How to Write a Memoir: 14 Tips for Writing Memoir That Sells

by Anne R. Allen

In a much-shared article titled “Why Your Memoir Won’t Sell,” former Writer’s Digest editor Jane Friedman listed the things that will trigger an agent or publisher to reject a memoir by a non-celebrity.

A lot of people working on memoirs have been pretty discouraged by it.

But you don’t have to be. Jane was simply saying that you need to learn what makes a compelling memoir and what doesn’t.

It is true that memoirs are problematic. They’re devilishly difficult for a new writer to do well, but they’re what newbies usually write.

The urge to put our own life story on paper is the most common reason people start writing. Adult education programs and senior centers everywhere offer courses in “writing your own life.” And there’s the old adage that says everybody has a book in them—their own life story.

That means there are a whole lot of memoirs out there, and most of them are written by newbies. Agents and editors cringe when a memoirist approaches them, because they’ve seen so many amateurish ones.

But here’s the thing: there’s a BIG market for entertaining, well-written memoir.

In this age of massively popular true crime shows and “reality” TV, there’s a huge audience for shared real-life experience. Readers are hungry for true stories: look how angrily they reacted to writers like James Frey, Margaret B. Jones, Clifford Irving, etc. who passed off fiction as memoir.

Compelling memoirs like Eat, Pray, Love, The Color of Water, The Glass Castle, and of course the entire oeuvre of David Sedaris (a hero of mine) top the bestseller lists.

So keep working on that masterpiece-in-progress.  Hone your craft.  Learn patience. Write short creative nonfiction essays and get a bunch of published work out there.  And keep writing. The results will be worth it.

It will help if you follow some basic dos and don’ts.

1) DO Read Other Memoirs

Before you put pen to paper, it’s a good idea to read the currently popular memoirs. You want to know what readers are buying.

You can also see what works and what doesn’t. Where are you flipping pages and reading “just one more chapter”? Work on getting that kind of tension into your story. On the other hand if you find the story getting bogged down somewhere, you know where not to go. Does something sound self-serving? Leave it out of your own work.

All authors need to know their genre and audience to write something that sells. Memoir is no exception.

2)  DON’T Write an Autobiography

I know this sounds like I’m just playing with words. But technically, an autobiography is a list of events: “I was born in (year) in (place) and I did (this) and (that.)

But a memoir is a story of one aspect of your life that has a beginning, a climax and a resolution.

The truth about autobiographies is that unless you’re already a rock star, nobody cares.

Except your family. And they do matter. So don’t let anybody discourage you from self-publishing a chronicle of your life as a gift to your family and descendants. Just be aware that an autobiographical list of events is not the same thing as a publishable, compelling memoir.

3) DO Tell a Page-Turning Story

A book-length memoir is read and marketed as a novel. It needs a novel’s narrative drive. That means tension and conflict—and ONE main story arc to drive the action.

So generally you don’t want to write a series of loosely related vignettes and stories. A memoir has to be one story.

Most memoirs fail from lack of focus.

Choose a basic storyline, like: “Orphan kids save the family farm during the Depression,” or “A cross-dressing teen survives high school in the 1960s.”

But note: vignettes and nostalgia pieces do have a market—in magazines, journals and blogs. (See # 13)

4) DON’T Confuse Memoir with Psychotherapy

Writing about a traumatic personal event can be amazingly cathartic for the writer, but there’s a reason shrinks charge big bucks to listen to people’s problems. Readers want a rip-roaring story, not unrelenting misery.

Writing does makes great therapy, though. Go ahead and write it all down in a journal. Then you can save that raw material to mine later for fiction, poetry, personal essays, and maybe even a well-crafted memoir.

5) DO Focus on Significant and Unique Personal Experience, Especially When Tied to Well-Known Person or Event

If you gave birth in the mud at Woodstock, dated Kurt Cobain, or were a first responder on 9/11, make that the focus of your book. That’s not “selling out” or falling for “celebrity culture.” It’s common sense. People want to read about stuff they’ve heard of more than they want to read about your dear Aunt Edna, lovely as she was.

Iconic events are shared experiences. Your readers have their own emotions tied to that event, so they’re eager to know how it felt to be close to it.

6) DON’T Include Every Detail

Including every little incident and every character because “it’s what really happened” doesn’t make good storytelling.

Just because something is true doesn’t mean it’s interesting.

Your happy memories of that idyllic Sunday school picnic in vanished small-town America will leave your reader comatose unless the church caught fire, you lost your virginity, and/or somebody stole the parson’s pants.

7)  DO Remember that a Memoir, like a Novel, is Read for Entertainment.

A memoir may be nonfiction, but it requires a creative writer’s skill set. Always keep your reader in mind. Never fabricate, but only tell what’s unique, exciting and relevant to your premise.

I had a friend who lived a fabulously exciting life, rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. But in his memoir, he kept insisting on giving equal time to his very ordinary relatives and schoolmates.

It’s all very well to be “fair” to all the people and events in your life, but that’s not what’s important when you’re writing for publication.

The only person you must treat with fairness is your reader.

If your reader isn’t going to be thrilled reading two chapters about your Uncle Wilbur’s gout, then don’t put them in the book.

8) DON’T Neglect Social Media

There are online groups for everything these days. When I was working on my novel that features the ghost of Richard III, So Much for Buckingham, I discovered more than 50 Facebook groups for people who think Richard III has been falsely maligned.

For any kind of disease or trauma, there is probably an online support group…or twelve. Look for them and make contact. (But don’t stick around if things seem “off.” Groups can often be taken over by one or more bullies. You won’t find help—or readers—there. Move on.)

One of the most important things you’ll need to do before you publish is connect with online communities who are interested in your niche. Visiting and commenting on the blogs, vlogs and podcasts of other people interested in your field can really help you tap into a community of possible readers.

9) DO look at Small and Regional Publishers.

A national publisher may not be interested in stories of the vanished ranch life of old California, or growing up in a lighthouse on the coast of Maine, but a local publisher who has outlets at tourist sites and historical landmarks may be actively looking for them. Another plus: you don’t need an agent to approach most regional publishers.

Not a lot of agents are interested in memoir, but many small publishers are. Here are seven publishers who don’t require agents and are looking for memoir.

10) DON’T Expect a Big Audience for Medical Journaling

If you or a loved one has a serious disease, chronicling your experiences can be invaluable to those suffering similar trials.

To the general public—not so much.

You may find it’s best to reach out to people who share your medical experience through online forums and blogs as well as print journals. Remember that publishing is a business, and no matter how sad your story, if it’s not an enjoyable read, it won’t find an audience.

But you may find exactly the audience you’re looking for with a blog, so read on…

11) DO Consider Writing Your Experiences as Blog.

I urge all nonfiction authors, especially memoirists, to start a blog as soon as possible.

As I said, a memoir needs to be written like a novel. But 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 the way you do with a novel.

But those things aren’t a problem on a blog. Most of what people read online is nonfiction, and readers love stories with heart.

Blogs are made for short personal essays. With illustrations. That means blogging might be the most effective way to write your memoir. Later, you can make the blogposts into a book of collected essays with a ready-made audience.

Even if you’ve finished your memoir, or are in the final stages of polishing, you can use segments of your book in blogposts and add lots of photos (expensive to put into books, but magnets for blog readers.)

12) DON’T Jump into the Self-Publishing Process before your Book—and YOU are Ready.

First hone your skills as a creative writer. Unless you’re only writing for your grandchildren and heirs (nothing wrong with that—but be clear in your intentions) you need to become an accomplished writer before you can expect non-family members to read you work. Even the most skilled editor can’t turn a series of reminiscences into a cohesive narrative.

NOTE: There are ghostwriters who specialize in memoirs, so if you want to get your story into book form and aren’t interested in becoming a professional writer, you can hire one. Many editing services offer ghostwriting—a more expensive process than editing—but worth the cost if you don’t enjoy the writing process. I’d recommend using a memoir specialist like YourMemoir.co.uk where Marnie Summerfield Smith provides an excellent service I can highly recommend.

13)  DO Think Outside the Book

Beginning writers often make the mistake of jumping into a book-length opus. But it’s smarter and easier to start with short pieces of creative nonfiction—what one writer friend calls “memoiric essays.”

Keep in mind that even though book-length memoir is a hard sell, there is a big market for creative nonfiction essays.

You can market short personal essays to magazines, anthologies, journals, websites, blogs and contests. You’ll be building platform and can even make some money.

Nostalgia and senior-oriented magazines and blogs are great venues for tales of life in the old days. Niche journals and websites focusing on hobbies, pets, disabilities, veterans, etc. are always looking for submissions.

These will also give you some great publishing credits, and you won’t have to slog for years before reaching an audience.

If you’ve been working on that memoir a while, you probably have a whole lot of material already written. With a few tweaks, your excerpts can become publishable personal essays.

And the good news is, those short pieces can pay very well. Look at the fantastic success of anthologies like the Chicken Soup series. And if you get into an anthology along with some well-known authors, you’ll establish a readership that would take years to garner with a solo book release. Check out our post on anthologies.

14) DON’T Get Discouraged.

If you’re working on a memoir, polish your creative writing skills, work at building a platform, and keep your reader in mind. That way you’ll avoid the cringe-making amateurishness that agents, editors and readers fear.

And you don’t need an agent. Plenty of writers have had success with self-published memoirs.

Eldonna Edwards wrote and self-published a memoir of her experiences as a kidney donor in Lost in Transplantation. She did some great marketing and it sold well. That led to a major book contract with Kensington Publishing. Eldonna’s second novel with Kensington, Clover Blue launches in May in hardcover.

For more about the strain and rewards of writing a memoir, see Michael Harris’s post The Story that Took 50 Years to Write.

by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) April 7, 2019

What about you, scriveners? Are you working on a memoir? Do you write creative nonfiction essays? Have you ever thought about blogging your memoir? What’s your favorite memoir?

BOOK OF THE WEEK

A satire of the dark side of online reviews and the people who make a game of them…a game that can lead to murder.

Camilla and Ronzo see their reputations destroyed by online review trolls who specialize in character assassination, while Plantagenet Smith heads over to England, where he encounters a dead historical reenactor dressed as the Duke of Buckingham.  Plant is promptly arrested for the murder. In jail, Plant meets the ghost of Richard III, and hears what it’s like to live with character assassination “fake news” that has persisted for half a millennium.

“This wonderfully satiric comedy is a joy to read. On the surface, it’s a frothy romance cum suspense story about a whacky writer, Camilla, whose life is threatened by trolls and who topples from one hilarious disaster into the next.

But underneath, it provides a perceptive insight into the mad world of modern publishing, the sub-culture of Internet lunatics and the mindset of cultists who can – and do – believe ten impossible things before breakfast.

The reader is left with the question: how much of the story, perish the thought, might be true? Tremendous fun, wittily satiric and highly recommended”…Nigel J. Robinson

So Much for Buckingham is available at all the Amazons,

Kobo, Nook Smashwords, iTunes ,Google Play, 24Symbols and Scribd.
And in paperback it is available at

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Also in AUDIOBOOK! (see, we’re on trend here!)

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