A first-time memoir writer who hasn\u2019t read many memoirs has an extra hoop to jump through when figuring out how to structure her own. When I determined to write a memoir after having published several nonfiction books and a novel, I realized that memoir isn\u2019t one of the genres I most often read. I got busy reading some right away. <\/p>\n
What I discovered is that there are many different ways to structure a memoir. Consider the following forms, with examples, that I found enlightening:<\/p>\n
1. Memoirs in essays <\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve already written some essays, or perhaps gotten some published over the years, consider adapting or collecting them into a cohesive volume. <\/p>\n
Examples: Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives \u2013 a memoir in essays by Mary Laura Philpott (Atria Books, 2022). \u201cIt hit me,\u201d she writes, \u201cas we left our son again at the beginning of August, that I was standing at the beginning of a string of endings, proud and bereft at once.\u201d This is from an essay in the middle of the book about the mixed feelings a parent experiences when her child is growing up. She goes on from there to call her grief<\/a> \u201cself-indulgent\u201d in comparison with the less ordinary losses of many others, and I understand what she means. I\u2019ve written about the same exact thing, and yet none of our words are the same. I stand by mine and yet I love hers.<\/p>\n Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron (Vintage, 1992). This slim book (82 pages) began as a lecture, which was then expanded into an essay. Styron is the author of Sophie\u2019s Choice and other novels, and this essay-to-bestselling-book is beautifully written and psychologically astute.<\/p>\n 2. Memoirs that focus on a specific topic or a major episode<\/p>\n Example: Hourglass: Time, Memory<\/a>, Marriage<\/a> by Dani Shapiro (Knopf, 2017). Shapiro, a bestselling novelist and memoirist, writes beautifully here about her 18-year marriage and how bonds change over time. She shares thoughts and memories of her sick child, her and her husband\u2019s first date, anecdotes about her family and friends, and her career<\/a> as a writer. It\u2019s not chronological, yet she handles the shifts in time and space gracefully. Reading it reminds me of how it\u2019s the writing that matters, in memoir as in a literary novel.<\/p>\n 3. A memoir about a place that\u2019s important to you<\/p>\n Example: Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir by John Banville (with photographs by Paul Joyce) (Knopf, 2018). I\u2019ve read nearly every book Banville has written; he\u2019s that good a writer. In Time Pieces, he tells us that his frequent visits to Dublin as a child were a treat, and \u201cThat the city itself, the real Dublin, was, in those poverty-stricken 1950s, mostly a grey and graceless place did not mar my dream of it.\u201d He fills the book with unexpected anecdotes, and the photographs are at least as evocative.<\/p>\n 4. Memoirs structured around objects, or letters of the alphabet, or just about anything<\/p>\n