Memoir outline: [Working title]
The question · the one the book answers
What I believed then | What I understand now |
Theme:
Reader:
See examples
A memoir answers a question, not a topic.
Topic: my year in Lagos. Question: Can you belong to a place that keeps calling you a guest?
Topic: caring for my father. Question: What do you owe a parent who never looked after you?
Topic: leaving the church. Question: Can you keep a faith's people after losing its God?
Then: I thought my father's silence was coldness.
Now: I see it was shame, and that I learned it from him.
The gap between the two columns is the book: the younger you inside the events, and the you who is writing.
Time span
Opens | |
Closes | |
Backstory | |
Writing from |
Structure · tick one
Chronological: in the order it happened
Thematic: in chapters or vignettes by subject
Braided: two or three strands that take turns
Frame: a present-day story holding the past
Why this shape:
Strands or frame:
Key scenes · where, when, who is there, what changes
Opening:
The question arrives:
Turning point:
Lowest point:
Understanding:
Last image:
Chapters
Chapter | Period | Key scene | What it reveals |
1. | |||
2. | |||
3. | |||
4. | |||
5. |
People in the book
Person | Role in the story | Hardest detail | Care decision |
Writing about real people
Write the first draft for yourself, then make the care decisions in revision, one person at a time: real name or changed, and whether they read the pages first.
For each hard detail, ask whether it serves the question or only settles a score. Keep what the story needs.
Changing a name doesn't hide someone their family would still recognize; change the identifying details too, or ask.
Privacy and defamation law apply to memoir. For anything that could harm a living person's reputation, know how you'd show it's true; a publisher's lawyer will ask.
Memory and sources
My own records | |
People to ask | |
Public records | |
Places to revisit |
Memories to check
What I remember | Check against | What I found |
Left out
Episode, person or subplot | Why it's out |
Saved for another piece:
Author's note
Names and details changed:
Time compressed or reordered:
Composite characters:
Dialogue reconstructed from: