Write what you know, experts say. What do you know best about your life? If you want to start writing down the experiences and emotions, dramas and disappointments you have experienced, you can learn how to start in the right direction. During your research you can find the emotional core of the story you intend to tell - that is, your story - and understand how to go about actually writing it. Read the first step for more information.
Steps
Part 1 of 3: Doing Research
Step 1. Start documenting yourself
It is very important for a budding autobiographer to find material that regularly documents his life. Magazines, videos, photographs and memories from the past will be extremely useful for you as you start walking backwards in memory. We often remember things incorrectly or have a hard time remembering details, but objects cannot lie. The photos will tell you the truth. Your diary will always be honest.
- If you haven't already, start keeping a detailed journal of everyday life. The best way to reliably record what's going on in your world and in your head is to update your diary every night before bed.
- Collect several photos. Imagine what it would be like to forget what your best friend from school looked like and not have a picture of him. Images help refresh memories over time and provide useful testimony of places and events. They are essential for autobiographers.
- A video can be particularly moving to bring memories to mind. Seeing from a video how you have aged, from adolescence to adulthood, or seeing an old pet living in the house can be an important experience. Try to make a lot of videos over the course of your life.
Step 2. Interview family and friends
To start taking notes and working on an autobiography or your own memoirs, it can be instructive to talk to other people. You may seem to have a fair idea of yourself and your "story", but other people may give you a very different version of yourself, more than you think. Ask for an honest impression of them by doing one-on-one interviews and recording them, or by writing a questionnaire and letting them fill it out anonymously. Ask specific questions about your friends, family and acquaintances:
- What is your strongest memory of me?
- What was the most significant event, success or moment in my life for you?
- What's the hardest moment you remember about me?
- Was I a good friend? Fiancé? Person?
- What object or place do you most often associate with me?
- What would you like to say at my funeral?
Step 3. Travel and talk to relatives you haven't seen in a long time
An excellent way to look for meaning in life and find motivation to start writing can be in the past. Connect with distant relatives with whom you have never previously had any relationship, and visit places from your past that you probably have not seen in a long time, or that you have never even seen. See what the house you lived in as a child has become. Go find the old park where you used to play, the church where you were baptized, the place where your great-great-great-grandfather is buried. See everything.
- If you are the child of immigrants, it can be very moving to visit your family's hometown if you have never done so. Plan a trip to the country of your ancestors and see if you identify with the place like never before.
- Try to get a sense of not only your life story but that of your family as well. Where they come from? Who were they? Are you the son of peasants and iron craftsmen, or of bankers and lawyers? Which side did your ancestors fight and in what important war? Has anyone in your family been in prison? Were your ancestors knights? From a noble family? The answers to these questions can lead you to formidable discoveries.
Step 4. Visit the family archives
It's not enough to look at documents and memorabilia, but also examine what your ancestors left behind. Read their wartime correspondence. Read their journals, copying everything to safely archive items, especially if you are dealing with delicate documents as they are very old.
- At the very least, it wouldn't be a bad idea to look into old photographs. Nothing can bring out intense emotions and feelings of nostalgia like seeing your grandparents on their wedding day or their parents when they were children. Spend your time browsing through old photographs.
- Every household needs a reliable clerk, someone who takes care of analyzing family records. If you have an interest in delving into the past, start taking that responsibility. Find out everything you can about your family, your history and yourself.
Step 5. Consider planning an exciting project to include in your autobiography
Many non-fiction books are based on a pre-planned structure, which has as its plot some exciting life change, a journey or a project to document with a book. It can be a great way to generate material. If you're worried that nothing so exciting has happened in your life, consider making a big change by writing a proposal to raise funds.
- Try being a fish out of water. If you live in the city, see what would have happened if you had gone away for a year, deciding to eat only food that you have grown. Spend a year learning about cultivation methods and self-sufficient lifestyle, propose the project and put on your gardening gloves. You might even go to an overwhelming place, getting a job to teach abroad, somewhere exciting and out of the ordinary for you. Write down your experience of being there.
- Try to give up on something for an extended period of time, such as throwing out the trash or eating refined sugar, and document your experience during this experiment.
- If you make a compelling enough proposal, tons of publishers will advance the money and get you a contract if you have a good track record in publishing, or if you've come up with a great idea for a book project.
Step 6. Read other autobiographies
Before starting your own, see how other writers have tackled the task of reproducing their lives in print. Some of the best examples come from writers who take their life as a challenge. Among the classic autobiographies and memoirs are:
- Townie by Andre Dubus III
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Malcolm X autobiography of Malcolm X and Alex Haley
- Persepolis: A Childhood Story by Marjane Satrapi
- The poignant work of a formidable genius by Dave Eggers
- Life "by Keith Richards
- Me by Katherine Hepburn
- Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
Part 2 of 3: Finding a Starting Point
Step 1. Find the emotional truth of your story
The hardest thing about writing an autobiography or your memoirs is finding the core of the story. At worst, an autobiography can be an incoherent series of boring details, flying around for months and years with no interesting or specific details to hold up the story. Or, an autobiography can elevate mundane details, making them important, profound and solemn. It all has to do with finding the emotional core of the story, keeping it in the foreground as events unfold. What's your story? What is the most important part of your life to tell?
Imagine your whole life, how you lived it, like a beautiful mountain in the distance. If you want to take people on a tour of your mountains, you could rent a helicopter and fly over it for 20 minutes, pointing out the little things in the distance. Or you could take them on a hike through the heights, showing the heart, the middle and more personal. This is what people want to read
Step 2. Name how you have changed
If you are having a hard time finding the narratable part of your life, start thinking about the big changes that have happened to you. What's the difference between the way you were and the way you are now? How did you grow up? What obstacles or conflicts have you overcome?
- Quick Exercise: Write a short portrait of yourself on one page 5 years ago, 30 years ago, or even a couple of months ago if needed - or the time it takes to recognize a significant change in yourself. What clothes were you wearing? What would have been your important goal in life? What did you do mostly on Saturday nights?
- In Dubus's book Townie, the author recounts what it was like growing up in a college town, where his estranged father worked as a renowned and successful writer and professor. However, he lived with his mother, using drugs, fighting and struggling with his identity. His transformation from an angry, out-of-control "townie" (college town dweller) to a successful writer (like his father) forms the core of the story.
Step 3. Write a list of the important characters in your story
Any good story needs a strong supporting cast of other characters in order to enrich the tale. Even if it is your life that is the main structure and center of autobiography, no one will want to read the rant of an egotist. Who are the other most important characters in your story?
- Quick exercise: Write the character traits of each member of your family on one page, focusing on questions you ask yourself about yourself or others about yourself for your research. What's your brother's big hit? Is your mother a happy person? Is your father a good friend? If your friends are more relevant than your family, focus more on them.
- It is important to keep the list of main characters as small as possible and to "merge" the characters if necessary. While all the guys you used to hang out with at the bar or all the people you worked with may be important at some point in the story, throwing ten new names every two pages will be too stuffy for the reader. It is a common technique among writers to blend several subjects into one character to avoid burdening the reader with too many different names. Choose a main character for each important setting.
Step 4. Decide where most of the story will take place
What will be the setting of your autobiography? Where do the most important changes, or events, or changes take place? How have you and your story been shaped? Think in both macro- and micro-geographic terms - your country and region may be just as important as the street or neighborhood you grew up in.
- Quick Exercise: Write down everything you associate with your hometown or where you come from. If you were born in Tuscany, how important is it for you to be Florentine and not from Livorno, or vice versa? When people ask you where you come from, are you embarrassed to describe it? Proud?
- If you've traveled extensively, consider focusing on the most distinctive, memorable, or story-critical places. Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore, which chronicles a life in motion and the tumultuous relationship of the protagonist with his brother, Gary Gilmore the murderer found guilty, contains dozens of trips to different places, but often summarizes them, instead of make them dramatic.
Step 5. Limit the range of the book
The difference between a successful autobiography and a failed one is whether or not it manages to contain the scope into a single unifying idea, or whether the sheer amount of detail stifles the story. Nobody can wrap their whole life in a story: some things will have to be left out. Deciding which ones can be as important as deciding which ones to include.
- Autobiography is a writer's lifelong document, while a memoir is a document that covers a very particular story, time period, or aspect of the writer's life. Memories are more versatile, especially if you are young. An autobiography written at the age of 18 might be a little boring, but a memoir might be perfect.
- If you want to write an autobiography, you need to choose a unifying theme to carry on throughout the story. Maybe your relationship with your father is the most important part of your story, or your military experience, or your fight against drug addiction, or your rock-solid faith and struggles to hold onto it.
Step 6. Begin to outline the story
When you begin to have some idea of what your autobiography or memoirs may include and the path to take, it is helpful for many writers to give a rough description of how the story will proceed. Unlike novels, where you have to invent the plot, here you can already have a certain idea of how your story could end or of the turn of events. Outlining it, you can look at the main plot points all at once, and decide what to highlight and what to condense.
- The autobiographies that follow a chronological path go from birth to adulthood, strictly following the order of events that occurred in life, while the thematic and anecdotal ones jump from one topic to another, telling stories based mainly on particular themes. Some authors prefer to be guided by the momentum and not by a complex well-defined plan for the plot.
- Johnny Cash's autobiography Cash runs through his story, starting from his home in Jamaica, then going back in time, continually moving between various life events, through a late night conversation on the porch with an old stopwatch. It is a wonderful and intimate way to structure an autobiography, impossible to delineate.
Part 3 of 3: Tracing the Autobiography
Step 1. Start writing
The biggest secret of successful writers, novelists and memoirists regarding this task? There is no secret. Just sit back and start working. Try adding an extra piece to your autobiography every day. Throw it on the page. Consider this work as the extraction of raw materials from the earth. Get it all out, as much as you can. Worry later whether what you write is okay or not. Try to surprise yourself before getting the job done.
Ron Carlson, a novelist and short story writer, calls this commitment "staying in the room". Although he would probably like to get up and have a cup of coffee, listen to some music, or take the dog for a walk, the writer remains in the room, glued to the difficult part of the story. This is where a work comes from. Stay in your room and write
Step 2. Organize a work schedule
More than one writing project falters due to insufficient production. It's hard to sit at your desk every day and jot down a few words on the page, but it can be a lot easier for some people to set up a work schedule, trying to stick to it. Decide how much you want to produce each day and try to stick to that production standard. 200 words? 1200 words? 20 pages? It depends on you and your work habits.
You may also decide to set a certain amount of time to commit to each day to carry out the project, without worrying about the number of words or pages. If you have 45 full, quiet minutes after you get home from work, or before going to bed at night, use that time to work undisturbed on your autobiography. Stay focused and do as much as possible
Step 3. Consider recording the story and transcribing it later
If you want to write an autobiography, but are not keen on writing it, or if you have difficulty with some aspect of vocabulary and grammar, it may be more appropriate to record yourself while "telling" the story, and then transcribe it into a second moment. Get yourself a good drink, a quiet room and a digital recorder, and hit the green button. Let the story flow by itself.
- It may be helpful to have someone to talk to, considering the recording as a conversation. It can be weird to talk to yourself into a microphone, but if you're a great storyteller, with a bunch of fun stories to tell, keep in mind to grab a friend or relative to talk to and ask questions about yourself.
- Most rock star autobiographies or memoirs written by people who are not professional writers are "written" this way. They record the conversations, tell stories and anecdotes from their own life, and then assemble everything with a ghostwriter who oversees the actual writing of the book. It may seem like a deception, but it works.
Step 4. Let yourself be carried away by the flow of memories, even if they do not correspond to the truth
Memories are unreliable. Most real-life stories don't match the simplicity and elegance of fictional fiction, but writers have a tendency to let narrative guidelines and rules be influenced by memories, smoothing them out and adapting them to the story. Don't worry if the story you are telling is not 100% accurate, but whether or not it is emotionally probable.
- Sometimes, you might remember two important chats with a friend, both over pizza at your favorite place. It probably happened on two separate nights two years apart, but at the end of the story it would be much easier to condense it all into one conversation. What's wrong with doing that, if it gives order to the narrative? Probably none.
- There is a difference between correcting the cluttered details in memory and building things directly. Don't invent people, places or problems. No lie.
Step 5. Scold the "inner policeman"
Every writer has an internal critic perched on their shoulder. That critic protests, finds everything too stereotyped, throws insults into the writer's ear. Tell that critic to shut up: when you start, it is important to remove as much as possible any censorship from yourself. Just write. Don't worry if what you write is not perfect or wrong, if every sentence is immaculate, if people will be interested or not. Just write. The important work of refining the story will come under review.
At the end of each drafting cycle, look back at what you've written and then make your changes, or better yet, leave the work on the shelf for a while before doing anything to edit it
Step 6. Include as many elements as you can in your autobiography
If you are moving forward in the story, you may get stuck at the end and find yourself running out of ideas for how to move forward. Take time for your creativity. Use all your research and the documents you've collected to kick something out on the page. Take it as a collage or art project, rather than a "book".
- Unearth an ancient family photograph by writing down what you think each character was thinking at the time the photo was taken. Write about this.
- Let someone else talk for a while. If you have done any interviews with your family members, suddenly insert one of their voices. Write down the interview and introduce it on the page.
- Imagine the life of an important object. You can make the brass knuckles your grandfather brought back from World War II the main object on which to center a discussion between him and his father. You can sit in front of your father's coin collection and imagine what he felt as he rearranged and examined it carefully. What did he see?
Step 7. Understand the difference between scene and summary
When writing a work of fiction, it is important to learn to distinguish between the scene and the summary. A good writing job is measured by its ability to summarize time periods across the narrative and at a distance, but also by its ability to slow down certain important moments, expressing them in scenes. Think of the summary as editing a movie and the scenes as dialogue.
- Summary example: "We traveled a lot that summer. It was all knee peeling, hot dogs at gas stations, hot leather seats in Dad's 88 Chevrolet Suburban. We fished at Raccoon Lake, caught leeches at Diamond Lake, and visited. our grandmother in Kankakee. She gave us a jar of pickles to share, while dad got drunk in the backyard, then fell asleep and burned like a lobster on his back."
- Example scene: "We heard the dog's moan and the grandmother opened the screen door slightly to look at him, but we could see that she was holding her foot down, as if she was afraid of something she saw. Her hands were still dripping with water. "cake dough and his face was like a mask. He said," Bill Jr., you touch that dog one more time and I'll call the police. "We stopped to eat the pickles which suddenly seemed absurd. to hear what he would say next."
Step 8. Write a little, but in detail
A good writing job is made up of clear details and specific details. A bad one is full of abstractions. The more specific and detailed the story, the better your autobiography. Try to make each important scene as long as possible by letting everything out you can. If it ends up being over the top, you can always reduce it later.
If the emotional core of your story revolves around the relationship with your father, you could write 50 pages systematically dismantling his worldview, cursing his meanness, his misogyny or his sterile tyrant talk, but you risk losing many readers in three pages. Instead, focus on the things you can see. Describe his daily routine after work. Describe the way he spoke to your mother. Describe the way he ate steak. Give the reader detailed details
Step 9. Use dialogue sparingly
Most inexperienced writers make excessive use of dialogue, write whole pages of word exchanges between characters. Writing a dialogue is very difficult, especially in an autobiographical project. Use dialogue only when the characters have an absolute need to talk and summarize everyone else. Try to insert a dialogue every 200 words of summary and narrative.
When writing a scene, dialogue should be used to move the scene forward, and also to show something about how the character is experiencing the scene. Maybe it's important for the grandmother character to be the only one to stand up to Jay Jr.'s bullying, telling him to stop. Perhaps this represents a major shift in the drama
Step 10. Be generous
There are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in real life, so they shouldn't appear in a good writing job. Memory tends to subdue our opinions, so it can be easy to erase the strengths of an ex-girlfriend or just remember the good things about schoolmates. Try painting an impartial portrait, though, and your work will be better.
- There should be no suddenly evil characters in an autobiography. They must have very personal motivations and attributes. If Bill Jr. is a dog molester drunkard, there must be a good reason for it, it's not enough to just paint him as a reincarnated Satan.
- Make "good" characters experience moments of discomfort or weakening of character. Show their failures so the reader can notice their success and appreciate them more for it.
Step 11. Don't give up
Stick to your work schedule as much as possible. There will probably be days when you don't feel like writing a lot, but try to keep going. Find the next scene, the next chapter, the next story. Jump from one thing to another if you feel it necessary, or repeat a search to refresh your memory on something you don't mind.
If you have to put work aside for a while, do it. You can always live a little longer, gain a better perspective, and return to the book with new eyes. Autobiography can be an ever-changing thing. Keep your life alive and writing new chapters
Advice
- Make sure your autobiography is true. Don't do anything just to make it more exciting.
- Use words that engage your readers and try to replace them with stronger expressions.
