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The Motion of the Ocean

Writing Memoir - Crafting a Story Line

Life is messy. Your story arc is not.

One of the biggest challenges in writing memoir is creating a single, compelling story line out of the myriad events in one's life. A successful memoir (unlike a diary) has a central theme or guiding principle that grounds the book from start to finish, e.g., a struggling marriage, breast cancer survival, mime artistry, coming of age. Each chapter, ideally, will have its own theme or mini-story arc that forwards, complicates, or enhances the book's major theme.

Use this exercise to decide what to include in your book (or chapter) and what to save for the next one.

1. Pore over your journals, letters, photos, videos, and memories. This is your raw material. Become intimate with it again. Pretend like you're researching your own life. 
2. Based on your research, make a list of all the possible events, people, and thoughts you might like to include in your book (or chapter). 
3. If you're still working on clarifying your main theme, this should help. Notice what topics and events recur and choose your theme accordingly. Write it down in one sentence. (E.g., While sailing across the Pacific on her honeymoon, a woman struggles to keep her marriage afloat.) 
4. Go back to your list and circle the elements (events, people, and thoughts) that are central to your theme and necessary to your story line. This is the backbone of your book (or chapter). 
5. Put stars next to the elements that support, deepen, or complicate your theme. 
6. Cross out all the elements that do not relate to your theme. (Yes, it's hard to lose the story about the sewage tank that exploded in your face. Lose it anyway.)

Now you're ready to begin outlining or drafting. And keep this list because, as you're writing, you might just realize that flying sewage does relate to a struggling marriage...somehow.

Feel free to use this! Here’s where credit is due:
copyright © Janna Cawrse Esarey 2009
author of The Motion of the Ocean, www.byjanna.com

If you’d like me to talk to your group, email me.

Curious how to pronounce my name? It’s easy.
JAN-nuh Course ES-uh-ree
Rhymes with banana of course yesiree

copyright © 2009 janna cawrse esarey
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