun.
Jane Friedman wrote a great piece on memoir “Using the Fallacy of Memory to Create Effective Memoir.”
Anybody writing memoir should read it. It will make you feel better about your worries that not everything is completely accurate. It can’t be.
So the key is to be as accurate as you can in a memoir, but also be kind. And, as attorney Carol Vorvain says, never “disclose private facts you have no authority to disclose.”
The derriere you save may be your own.
Book-Length Memoir is Tough to Market
When you’re deciding whether you should novelize your story or write an accurate memoir, consider another article Jane Friedman wrote recently.
In “Why Your Memoir Won’t Sell”, Jane lists seven things that make most agents and publishers reject a memoir.
On the top on her list is “This is your first book.”
A lot of people who have “always wanted to write a book” when they retire or have a gap in employment, start with a memoir.
But this isn’t a good idea if you’re not famous and you’re hoping to make money or start a writing career. (It’s great if you simply want a record for family and friends. And there are even services that will help you write that kind of memoir. Marnie Summerfield at YourMemoir.com offers a fantastic memoir service.)
Good memoir is the toughest thing to write well. Memoir needs to be crafted like a novel, with a story arc, compelling dialogue, and tight pacing. (Otherwise it’s not memoir, it’s autobiography.)
But the problem is that real life doesn’t have a story arc, compelling dialogue, and good pacing.
That means you have to superimpose those things on a story that already exists, instead of creating your story around a structure. More on this in my post “How to Write a Publishable Memoir.”
Also, a lot of readers are turned off by memoirs because so many of them involve navel-gazing. As Anna Sabino wrote at the Writing Cooperative recently. “Here is a reminder: It’s not about you. Remove the “I”, stop being worried about feeding your ego and redirect the spotlight to your readers.”
It can be harder to think of your reader when you’re writing memoir than when you’re writing a novel.
If This is Your First Book, Consider Writing the Story as Fiction.
You can always write a “just the facts ma’am” memoir later. But for a first book, a novel is easier to write well and easier to sell.
You have to be careful of people’s feelings in a memoir, but if you want to kill off nasty young men who refuse to help old ladies in distress, do what I did and write fiction, where you can wreak vengeance with impunity.
It can be just as cathartic, and there will be fewer lawsuits. 🙂
But if you do fictionalize, make sure you ARE writing a novel. Let the characters lead you. Don’t try to cram them into the “that’s what really happened” box. Fiction needs to flow. Real life does not. You may have to skip precious, memorable scenes because they don’t further the plot, or take people out of a scene who overshadow the protagonist.
Also, many things that “really happened like that” are totally unbelievable in fiction. Consider our current political situation. Would anybody have believed this stuff in fiction a few years ago?
Also, if you stick too close to the factual details, you could still be open to lawsuits.
There was a case in Portugal a few years ago where a women’s family sued her—and won—after she self-published a barely-fictionalized portrait of her in-laws that was less than flattering.
And yes, she uses a pseudonym, but that didn’t help one bit. Pen names don’t protect you from lawsuits and they are a huge pain. Here’s Kristen Lamb explaining why pen names are a “Ticket to Crazyville” in the digital age.
For more on this, see Ruth Harris’s post on Turning Real Life into Bestselling Fiction.
How to Fictionalize a Real Person
I had to learn to novelize a real person when I wrote The Gatsby Game.
I dated a man in college who was a terrible boyfriend but a fascinating character. David Whiting was comically old-fashioned in his dress and style, and talked like a character in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. He loved to “Gaslight” people, often sneaking into my dorm room to move things around or leave mysterious gifts without explanation.
A few years later, David was found dead on the floor of actress Sarah Miles’ motel room during the filming of a Burt Reynolds movie.
The incident caused a media frenzy—one of the “Ten Most Notorious Sex Scandals in Hollywood History“.
The medical experts said David didn’t have enough pills in him to kill anybody, but they called the death an “accidental overdose.”
Nobody will ever know how he died, but I’ve always had my suspicions.
I fought writing about the incident for years because I don’t have any experience with writing true crime. My first try was so dry, even I got snoozified.
A few years later, I decided to write the story as a novel. I invented a fictional protagonist—a smart-mouthed nanny. She made the story come to life and added a lot of humor. I moved the setting to the little California oil town of Taft—originally called “Moron.” (For real; truth IS stranger than fiction.) It was a perfect stand-in for the real site of David’s death, Gila Bend, Arizona.
The result was pure fiction. The dead man became more childlike and endearing than the real David. The Burt Reynolds-type movie star faded into a walk-on. The story became a hero’s journey for the nanny character. I gave her a down-to-earth romantic interest to make up for the dead delusional boyfriend.
Why Memoirists Should Think Outside the Book
My advice to memoir writers these days is to write a series of short personal essays based on your chapters and sell those to magazines, anthologies, journals and websites.
Short creative nonfiction is much more in demand than book-length memoir by non-celebrities.
You can write those short pieces long before you finish a book-length memoir and you’ll find out if there is a market for your story. Plus you’ll start building platform, and even make some money.
Another really great venue for short personal essays is blogs–both your own and as a guest post on sites that address your issues or topics. This is especially true if you have photos. Photos are super expensive to put into a print book, but every one of them can go on your blog.
If you blog pieces of your memoir, along with photos, you can start to build an audience long before you publish, and you’ll have a ready-made list of possible readers.
I urge all memoirists to start a blog. It can make all the difference in whether you can sell that memoir or not.
For tips on how to excerpt short, marketable pieces from your memoir, check out Paul Alan Fahey’s post Writing Memoir that Sells.
And once you’ve had parts of it published, you may find a small press that’s interested in the full book. Here’s a list of 7 publishers who are interested in memoir.
***
The important thing for every writer is to decide what you want your story to be and then commit to it. If you want to write true crime or a factual, detailed history, that’s great and they can be very popular, but you need to get your legal ducks in a row.
If you want to write novels, let the characters and story take you wherever they want to go. Stay true to the story, not the factual events. And it always helps to include a disclaimer like: “This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.”
Good fiction is inspired by real life, but it doesn’t imitate it. Fiction may not tell “the facts” but it tells the truth.
What about you, scriveners? Are you working on a memoir or fiction? Have you tried to place some short memoir essays in journals or anthologies? Do you put real incidents in your fiction?
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) August 20, 2017
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Good article, Anne. I used many experiences I had while working in television in my novel, Sweeps. They are to good to go unrecorded. I think of it as a roman a clef where real people appear but are protected by invented names. It’s far more fiction than reality but a genuine sleuth could figure out some of the situations. Fortunately the individual who fared least well in the novel is now dead. In real life/death. So I didn’t even have to wait until the next book to kill him 😉
It’s wise to be quite careful or you may have an angry person coming back at you.
too!
Barbara–I think that’s how most writers work. And readers appreciate it. I’d be much more likely to read a book about TV sweeps week by somebody like you who worked in TV for years than from somebody with no background in television. We expect to see real life, or a reasonable facsimile, on the page.
But yes, we need to be careful. Angry former friends wielding lawsuits are not fun to deal with.
Excellent! So often, I get students in my Crafting a Novel class who really want to write their life story, but have heard that ‘memoirs don’t sell’ – so they decide they will disguise it as fiction. This often doesn’t work, because fiction requires endings. Good endings. Endings that are contrived in order to be satisfying. The problem is that life doesn’t usually give us those type of endings, or even endings at all. What happens to you in real life rarely makes good fiction. (although it may start you off on a ripping good tale!)
Melodie–That is exactly the problem isn’t it? No structure. No story arc that comes to a satisfying conclusion. The truth is that good memoir needs a satisfying ending too. But so many people write autobiographical episodes, not memoirs. And when they try to fictionalize just by changing names, they end up with a god-awful mess. I tried to edit some of them in the old days. They’re often unsalvageable. 🙁
I used the Law & Order method. I based my protagonist on myself when I was a painfully shy 19 year old college student. Some of the characters are inspired by real people, although many are composites.
I took this premise and then asked, “What if?” What then followed is a totally fictional story. In all cases, the story and character arcs are paramount, even if some of the individual events were inspired by real life anecdotes.
For example, one time a friend and I went with a mixed gender group for a beer party out at an old strip mine. One of the guys suggested skinny dipping. It sounded exciting, with all the other guy’s girlfriends there, but we all chickened out. I designed a scene on that, but with the protagonist having his own girlfriend. When it came time to write, those basic factual elements remained, but were no longer the focus as I created new interactions and symbolism between the two lovers that advanced the plot and their respective arcs. The memory simply gave me a setting.
Joe–Exactly. I think that’s how most of us do it. We observe something or have something in our memory banks that intrigues. So we take that as jumping off point and then let the muse take over. Let the story tell itself. The problems happen when you try to wrestle the story to the ground with facts. Fiction isn’t about facts. It’s about truth.
My basic rule is that nobody needs to read a memoir of a life of tediosity, thus, I write fiction!
CS–It’s true that a lot of writers are introverts, whose outer life would be a snooze to read about. And many people who have exciting lives can’t write. But most writers would prefer to have their excitement on the page, not in real life.
Love the Queen of Staves cover! Just perfect! Everybody should buy (at least) one copy. 🙂 As to turning “real life” into fiction, it’s been my experience that people don’t recognize themselves, proving that most have absolutely no idea what they’re like. Truly!
Ruth–Thanks for the kind words about the cover, designed by Keri Knutson. She’s a gem.
You’re right that people usually don’t recognize themselves. Or they’ll see themselves in some character that bears no resemblance to them. We often have no idea how we appear to others.
Anne, I’ve read your great trilogy that the ‘Gatsby’ story is a part of. I recognized it immediately, but I didn’t know your blog then and, sadly, didn’t remember it was you who wrote it. What an interesting backstory, and true-life example of how to turn real people/events into fiction.
Thank you!
Tricia–How great to “meet” a reader here! Usually people know my blog but not my fiction. I’m so glad you enjoyed the Boomer Women trilogy! Yes, It was fun and cathartic to turn all my confusing emotions about David into fiction. it allowed me to let go of the wounds I felt from that relationship.
I mentioned above how my story is premised on my real life situation at age 19, and ion the story I mad my father the antagonist. I really did suffer a lot of verbal abuse that likely led to my anxieties, some of which follow me to this day. We had many years of detente as I became an adult, but later we had a split and then he passed away 9 years ago without us ever making peace.
My story has a happily for now ending on the romantic level, but the closing scene is where the protagonist is encouraged to let his past (everything he has done, everything that has happened to him) go, and he finds forgiveness. It’s something that did not happen in real life, but I now find myself in tears describing it to you.
JOe–It’s always tragic when we can’t resolve issues with difficult people before they die. But fiction allows us to process our feelings in ways that can help us heal.
I did a memoir from my experiences during Desert Storm (it’s called Soldier, Storyteller for anyone interested). It was very difficult, because even a year after the war I wanted to do one. Yet, I couldn’t get enough distance to have any perspective. Part of me knew that if I didn’t have distance, I wouldn’t be able to turn it into a good story.
Over the years, I tried it a couple of times, both as memoir and as a novel. Neither worked really well. With the novel, I was pretty stuck on being able to separate my experiences from telling the story. It actually took twenty-five before I was able to do that. I now routinely put military in many of my stories, something I could not have done. The memoir came as a series of blog posts for the Desert Storm anniversary. They were focused on the question that had stymied me in the early days: “What was it like?” I used no people–it was all things like what I experienced when I deployed, what it was like when I got to Saudi Arabia, what it felt like when the war started. The blog format actually worked very well for me because it helped me compartmentalize the sections. As it turned out, there was a story there, but not the one that I would have told 25 years ago.
I’m glad I wrote it. Yet, not a single sale.
Linda–Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I hope people who are working on memoirs will pay attention. I once read a piece of advice from playwright Marsha Norman who said, “Don’t try to write about something until it’s over.” So for you, the war wasn’t “over”–that is processed. So you couldn’t write about it.
And I LOVE what you say about how blogging your experience helped you to see the real story. Would you let me quote you in my upcoming blogging book? That’s such incredibly useful advice to memoirists. Thanks so much!
Sure, you can quote me. If you need any more on the experience of blogging, let me know. Most of it I was actually enjoying writing, and then I got to this one spot at the end, wrote, and realized I was crying.
Thanks so much Linda! I may take you up on that.
My parents grew up as children in Nazi Germany. Now that both of them have passed, I want to write up their stories as a book, but have been struggling with how to do it properly. Thanks for some great tips!
Trish–It’s so important to preserve history. Both fiction and nonfiction can work, and you can even do both. Write the whole story as fiction, and then take “the facts” and turn them into nonfiction essays that can promote the book or create buzz. Creative nonfiction essays are in demand for everything from magazine articles,to guest blog posts to inspirational anthologies like the Chicken Soup series. So don’t forget you can “think outside the book.”
Hey Anne,
I can’t say I’ve ever felt my life was worth memorializing – but sure, real life experiences creep into my stories. We have to work with the material we’re given, right?
Love your “I’m a novelist. Anything you say can be taken down and used against you in a work of fiction.” and thought it would make a great little image post on FB. Would you mind if I made one? LOL
As to memoirs, I am not much for reading them but the few I have read that were good, seem to have one thing in common – the writer has a talent for romanticizing real life events. It’s a somewhat illusive and can’t put your finger on it, kind of quality, but you know it when you see it.
I’ve only known one writer who wrote memoir. He posted all his stories on his blog – it was beautifully written and heartbreaking (not one, but both of his parents fell victim to Alzheimer’s) and yet he never could get it together enough to write a book. Too bad, because I thought it would be a memoir worth reading.
Have a good one.
Annie
Annie–Actually my “Mirandizing” quote was circulating on Twitter for quite a while from some Twitter writing quotes account. But I haven’t seen it for a couple of years. Sure, quote away. Just spell my name right! Haha. Are you an Anne with an “e” too? I don’t know why, but I always feel annoyed when people leave off my “e.” I guess Anne of Green Gables influenced me a lot when I was a kid. 🙂
Your friend’s blog may have been more popular than a book ever could be. I think more people are reading blogs these days than books. At least it probably reached the right people–children dealing with parents with Alzheimer’s. Such a tough road. I’m sure his words helped people.
Haha, Anne. Yes, I spelled it right, but it looks like I can’t attach it here. I’ll tag you on FB with the image or twitter – or both. My name is actually Anita but I hate it, so prefer to go by Annie.
Congratulations on the launch of Queen of Staves, Anne! May she sail merrily into bestsellerdom. This is a great piece too. I am in awe of anyone who can sit down to write personal non-fiction. I find the process horrifying and damn near impossible. This is the reason why I have been making everything up since 1997.
Tara–Thanks much for your help as a beta reader on QoS! And thanks for weeding out the shamrocks!
Wait, are you telling me that Tark and Mara are not real people? Oh, no! I feel so disappointed. I thought I was going to get to meet them if I went to Ireland.
You’re welcome! And of course Tark and Mara are real, Anne. However, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay disappointed. They refuse to meet their fans (ever since they found out they weren’t getting paid to do so).
Tara–Haha! I suppose I should have expected it of those two!
Great post Anne. As a reviewer and proofreader I have seen some pretty bad stuff in the memoir category, but also some good. There is a definite talent required to find the correct angle. I always enjoy reading your blogs.
Mark–Thanks. I think reviewers, proofreaders and editors often get burned out on memoirs. I sure did when I was an editor. That’s because so many amateurs try to write memoirs and they’re so hard to do well. It has to read like a novel, but tell the facts. That requires a lot of skill. Elizabeth Gilbert had been a professional journalist for years before she wrote Eat Pray Love and she had already written and published several nonfiction books. But a whole lot of amateurs thought they could carry off what she did and their work fell flat.
I did not know that about Gilbert. It is easy for me to imagine that kind of burnout. I have already turned several people away because they thought their first draft was ready for a Pulitzer. I could barely stand to read it.
Mark–The clueless divas are impossible. Then there are the ones who are scared you’ll “steal their ideas.” I ran very fast away from those.
Great post, Anne. I’ve never been interested in reading or writing a memoir but I definitely use real people’s personalities with whom I either have or had a relationship. The last book I wrote, in order to keep the people straight in my head, I used the first letter of the real person’s name for my fictional character’s name. And it was really just the way the real person acted that I inserted into the fictional character’s personality and not incidents that could be used as libelous. No one wants to be sued. That sounds scary.
Patricia–That’s probably a good plan. Unless your real-life model has a first name that begins with X or Q. Might be a little obvious then. 🙂 I’ve never been a big fan of memoir, although I’ve read two recently that I really liked. But I already knew the authors’ work and knew they were good writers.
Fantastic post Anne. Thanks for all the links I’ll be clicking on to read on memoir. And really? You fell and asked someone to help you and they wouldn’t? What kind of sick person does that? Glad you made good use of him in your book! Lol. 🙂
Debby–I kept asking myself that. Who doesn’t help an old lady who has fallen down? Obviously somebody indoctrinated with the philosophy that the victim is always at fault. They are wimps who have to believe if something bad happens, it’s because the person did something bad, and since they’re “good” they don’t have to be afraid. Or empathize. I also think he was on steroids. Super-bulked up, with yellow eyes and pockmarked face. .
Let’s not forget that many people carry so much anger within themselves and release it on others. Regardless, it’s just wrong! And stop calling yourself old! 🙂
I love weaving my personal life into my fiction. I would never even attempt to write a memoir because I love to be swept away by a story–not wake up to reality, just my personal preference. And that’s the thing, isn’t. You have to do what you love and find a way to make it work.
Thank you for this information-rich article, Anne.
Leanne–I’m with you. I prefer light, escapist fiction. We have so much to escape from these days. 🙂 There’s altogether too much reality.
Loved this! I see elements of the Alleged Real World in Queen of Staves, which I’ve just started.
My only contribution to this subject would be the confession that if I am writing autobiography, I’d better turn myself in before the police show up. It could get messy if they come prepared for the characters I’ve been writing about!
Will–Thanks for taking the time to comment. I know you’ve been busy being ‘the author” at a con this weekend. Yeah. That guy who wouldn’t help me gets his comeuppance in The Queen of Staves!
But yes–of course our characters are mostly fiction and the people who think we condone the behavior of every one of our characters knows nothing about fiction. Luckily the real police are a lot smarter about that stuff than the self-appointed book police!
Good article Anne! I can’t believe someone could actually see another person fall and refuse to help. So terrible what this world is coming to 🙁
efauthor–In his defense, the man may not have seen me fall. But he did see me having fallen, and he saw the chair on the ground. All I asked him to do was pick it up. What was so shocking was he was so self-righteous and smug. He honestly thought that helping anybody in distress would only “encourage” us to go out and fall again. Right wing lack of empathy on steroids. Literally.
Are you assuming he was right wing? The guy sounds despicable, but perhaps you’re waving at a straw man. I believe it’s sufficient to condemn the actions without venturing a guess at motivations or affiliations.
Joe–You’re right. He was a skinhead and so smug and pleased with himself that I assumed somebody had indoctrinated him with Ayn Rand stuff. But it could also be some radical feminist who taught him no man should ever help a woman because it’s “insulting.”
Great post, and thanks for all those great links about fictionalizing real people!
I found that fictionalizing real-life events is more fun for me than trying to craft a narrative out of real life, that’s my WIP right now. I first wrote it down memoir-style, purely for myself, and while it was fun to relive, it felt more like an exercise in remembering than in writing.
But for the fictionalized version, it’s been really cool to watch its evolution from something that hewed really close to my experience, to something completely different. The characters barely resemble their inspirations, there are “original characters” that keep demanding bigger roles, and I’ve just decided to add a second POV to flesh out the story. Pretty sure once I’m done, it’ll be barely recognizable as the actual events.
Irvin–That’s always been my experience. The real-life characters are an inspiration or jumping-off point for the fictional ones. But the fictional ones always take on a life of their own and take the story in a direction that’s wildly different from the original events.
I like two POVs in a novel. I think it adds richness. But beware there are always some readers who want everything simple and will ding you for it in reviews. (I ignore them and figure they’re not my audience.)
Thanks for the advice! I find that readers will ding for multiple POVs when they sound identical, but they’re quite impressed when it’s pulled off correctly. Admittedly, I’m slightly terrified of trying multiple POVs for the first time, but it was either that or fold the story into pretzels to have one character have all the moral quandaries I wanted to include. So I go into the fray!
Terrific post, Anne. And thanks for the shout out. You know I did pretty much what you’ve advised new writers. Had many of those short pieces of memoir published in small lit journals and magazines first. Testing the waters for sure. I used these pieces when I structured my hybrid memoir of my mom. A combination of short memoir or vignettes along with some short fiction and a few novellas and poetry that featured my mother or a character like her. I found blending these genres together gave me and the reader a fuller picture of the changing relationship I had with my mom over several decades. I sure hope it works. It’s coming out end of this month. Thank you again for a wonderful discussion. This like so many of your other posts is a keeper. And congrats on the new Camillla. I know I’ll love it.
Paul–You’re definitely my role model on how to write memoir. You’ve edited two anthologies of short creative nonfiction essays, which are often short memoir pieces. You also got your own essays published widely. At the same time, you published a popular fiction series with a traditional press. And THEN you came out with a book length memoir.
That seems to me the right business plan when planning a memoir. Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat Pray Love fame did the same thing: lots of short nonfiction published in many places, then a couple of books, then release the memoir. Here’s hoping your new memoir, The Mother I Imagined: The Mom I Knew, has the success that Gilbert’s did!
Great insight. I wish I would have seen this information before I wrote and published my first book Bullets From a Dead Man. It is an imagined mystery woven with my first-hand experience growing up in the 60s/70s world of music and touring groups. Many things may appear unbelievable, so that is why I interspersed personal experience and did some name dropping.
John–I think it adds verisimilitude to a story to add real people and real places. Just make sure you show them in a neutral or favorable light!
An excellent article.
Robbie–Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks, Anne for all this great information on Memoir writing. 🙂 — Suzanne
Suzanne–Thanks! So many memoir writers don’t realize that a memoir has to have a story arc. They’re actually writing autobiography, which tends to be a snooze.
An “oldie but goodie” blog post that I’m just now reading, or maybe re-reading. Good info here.