telling your story your way
Sharing our stories offers a way to inform, teach, and persuade others. Maybe you want to
expose discrimination using your lived experiences. Maybe you want to inspire people to make better
life choices. Whatever your motivation, the autobiographical forms represent an important body
of literature. Some of the best written works are autobiographical.
The long-form personal narrative life story may take several forms. A
life story often takes the form of a traditional linear autobiography, but that’s not the only form for such
narratives. Telling your story begins with the creative choice of how to
structure the story.
- Autobiography: Linear, from early life through the author’s “now,” a fact-checked work.
- Journals or Notebooks: Linear, slightly edited and formatted entries from diaries, journals, or notebooks.
- Memoir: An important segment of the author’s life, and often one aspect of life.
- Literary Memoir: Creative memoir, aiming for a “truth” beyond researched and verified facts.
- Collected Essays: Essays representing a memoir of sorts.
- Vignettes: Short essays or creative pieces that could stand alone.
Common Questions
“How long should it be?”
We understand the question and our usual answer applies: As long as it needs to be! If you want a general guideline, works covering a specific period of time or a major event tend to be shorter
than life-spanning autobiographies. The shorter works range from 50,000 to 60,000 words, but we have
found shorter works. Memoirs and autobiographies traditionally average 90,000 words. Any text longer than
75,000 words must offer a value that justifies its length.
“What is a good reason to write about myself?”
Again, there isn’t one answer, but there is a good two-part test: Will other people learn something valuable from your story and is the story a captivating page-turner? You need both ingredients for a good personal story.
“Are the formats exclusive?”
No. Include letters or journal entries in a traditional autobiography. Introduce essays with some background. Mix and match in whatever fashion works. This is your story, so stitch it together in the quilt pattern you like most. Experiment. You might return to a strict from or you might create something unusually great.
“Are there reasons not to write one of these?”
You know the answer: Could the book harm anyone else, intentionally or unintentionally? That’s not to say that a work critical of some people or groups should not be published. Works exposing problems need to be published. Still, some famous works ruined relationships and did lasting harm to their authors. If you plan to write to settle scores, to seek some personal form of retribution, contemplate and question your motives. You might still decide an exposé must be written. Do so with your eyes and mind wide open to the potential outcomes.
Traditional Autobiography
The traditional “This was my life” autobiography tells a story covering a significant portion of your adult life. Some also explore the earlier years, when there’s a good reason to do so.
Research and verification present a challenge for writers going back in time. Readers expect an autobiography to represent a form of first-hand journalism. Dates must be accurate. Quotes should be double checked. An autobiography involves more than recalling memories. If you foresee writing a work based on carefully researched material, with footnotes or endnotes and lots of citations, that’s a traditional autobiography.
Journals and Notebooks
Many people keep journals, diaries, or notebooks during parts of their lives. The benefits of using a journal as a primary source include the dating of entries. Few people keep diaries or similar records without dating the entries, or at least dating the weeks and months. Recreating the entries, with some light editing, supports the perception that the work accurately reflects events.
Travel journals and scientific notebooks have enjoyed some popularity as autobiographical works. These forms were especially popular during the nineteenth century. Explorers and scientists enjoyed celebrity status as authors, respected for their reporting from remote and exotic locales.
Commonly mixed in with the journal forms are epistolary memoirs, collections of letters. The epistolary novel, a story told as a collection of letters between two or more characters, was once a popular form. Using personal letters within a memoir certainly ensures accurately reporting the words exchanged. Letters are dated, like diary entries or journals.
Memoir
Memoirs shift from reportage to “personal truth” as their focus. Memoirs rely more heavily on personal recollections than journalist research and reporting. Memoirists write attempt to engage readers, using literary techniques while (generally) adhering to a linear narrative structure. Some memoirists write new works periodically. They have loyal followings, audiences with expectations.
Literary Memoir
Literary memoirs might be creative non-fiction in any of several forms. If you want to include poetry or loose form prose, do it. Surrealism? That’s okay, too. Literary memoirs tell your story using whatever techniques work. Readers of literary memoirs embrace experimentation.
Publishers of literary memoirs allow authors some typographical freedom, illustrations, photographs, and other forms of self-expression. The book itself offers readers an experience.
Collected Essays
Essays are a classic literary form, taking their name from the French verb essayer, meaning “to try” something. Essays attempt to make an argument, advancing the author’s point of view. Many essayists enjoy satire, mocking audience expectations and popular opinions.
Essayists frequently publish collections of their works, with new material serving as transitions between the essays. Essays tend to be short, especially if previously published, so new explanatory material might be a third of the collection.
Vignettes
Vignettes are poetic, short and elegant pieces that can stand alone. When gathered, the vignettes form a larger picture, a fuller story. It’s like a montage of portraits making a larger portrait. A vignette embraces literary storytelling, distinguishing them from essays. Autobiographical vignettes resemble short story collections, with a single author.