The secret to writing a good memoir, with Wendy Dale
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Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I'm here with Wendy Dale, author of The Memoir Engineering System, a fabulous book about writing your memoir. Wendy, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Mignon. I'm so happy to be here. Yeah, well, I really enjoyed your book. I found it interesting and inspiring. Do you have to have an especially interesting life to write a memoir? I'm wondering who writes memoirs? Well,

I would say that there's a difference between memoir and autobiography. To write an autobiography, you really do have to have an interesting life. In fact, it helps if you're famous. Most autobiographies are written by famous people. However, memoirs are written by normal people who want to recount an interesting period in their life.

And they really are. They don't have to be incredibly exciting. The plot doesn't have to be out of this world. But the key is that they have to have plot. The big difference between memoir and autobiography is an autobiography really is a lot of things that a famous person lived through.

But if you try that with your memoir, if you try and recount a bunch of things that you lived through, you will lose your reader. So besides being written by famous people, I would say the biggest difference between autobiography and memoir really is having plot. And so in that way, is a memoir more like a novel? Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, the end result should feel much like a novel, right?

But getting there is a very different process because when you're writing fiction, you make stuff up. When you're writing memoirs, you have your whole life to draw on. I tell my students that fiction is a lot like oil painting. You start with this blank canvas and you just create what you need.

And memoir is like sculpting. You have it all there. You have this big chunk of marble and you have to scrape away until what's left is meaningful, until you have a story. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's the whole debate about pantsers versus outliners in the novel writing world. Pantsers are people who just sit down and write and outliners are people who outline. And you, you really convinced me that having an outline is the way to go. Can you talk about how the outline works?

Yeah, absolutely. I, and I tell my students this as well. I'm like, I was once the person who hated outlining and I still, it's not fun. It's not, it's, it's this logical part about, of, of writing. I love writing prose. Why? That is why I became a writer. I love the words on the page.

but when I realized that I would save myself years and I would also not have to throw out draft, I would not have to write draft after draft because I was doing it right the first time.

I became a fan of outlining. I really did. So I really think you can create structure at the outline level. Once upon a time, I wrote, you know, I wrote my own memoir and I, I fell in love with certain scenes, you know, don't kill your dar or kill your darlings, but I didn't want to, but I had to in the end in order to create plot. And to me, it was so painful to have these scenes that I love so much and have to throw them out. And so I,

Also, the time wasted in writing these scenes that didn't eventually go into my own memoir. And so I really do believe in outlining. I don't think it's fun, but it's such a small investment that pays off. And what is the difference between like writing about what happened to you and plot?

So I have a two-word definition of plot. And, you know, I really, I sometimes say it took me 15 years to learn the two words that go into defining plot. And they really are connected events. So a mistake that people make is they write down everything that happened to them, which is not plot. I call this writing from memory.

And it's really easy to lose your reader this way because you think it's interesting. It's what you lived through. And you, in fact, often have this emotional experience of writing it because the memory is still present. But your reader doesn't have that same emotional experience when they read it because you're just telling them a bunch of stuff that you did. So the key to fixing this is to take the things, the events from your life and to connect them in some way.

And so that's where, how do you connect your events? You have an idea that connects them, right? So you put in a transition that helps a reader understand. So this is writing from memory. A reader will say, okay, so one day I went and picked blueberries. Two days later, I broke my ankle.

That's how it happened in real life. So a reader thinks, so the writer thinks, oh, a reader's totally good. This is going to resonate with a reader. Unfortunately, that's not the case. What a reader, how a reader is interpreting this book is, okay, you went and picked blueberries. Now, what does breaking your ankle have to do with picking blueberries?

Right. And so this is where writing from memory comes in. And this is where a transition can work to connect your scenes. This is where we come back to connected events equals plot. So what does blue rays have to do with breaking your ankle? I don't know. As an idea, as an example, you could say it was the worst summer of my life.

I loathe picking blueberries. And but yet I had, you know, one day I had to go do it right just and then to make things worse. I broke my ankle. So there you have a story connected by an idea. Now, it's not a fascinating story. This is off the top of my head.

Go easy on me. But blueberries and broken ankles suddenly are combined to tell a story. So that is how plot is different than recounting a bunch of things you lived through. Yeah. One of the things I thought was really fascinating in the book was the way you described using time elements to separate the different kinds of points in your memoir. So it never would have occurred to me that there's a really big difference between

last summer and this morning at breakfast.

Yes. So the premise of the book, besides connected events, is that really if you use the components you have in the right way, you won't have structural errors. So basically the two components of your book are scenes and transitions. And scenes and transitions are very different. They follow very different principles and you need to use them in different ways. And so absolutely this morning,

This morning I had breakfast is very different than every morning I have breakfast. Every morning I have breakfast is not plot. It really isn't. This morning I had breakfast is actually the beginning of plot. It's happening at a very specific point in time. And your scenes happen at a specific point in time and your transitions don't.

Am I throwing way too much at you, Mignon? You've read the book. No, no. I think maybe one more example of showing how you would use last summer as a transition and then this morning at breakfast as a plot point. Okay. So this morning, I went to Target. Okay. So when I say that to you, you're expecting me to keep going. This morning, I went to Target. Okay.

Well, what happened to Target, right? I picked an everyday example. What happened? When you use a specific point in time, a time anchor that is specific, this morning, all of a sudden you've begun to write a scene and I expect something to happen. So when you use that specific point in time,

you create this expectation for your reader. And a lot of structural problems come about when you create this expectation and you don't fulfill it. So if you said to me this morning, I went to Target. Okay, what happened to Target? Right? But people do this in their book all the time. They create this expectation, they leave their reader hanging, and they do this consistently in their book. And the end result is they don't have plot, they have a frustrated reader, and

Reader doesn't want to read their book. So let's go back to the other one. You want to meet us. So what was it this summer? Last summer, you know, it's sort of a way of musing, starting to muse on what happened, the transition. So every summer I go to Target, right? Every summer I go to Target. Oh, good for you. I mean, it doesn't create that expectation. This morning I went to Target.

What happened at Target, right? Every summer I go to Target, I'm done. Oh, good for you, right? What else do you do during the summer? It doesn't create that same expectation. Transitions don't exist in a specific period in time, whereas scenes actually do. And you can feel it in books. Once you point this out to people, they come back to me and say, what, do you

You will find this in novels as well as memoirs. In that way, they're absolutely identical. They have transitions and scenes, and you can feel where the scene starts. It usually starts with a time anchor. It usually starts with this morning, one Thursday at 3 p.m. this afternoon. That's a specific point in time, and you'll feel it. Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like I'm going to notice it in novels, you know, now forever. Ruined novels for you. Looking to buy your dream home or rent that perfect apartment? With the Redfin app, you'll know the moment your next place hits the market. Set up your gotta have it wish list and Redfin will send you real time notifications for properties that match.

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And the other advice you had that I thought was surprising, but actually lines up with something I've heard novelists say, too. You suggested a very nonlinear way of writing, like start like starting with the scenes and then going back and filling in the transitions. Yeah.

Well, okay. So we're not talking about chronology when you say nonlinear, right? We're talking about the way you write your book. So I say to my writers, you know, don't start reading page one and then page two and then page three and then page four. Instead, take this bird's eye view of your book. Step back from it and figure out, first of all, what your book's about. What is your memoir about? And then figure out how your next step is to figure out how you're going to use chronology in your book.

So, I compare this to a house. A lot of people start writing. Writing, I love writing. I love prose so much. Writing is the furniture. The structure for your house is the foundation. It's the walls. And you don't build a house by building first the bathroom and then you build it from the ground up and then the living room and you build it from the ground up and furnish it and paint it and then the bedroom.

It's very similar. You sketch out the foundation first. So you take a bird's eye view with your book and you see globally, okay, where am I going to start in time? Where am I going to end in time? So, so many people think about the furniture and they never get to having walls. And so they have a house that they have beautiful paintings.

prose that doesn't make sense to a reader that no one is going to read because they have no walls to their house. They don't have structure. They don't really have a story. I use structure and story almost synonymously, right? You're creating a story out of these disconnected events.

Right. The scenes, right? So the scene, yes. So your scenes, you're creating a story out of scenes and you're connecting them with transitions so that you have a story. So you don't have one day I picked blueberries. The next day I broke my ankle. Wait, I need, so those would be my scenes. One day I go

pick blueberries and, and, you know, and, and I stained my hands terribly. Something happens when you pick blueberries. And the next day I broke my ankle. Well, what do they have in common? Now you need a transition there to connect them, to turn them into a story.

Yeah. So what are some of the other common mistakes you see people make when they're writing a memoir? A big one I see is that people describe their life. And by this, I mean that we never get scenes. And this makes perfect sense why someone would do that, because the way you think of your life is, you know, oh, third grade, you know.

I just was bullied all the time and I sat alone at lunch, but I had the best teacher. So you're thinking that's describing your life. There's nothing actually happening. You're again, using that transition tense. It happens over all of third grade. Plot starts when something happens. And when something happens, you need a scene. So one day in third grade, just,

James Mason came up to me and stomped on my foot. That's the beginning of a scene. And so what I see is people don't even realize they need scenes, but scenes really are the first building blocks of plot. So what I see is people making the mistake of describing their life instead of thinking in terms of scenes, instead of these moments that are happening.

these moments that transport your reader too. Transition writing will never transport your reader, right? So that feeling when you're watching a movie or reading a great book and you become the protagonist, you become the narrator,

That's what you want to achieve with your memoir. But you'll never do that with transition writing. There's nothing wrong with transition writing. I love transition writing. Transition writing is full of ideas that connect to your scenes. However, you have to have scenes in your book or you'll lose your reader. They'll never have that sensation of living through this with you or forgetting that they're actually reading a book. They become part of the story. So you absolutely need scenes. In fact, I don't know if this is your next question I'm anticipating.

Can you have a book without transitions? And if that was going to be your question, you absolutely can. You can, but you can't have a book without seeds. So I would think a book without transitions, what popped into my head is that's a play. It's not a book, it's a play. It's just everything that's happened. Well, there is a caveat here. It's not that any memoir, you can write any memoir and not have transitions.

In order to write a book without transitions, now this is theoretical. I have seen, I think I had one client ever do this, right? Write a book that was all scenes. It's not common, but I do like theoretically, could you do it? And why she was able to do it was because she had causality.

And causality is how fiction writers and filmmakers create plot. The oil painters who only give you what's necessary. It's a lot harder to do in memoir. But causality means that one event happens.

brings about the next one. So I gave you the example of picking blueberries and breaking my ankle. No causality there. Blueberries did not cause me to break my ankle. What would causality be? Causality would be, I break my ankle, I go to the hospital, turns out the doctor is someone I knew from high school. Three events with causality, one brings about the next.

If you have that, you don't need the transition because you're what? So why does your transition exist in the first place? It's to keep your reader from being confused.

What does picking blueberries have to do with breaking your ankle? They will spend so much time being confused that they won't, they won't enjoy. They won't read your next scene because the whole time they're going, wait, why are you talking about breaking her ankle? Right. And so that's what the transition is there to do is to solve that problem for you. Oh, these are related events, right?

If you have causality, you no longer need that transition because the events themselves are connected. I break my ankle. Then I go to the hospital. Your reader's not going to say, I have no idea why she went to the hospital. Well, because she just broke her ankle, right? And so your reader's not confused and therefore you don't need that transition.

Okay, that makes sense. Okay. And now I have more of a philosophical question about memoir, because I imagine, you know, some of the people listening might be interested in writing a memoir, but they might be worried about the people...

about whom they're writing, you know, so they don't want to burn bridges or they don't want to hurt people's feelings. And I know you work with a lot of memoir students. So, you know, how do you advise people to handle those potential landmines? There's a lot of advice out there, a lot of legal advice that is better than my own. So I will tell you from my personal experience, what I have found

is that what you think is going to bother someone is usually not what actually bothers them. So as an example, I had a client and she wrote this chapter and it included a lot about her mother. And she said to me, Wendy, you know, I really like this chapter, but I just, I don't know what my mother's going to say. I'm just so terrified. And honestly, I didn't see it as being that problematic, but I didn't know her mother. And I said, well,

For people you want to maintain relationships with, what you want to do is share this in advance and say, hey, I'm writing a memoir. This is my point of view. I care about you. I care about our relationship. And let me know what you think about this. And what I have found...

is people often are not offended by what you think they're going to be offended by. And they are upset by the tiniest things that you never considered. Right. And so her mother actually in this case came back and said, she forwarded, my client forwarded the email to me and the email said, it was titled, thank you for this gorgeous tribute.

Right. And it was, and she, and it brought her closer to her mother. Having said that sometimes people are upset by the tiniest things. I have another client whose daughter was upset because she was three years old and there, and there's a scene in which she's peeing on the street and

her daughter was mortified. And her mother said, well, you were three years old. And she said, I don't care. I don't want anyone to know I peed on the street when I was three years old. So you kind of never know what's going to upset people. And the way to handle it with people that you care about is to say, here's the manuscript. Please let me know if there's anything you want me to remove.

Good advice. Good advice. Well, Wendy Dale, author of The Memoir Engineering System, thank you so much for being here and sharing your knowledge. Where can people find you? So you can find the book on Amazon. You can also get a free memoir writing class. Go to freememoirclass.com.

Oh, wonderful. And for all, for the Grammarpalusians, the people who generously support the podcast, we're going to have a bonus segment. Wendy actually lives in Peru and we're going to talk about the way English words are used. She says badly in Spanish, so that should be a lot of fun. So if you're a Grammarpalusian, look for that bonus segment in your feed. And for the rest of you, thank you so much for joining us today.