If you’ve never written before, you will be amazed at what an almost mystical experience it can be for you. If you have dabbled in writing but kept your precious thoughts and words buried in a drawer or hidden on your hard drive, this is the best way I know to write, first, for yourself and, second, for your most appreciate your audience, your family.

Ten ways to structure a memoir

1. A theme or a thread
2. Chronological
3. Flashbacks
4. Function: how things work
5. Journey: circular changes, from beginning to end
6. Mosaic: pieces of a puzzle or little vignettes
7. Organic: from physical qualities or layout
8. Origins: how things came to be or are made
9. People or characters
10. The seasons

Ten ways to begin

You do not necessarily have to start at the beginning. Consider starting with:

1. an important moment that reveals character—yours or someone else’s
2. a memory or flashback
3. a photograph or memento
4. beginnings, endings, first times, last times
5. a significant event—illness, birth, death, funeral, wedding, divorce
6. sensory memories—sights, sounds, smells
7. secrets, epiphanies, encounters, accusations
8. successes or failures
9. worst and best moments
10. mentors, heroes, villains

What to do

Use impressionistic description through metaphorical language: metaphor—direct comparison; simile—metaphor, using like or as or as though. Paint a picture with details, active, descriptive verbs. Orient yourself with the landscape. The external landscape reflects the inner landscape of your life (turbulent, stormy).

Personalize your writing, using “I” words and a subjective approach to subject matter. Use present tense; it gives energy to the writing. Use dialogue; direct conversation is powerful.

Break your memoir into moments or scenes; include conversation. Capture interesting conversation that reveals something about the character; leave out what’s not important. Boil events down to the basics. What is important to convey? What about you is different because of this incident or time in your life?

Make your story complex, unpredictable, powerful. Loop together a series of scenes like moments of conflict; conflict makes writing interesting. Do your best to tell the truth, as you know it; but even when you’re writing about the truth, it’s OK to combine several people into a composite character.

What not to do

Don’t just write down facts; create images for the reader. Don’t tell; show. Show with visual description, metaphoric language, dialogue (either conversation you remember verbatim or close to what could have been said based on the situation). Don’t use clichés and expected language; use powerful verbs. Don’t weaken your writing with adverbs; get rid of all “ly” words. Don’t ramble; compress language.
Why it’s personal

A memoir is about you. It is creative nonfiction. The greatest strength about creative nonfiction is that you stick to the essence of the truth, but you can exercise some creative license by including factual information and physical details to make a scene come to life. Creative nonfiction teaches something, even if the lesson is subtle.

A memoir challenges you to do more than recall and record facts about you life. It asks you to engage in courageous writing—to reveal yourself, your humanity, and the range of human experience, both joy and pain.

There is something in your story that every reader can relate to even if you don’t know what that will be. So, even though it is your story, as you write it, seek universal themes so that it relates not just to you but also to humanity in general. Above all, remember that your life is a story. Write it!

Bobbi Linkemer is a book coach, ghostwriter, editor, and the author of 16 books under her own name. She has been a professional writer for more than 40 years, a magazine editor, and a book-writing teacher. Her clients include Fortune 100 companies, entrepreneurs, and individuals who want to write books in order to enhance their credibility or build their businesses. Visit her Website at: www.WriteANonfictionBook.com.

Your life will pass before your eyes. You’ll re-experience its pleasures and pains, longings and achievements, loves and hates. This is not a journey for the squeamish, but those with the courage to walk this road will be wonderfully rewarded. These rewards will radiate out, from you, to your family, to your entire society.

“How can that be,” you ask? “I’ve led such an ordinary life.” Well, that’s what you think! In reality, your life is unique. It is a bridge to the past. Your life story is your finest legacy and an invaluable gift for your family.

Members of your family want to know more about your life than you realize. They’ll treasure every word you write. To them, you are the connection, the bridge, between the remarkable past and the present. You are history, and history disappears if you don’t record it.

You’ve been living through one of the most event-packed periods of human history. From splitting logs to splitting atoms, the 20th Century has brought immense change. You’ve seen it first hand and have thoughts and feelings about it. Now’s your chance to tell about them.

There’s little opportunity today for kids to hear the stories of their family’s past. Not only don’t they experience the lifestyles their parents and grandparents lived, too often they don’t even know about them. Most of today’s kids exist in isolation from their own pasts.

When we’re marooned from our ancestors and traditions that have evolved — within the family, the tribe, the nation, the culture from which we sprang — we’re separated from a meaningful sense of SELF. Kids need the connectedness that comes from knowing their grandparents as people; from understanding their heritage and the basis of their family’s values.

So that brings us to the first reason for writing your life story: to create a legacy for your family Writing your life story is the perfect way to link generations. It’s a voyage of self-exploration – a way to discover more about yourself and how you came to be the person you are today.. It’s equally important for society, allowing others to experience another historical period. In offering younger people the chance to participate in life as you’ve known it, you make it easier for them to understand the forces and values that shaped your life. It can give kids courage. The message they receive is:

Some things in life never change. Some things are scarey, but you can get through them. Look at me! I was just as scared as you are, and I made it. You can, too.

Or: Okay, so you goofed. It isn’t the end of the world. Let me tell you about a goof I made at your age…”

Writing your life story also offers you the possibility of PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION.

As you journey backward through your life you’ll gain new insights. With the passions of earlier moments now behind you, you can review them more calmly. You can begin to look back on your life with more understanding and sympathy — to understand not only your place within your family but your place in history. Not only can you begin to forgive others, you can also begin to forgive yourself. You’ll see your life-so-far in new ways. You’ll begin to see patterns and threads of continuity you hadn’t been aware of. You’ll recognize themes, life-long desires and preferences. Through these recognitions, you may discover hidden meanings and even missions in your life.

You may discover that your personal mission is as family historian. Or this may be only the first stepping stone toward a life of greater awareness, fulfillment and satisfaction in a work which you are yet to discover.

In either case, prepare yourself for this journey’s personal adventure of self discovery!

Excerpt from the audio book, How to Write Your Own Life Story, which explains how to write it, how to get it published and how to gain a wider audience for it.

PatrikaVaughn is the world’s foremost Author’s Advocate, helping writer’s write better and get published. Find this audiobook and others, plus online classes and consulting services, on her website: http:www.ACappela.com. She is listed in The International Authors and Writer’s Who’s Who, Outstanding People of the 21st Century, and has been awarded the Order of Excellence in Who’s Who in the 21st Century

Brainstorming story ideas
For new writers who want to write a book, it can be much easier to begin with just one story…to get into the flow of writing and to learn the elements of writing through just one piece. I suggest using an event from your life, because this can segue easily into memoir and is also the method many writers use as they turn their lives into a work of fiction. Come up with and write down at least three events from your life; one of which you will write about. I recommend students think of an event that fits into a two- to six-hour time period; shorter time frames are easier to explore, and simpler to finish.

Writing the story in rough draft
Spend an hour or two writing about the event. Do not self edit. Try to keep the pen moving. The most important objective is to write the story in its entirety — from beginning through the middle to the end, even if this means using broad strokes. Rough draft means rough. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar at this stage. This is just pure storytelling. Self editing before you get the rough draft onto the page can be a sure way to writer’s block.

Vivid Description
Description…it’s important to use all the senses in writing rich and vivid description, taste, smell, sight, sound, touch. Choose an object from your story and practice rich, vivid description. Do this only after you’ve finished that rough draft.

Characterization
1.Description
Begin characterization around one person in the story. Good characterization makes or breaks a story. This is true in fiction, as well as in memoir. You must bring the people in your story to life. How do they walk? How do they look? What types of clothing do they wear? What are their hobbies?

2. Dialogue
How can you capture the voice of your character. Pick a scene from your story and rewrite it in dialogue.

Setting
Place is of prime importance in your writing. Read setting descriptions by well-known authors. Write setting as if you’re on a photography assignment. Begin by giving us an overview picture of the setting. Move in close to the main building or landscape where the events in your story takes place and describe that. Take intimate snapshots of the actual building or room. Add weather. Don’t scrimp on the setting; putting your characters in a solid, real, even eccentric landscape will ground them for the reader, embed them more deeply into the readers’ psyche.

Plot
All stories have some sort of plot, basically a beginning, middle and end that fit together. One concept of plot is this: the character wants something and must face increasing challenges to getting it, until finally a climax is reached and either the character gets what she wants or she doesn’t. This is the structure, the bones of the story, and should be explored AFTER one has already written out the rough draft.

Theme
Theme is difficult to grasp. To get to the spirit of the story, you must first write it. Look for themes that pop up unconsciously. After you finish the rough draft, look at what universal/spiritual ideas appear — survival, revenge, rebirth, etc.

Caroline Allen is a writing coach, fiction writer and visual artist based near Boston. She has clients all over the world and can help you learn these elements and put them into practice in a novel or memoir. Visit her coaching website at www.artofstorytellingonline.com, her personal art/writing site at www.carolineallen.com and her blog at www.artofstorytelling.wordpress.com.