1) Honesty

Believe it or not, painting yourself as the unabashed hero of your own story will make you very unlikeable to readers. They know you’re the author, so they’ll be going into reading your book with the thought that perhaps your story could be a little biased. You’ll want to cut off that thought as quickly as possible if you want your story to feel believable to your readers. In addition, people have a much easier time empathizing with people who can admit their mistakes and learn from them. As much as you may be tempted to do otherwise, do not embellish or alter the facts to try to make yourself appear more likable. You’ll be robbing your readers of the chance to learn from you and, trust us, they won’t thank you for it.

2) Include more than just your story

Although a memoir focuses on a specific portion of your life that affected or changed you in a way readers could learn from- it’s not all about you. If your memoir feels like a bad first date where the person can’t shut up about themselves, your readers are going to fake an emergency to escape your ego. Instead of solely focusing on how you were feeling from moment to moment during this time of your life, make sure you’re also including the motivations of the people around you. If those people are still part of your life (once you’ve got your Outline done), interview them about the specific scenes in which they’re included. Perhaps they remember things differently than you, this may either help jog your memory or allow you to include a present voice that would give your memoir an interesting layer.

Make sure you remember that, ultimately, your readers want to learn from your experience- that’s why they’re reading your book. So instead of focusing on yourself, focus on what lessons you can impart to your readers.

3) Write In-Scene

As we’ve stated previously, you’ll need to employ the techniques of fiction writers to tell your story effectively. If people wanted a distant third-person narrative of your life, they would be looking for your autobiography (which you’d likely only write if you were a celebrity or for a family legacy). Memoir readers want a scene-by-scene close account of your story. They want specific dialogue, flashbacks, character arcs, emotion, etc. If this isn’t your strong suit, it may be prudent to take some Fiction Workshop classes to brush up on your scene writing or to work with a Writing Coach. Fiction writing may hold no interest for you, but brushing up on basic scene-writing technique is crucial for writing a memoir that will hold your reader’s interest.

4) Clear Character Motivation

Going along with our second point, make sure you understand every character’s motivation clearly when you go into writing the story. You don’t have to include the motivation of each character in every scene, but having that awareness will allow you to write them as real well-rounded characters rather than simply secondary characters in your story. The more real everyone feels, the more believable your story is and the more your readers will engage and learn from it. If you no longer speak to some of the people that appear during the period of your life in which your story takes place, try to imagine what their motivation may have been. If you paint some of the characters as simply “being a jerk”, not only is that not motivation but that character (and you by extension) will feel less real to your readers.

5) Did your ending happen yet?

Before you go into writing your memoir, consider whether you’re ready to write it yet. How does your story end? What did you learn from this period of your life? Does it feel well-rounded and complete when you outline it? Readers can smell a revenge book from a mile away and, trust us, they have absolutely no interest in reading one. If you’re still in the thick of healing or overcoming from the period of your life in which you’re focusing, perhaps your story isn’t finished yet. And, if you go into writing it when it’s not finished, your voice will feel biased and memoir readers won’t be as engaged with your work.

The post Writing For Your Audience: Memoir appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Standalone

A standalone novel requires a lot of preciseness. It is a self-contained story so, for readers, it will feel clean and complete within itself. However, because the story will be contained within the confines of a single book–rather than several–not a single moment can be wasted. Every scene has to be important and purposeful, you don’t have the liberty of being able to write cute or heartfelt scenes that don’t advance the plot or develop your characters…it’s crunch time. When writing a standalone novel, every scene needs to answer the questions: How does this further the character arc? How does this further the plot?

This also means preciseness in terms of charting out the plot strands as a whole. A standalone novel must have a main thread that is being followed clearly, so don’t make the plot too complicated. There can be side plot points as well, but there has to be a clear narrative structure. If things get too complicated, you most likely won’t be able to come to a satisfying resolution by the end. Speaking of which, with a standalone novel you absolutely need a satisfying ending. That doesn’t mean a happily ever after per say, but because there won’t be another book you can’t end on a horrible cliffhanger. You have to give the readers–and the characters–the ending that they deserve.

Series

A series is a completely different beast. Think of it in terms of the cinema: a standalone novel is like a movie whereas a series is like a TV show. Because you have multiple books to fill, you’re given a lot more freedom in certain ways. You can have super complicated and intricate plots with overarching themes that will be revealed by the end of the series. Readers will also be able to spend more time with your characters and thereby grow to love and care for them more. However, because you have more time, readers have higher expectations. They want plot points that relate back to the first book of the series: they want continuity and consistency and surprises. You’ll need to do a lot more work charting out your series as a whole, rather than just letting it happen as it goes along and seeing where you end up.

Because a series is longer, you have the freedom to write those little funny or sentimental scenes that may have got the ax in a standalone novel. However, be warned: your pacing must remain consistent. How many times have you heard the phrase, “The second one wasn’t as good as the first one…”? We’re guessing quite a lot. Authors tend to exhaust their ideas in their first book to win over readers and then the pacing of the second book ends up way slower because they’re using filler info. Make sure each book in your series is comparable in terms of pacing, plot/character developments, and payoffs.

What’s right for you?

When deciding whether your idea should be a series or a standalone novel, focus on how complex or simple your book idea is. For example, fantasy and sci-fi books typically work best as a series because those ideas are really complicated and take longer than the length of a single book to tell the full story. On the other hand, contemporary novels typically work best as a standalone. This is obviously not true in every case, so make sure you think through your idea and how long you’ll need to tell the full story. If you feel like it’d be hard to condense the idea into one book, go with a series. And if you feel like it’d be hard to figure out how to expand your idea into multiple books, a standalone is probably your best move. Don’t force your idea to be something it’s not.

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The post Standalone or Series? appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.