Writing A Memoir? Narrow Your Focus

Writing a memoir? Learn why narrowing your focus and sticking to your theme can help you tell a more focused memoir.

Writing A Memoir?

If you want to write a memoir, you need to learn to focus on what you need to include. You need to limit extraneous storylines and narrow your focus. You need to stick to your memoir type.

Narrow Your Focus & Stick To Your Theme

As I explained in a previous post, a memoir is not an autobiography. A memoir focuses on a time, an event or a series of events, or a choice tied to a theme. It is not your entire life story.

If you remember this, you will be able to focus on what is important to the book you are writing. Every scene you include in the memoir should have something important to show about this part of your life.

For example:

1. Julian Barnes focuses on the period of grief following his wife’s death in Levels of Life. It is a memoir of love and grief and he ties it together with a theme of ballooning and photography. He asks what happens when you put two things together and then tear them apart? It is a powerful book that is only 140 pages long.
2. Tara Westover’s Educated covers much of her life, from her childhood in a strict, isolated family to her education at university and beyond. But it is not a record of everything that happened to her. The events support the central themes of education, independence, and creating your own identity. It is 352 pages long but still manages to focus on the theme.
3. In When Breath Becomes Air, neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi writes about being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He reflects on his medical career, his relationships, and fatherhood. The memoir is held together by the theme of what makes a life meaningful when death is certain. It is 256 pages and sticks to the theme.

A memoir can have a short or long time span. The events could happen over a few days or many years. What matters is that you choose the events that show your theme.

How Does Narrowing The Focus In A Memoir Help?

If you can narrow your focus in your memoir and figure out what your theme is, you should ask:

1. Is this scene important to my theme?
2. Does this person show something new about my theme? Have I already shown this through another person?
3. Does this conversation relate to my theme?
4. Does this memory help me explore my theme?
5. Does this event show how I changed, or help explain why I changed?
6. Does this chapter move my story forward, or does it repeat something I have already shown?
7. Am I including this because it is important to the story, or simply because it happened?

This will help you to decide what is important and what is superfluous to your story. You do not need to include everything that happened in your life – only the parts that resonate with the memoir.

The Last Word

When you write a memoir, you cannot include every detail of your life. Narrow your focus and choose the story, theme, or experience that matters most. A clear focus will make your memoir more engaging and easier for readers to follow.

Top Tip: If you want to learn how to write a memoir, look into our Secrets of a Memoirist course.

by Amanda Patterson
© Amanda Patterson

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