Writing A Life Story Examples – Aspiring autobiographers often ask us by letter. “How can I write my own story?” Try these 7 life writing tips to get started.
There are many ways to approach biography. You can follow a non-fiction approach and mention dates, facts and memories as close as possible to the events.
Writing A Life Story Examples
Another option is to fixate and blur the line between fact and fiction. This approach to life writing can help if you want to:
Tips For Writing Your Life Story
Barthes continues to present the reader with passages written in the third person, interspersed with captioned photographs of his youth. For example, in the section entitled “People” he wrote:
He does not like victory proclamations. Worried about the humiliation of others, when the victory appeared, he wanted to go somewhere else. Barthes, Roland Barthes, p. 46.
By describing himself in the third person, Barthes gives the reader an insight into his views and values as a conventional autobiography can. However, in their fragmentary, third-person presentation (without narration), they become short, philosophical musings instead of the traditional linear “story” with character development. Memoirs have been told a lot
For example, your book will cover the birth to the present. Or several weeks or months covering both sides of a major life event.
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The first-person narrator in fiction gives us an example of a narrative approach to time that we can also take in writing about our lives.
To start my life at the beginning of my life, I note that I was born (as I am informed and believe) on Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), p. 5 (1992 Wordsworth Editions).
I was born in Blunderstone, Suffolk, or “about there” as they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had been closed to the light of the world for six months when my eyes were opened for him. Dickens, David Copperfield, p. 6.
This approach to time provides a linear view of life progression from childhood. It is a common and abundant narrative approach
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You can start with a significant event that happened later in adulthood, for example, and cut to a past scene that illuminates the story and helps the reader understand what led to the next event.
Many writers feel intimidated when they start a new project. This is often especially acute when you are writing about more personal experiences where you don’t have the protective veil of a fictional character.
When Virginia Woolf’s acclaimed biographer Hermione Lee was asked if fear was a useful emotion for biographers, she replied:
Fear must somehow be channeled into the workforce. When you do this, I think you should feel that he is yours and only you understand him. But to achieve that feeling, you have to overcome and master your fear. Hermione Lee, interview in Hermione Lee, The Art of Biography #4, for The Paris Review, available here.
Autobiography Of A Person Who Insisted On Writing One]
I go to my desk every morning and hear these little voices saying, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Find your own way to silence any fear, whether it’s changing the name of a key character or even creating your entire life.
The life of any person is a wonderful archive or storehouse of important experiences and memories. As Hermione Lee says, the enormity of this “source material” can seem overwhelming.
As a preparatory step in deciding how to write your life story, summarize the main events you want to include. Try to write only two lines for each event or scene you’re thinking of including (you can create and manage scene summaries in our Scene Builder tool).
How To Write An Autobiography
At the heart of great life writing (as with great fiction), there is often a situation of internal conflict and/or external conflict. A key tension or experience that the autobiographer faces. Tweet this
As in fiction, as in life writing, the memoirist’s voice helps create a distinct sense of character.
Acclaimed memoirist and poet Mary Carr offers great advice for aspiring writers in her book:
Every great memo lives or dies based on 100 percent sound. It’s the author’s experience delivery system, a high-bandwidth cable that delivers every pixel of someone’s internal and external experience with brilliant clarity. Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir (2015), p. 35.
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Carr cautions against masking aspects of your voice in order to appear more personable to readers. He says:
The voice should allow for a range of emotional tones. too pathetic and it’s terrible. It defines and differentiates the distance from the material and the reader, from cold and different to high wire and close. The author does not choose these styles because he was born, based on who he is and how he lived in the past. Carr, p. 36.
In Carr’s chapter, The Truth Contract Twixt Writer and Reader, he discusses the value of telling the truth (instead of “blinding” your audience):
However, how to tell the truth helps our reading experience? Suppose you had a horrible childhood, tortured, teased and starved every day, beaten hard with belts and hoses, etc. You can write a repetitive, painful memoir that is dull from a rubber knife. But will it be “right”? And really how do you hold on now or to the experience of living then? Back then, those same criminals had to eat you or you would die. Carr, p. 2.
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What Carr’s words hit on is that “truth” is often something more complicated than what makes us look good (or make others look bad).
One of the important lessons in learning how to write your life story is how to present people as more than just heroes and villains. Instead, it’s better to show areas between better and worse options for people with more complex portraits, with more colors (and more shades of gray). As Kar says:
These disparities from your childhood, your life among donkey-whips, soothes the pain of the past to read. Carr, p. 2. 7. Get help to build your life story
Writing a fictional memoir or autobiography is difficult because you are dealing with not only standard story elements (conflict, narrative, voice, etc.), but also with personal nature. Some of these may be more difficult to revise (or put into prose) than others.
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Because there are many challenges (including the challenge of subjectivity), don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Carr wrote about sending the people he included in drafts of the memoir to make sure the embellishments didn’t detract from the people or the story. Beta readers can provide valuable information, especially if they have watched or are active participants in the event you describe.
You can also get help from a writing coach to help you begin to weave personal experiences and anecdotes into better, more complete stories.
Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He holds a BA in English Literature and a BA in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.
