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10 Tips for Writing an Autobiographical Story
Chapter 2 “Genres” – Section 8 “Autobiographical Stories”
With Links to Supplementary Material
Recently, I was contacted by Mel Finefrock (hopeburnsblue), who wanted to know my thoughts on the topic of autobiographical stories (both lifestories and stories about events in people's lives). Obviously, my expertise is primarily in the fiction genre, but I think that a story is a story—and both deserve the same basic principals of truth, quality, and style. And so I did a bit of research on what was different about autobiographical stories, remembered the autobiographical stories I've read in the past, and collaborated back and forth with Mel—who provided invaluable insight, perspective, collaboration, and even criticisms to this article—and then I compiled it all into the article that you currently read. And, as always, remember that the truest guide is to read from other works in your chosen genre.
Tip 1: Decide why you are writing and choosing to share your life story.
What is your motivation for writing this story about yourself? It could be that you're trying to create a catharsis—to come to emotional terms with a painful event, or just trying to understand it. On the other hand, it could be that you are writing for others—to inspire them, to give hope to those who are going through something similar, to raise awareness of a common struggle, or possibly even to entertain or make money. Each of these is a valid reason for writing down your life story, but you must establish your main reason for writing so that you can do so as effectively as possible.
Tip 2: If your motivation is to help/inspire others or gain publicity/money, then your story must be crafted in order to do that efficiently.
If you are writing just for you, write whatever you want and be done with it—you don't need a guide for style. If you are writing for others, however, you have to craft the account in such a way that it will actually help/interest your readers successfully. The story, while still about you, can no longer exclusively serve you, and you now have certain obligations to your reader, such as honesty and a willingness to tell the story with the level of quality that it deserves, and that the reader deserves for spending the time to read it.
Tip 3: You must tell your story with complete honesty.
Readers can tell on a subconscious level when a story is dishonest, either through faulty information or omission of important information—when the protagonist is too brave, too perfect, or tells the story from an extremely one-sided bias. And no matter what your motivation for writing, you cannot afford to lose your reader's trust. Note that this does not mean that you have to be completely factual with details such as people's names—which could hurt you, them, or your relationship. In these cases, you should just tell your readers that you are purposefully changing the names of those involved for the sake of their privacy. Just be honest as to what truly happened, your true motivations, and your true feelings, whenever an event occurred. And don't omit details simply because they make you or someone you care about look bad in the context of the story. These moments of painful honesty are what will gain your reader's trust.
Tip 4: In all things, work towards an attitude of ambivalence.
When talking about people, situations, and anything else, always strive for ambivalence. Though it may not seem it through the perspective of your memories, there are no completely terrible or completely wonderful situations, people, places, or events. No matter how bad a situation, you can always learn from it or grow. Bad people may be awful, but that is often because they too had awful lives. Just don't be a Pollyanna, nor an Eeyore. Address and deal with the pain, but don't let it become a dark cloud that drives your audience away by the powers of hopelessness and despair.
Tip 5: Your Narrative Voice means everything.
If your reader is Dante, being guided through the depths of Hell and Heaven, then you are Virgil—their guide. Which means that you have to have a good speaking voice (or Narrative Voice) if you do not want your reader to get bored and ditch you, or for your story to sound dull and lifeless. This is neither as difficult nor as easy as it may sound. For your Narrative Voice to be interesting, it merely needs to be honest and truly your own—through your usage of words, sentences, explanations, and dialogue that you would use in a real-life conversation with an intelligent listener. However, a voice like that has to be styled and crafted with much effort, countless revisions, with the grammatical style of one who knows how to use the English language well, and through lots of criticism from a Writing Partner.
Tip 6: Even though you are writing from the First Person Point of View, you must make efforts to show—not to tell.
The human mind automatically interprets everything it sees, especially through memories. If you want to craft your story in a way that is honest, interesting, and respectful to your reader, you must make efforts to tell the events as objective facts that the readers can then interpret for themselves. If mnemonic devices are your thing, remember to Relive, Recount, and Reflect. Relive—put yourself back into the memory from as objective and emotionless a perspective as you can, and then a second time to recount your feelings and emotions. Recount—give an objective account of the things which happened (don't attribute anger to a person, for example, say that his/her face was red, for complete factual accuracy). Reflect—afterwards, tell how you interpreted and were affected by the situation, as well as why others behaved as they did. But always be honest in the difference between your subjective feelings and objective events.
Tip 7: In order to keep dramatic tension, you must use a Plot Structure.
A common problem with autobiographical stories is that they seem like ceaseless rambling, or a vomiting of jumbled information from which the reader must pick out the solid pieces, or else run from the smell. There are two ways that I advise structuring this: either as a Chronological Three-Act Structure, or as a Topical Three-Act Structure. I've often explained the former, but the Topical Three-Act Structure is an approach by which you assemble vignettes in terms of topic or purpose, and not necessarily by order in which the events happened. The important thing, regardless of what style you choose, is that every chapter serves a specific purpose in creating a dynamic storytelling experience with building tension, highs and lows, a beginning, and an end. Think of it as the difference between riding in a water-park's lazy river, and riding the water-slide. Whether you are going on the biggest slide or the smallest, you still need the climb, the descent, the curves, the drops, and the tunnels in order to make it a truly dynamic experience.
Tip 8: Jot down your memories in a notebook, as a list of construction materials that you can choose from.
Create a compilation of memories and stories that you identify as having a specific purpose or showing a specific point. This way you can piece the story together like a puzzle in your Outline, and not feel like you have to write down an event as soon as it pops into your head, or when you think the memory has some vague relevance to the chapter you are working on at that particular time.
Tip 9: Remember your Antagonistic Force, and its role even within an autobiographical story.
Even in real-life stories, there will be a main Antagonistic Force that plays the exact same role and appears in the exact same plot-points as a villain in a story. In reality, however, this Antagonistic Force will often be a situation, an event, society, or (most often) something within yourself. Illustrate and deal with this Antagonistic Force the same as you would a villain—with complexity, ambivalence, and empathy. But, unlike a villain, note that this type of Antagonistic Force will often not be something you are able to vanquish, but something that you must grow stronger to be able to battle against for the rest of your life.
Tip 10: Look at the challenges and Antagonism you face in terms of universality, as opposed to something totally unique to you.
Don't make efforts to illustrate yourself as so unique in your struggles and thoughts that you isolate yourself from your reader. If you want reader interest and to help others, you must gain empathy—a feeling of connection that the reader feels with you. And empathy is gained through a feeling of shared experience, even if that experience is somewhat varied. For example, maybe your parent died in a war, and a part of you thinks that this is harder than any other sort of loss. Resist that temptation. Focus on the shared human experience of loss, no matter what the cause, even if your experience was indeed worse.
Be sure to check out Mel's page, hopeburnsblue. There, you will see works of both professionally published and self-published poetry, prose, and even photography. A special thanks for her help in making this article possible. So send her llamas, an ungodly number of llamas!!!
Feel free to comment with other suggested resources. Any questions about writing? Things you want me to discuss? Comment or send me a message and I will be glad to reply or feature my response in a later article. If you enjoy my reviews, please feel free to share my articles with friends, add it to your favorites, become a watcher on my page, or send send a llama my way!
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