Exploring Genre: Memoir

Memoir is one of my favourite genres to read, and I’m in good company, it seems. 

I did a quick google search for ‘best selling Australian books 2019’ as I wrote this article, and unsurprisingly, the first three books I saw were memoirs. 

The right memoir can do exceptionally well. Elizabeth Gilbert sold over four million copies of her Eat, Pray, Love, the story of her quest for meaning and inner peace across several continents. It was equal to Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, the story of a miserable Irish childhood. Another miserable childhood story, this time from the US, The Glass Castle, sold 2.7 million copies.

Why do we love to read other people’s real-life stories so much?

They’re a good read.

The best memoirs are well-written, with a distinctive voice and a strong story structure that has the beginning, middle and end that every work of fiction relies on. We follow the character through their challenge, quest or discovery, fight their battles with them, and marvel at their transformation at the end.

They give us true insight into other people.

Putting your hopes, dreams and flaws on a page for all to see can feel exposing for the memoir writer, but it’s a gift to the reader. We don’t know many people as well as we know ourselves. When you read someone’s heartfelt story, it’s an opportunity to intimately understand not only an individual, but humankind.

They allow us glimpses into situations we haven’t experienced.

I’ve never lived with drug-addicted parents, hiked a 1200-mile trail or travelled to a war zone to be a medical officer, but I’ve read the experiences of those who have. Their stories opened my eyes, moved me and challenged me. Most of us live safely in the suburbs; reading a memoir is a world-widening experience.

They teach without being didactic.

While I press the point home to my memoir students that writing their story is not the same as writing a sermon (ie. no lecturing!) it’s true nevertheless that readers will learn. Lessons are gained from the writer’s experiences and transformation. Anyone who has ever tried to teach a child—or an adult—will know that we all listen to a story more easily than a ‘you should’. By reading other people’s stories, we learn lessons for our own lives.

Types of memoirs

While it’s true that there are plenty of memoirs written about tragic childhoods, abusive marriages or terrible sicknesses, memoirs don’t have to be miserable. There are canine memoirs, eccentric-mother memoirs, travel and celebrity memoirs and a whole sub-genre based around the ‘My Year Of…’ concept. I’m thinking Julie and Julia, where Julie Powell decided to cook her way through the famed French cookery book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking; and Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood, in which she spent a year following the Bible’s instructions to women, literally and figuratively.

You could argue that blogs, which after all, are mostly personal stories, are memoir in short form. Often, a blog will become a book. My memoir, Love Tears & Autism drew on the five years of blog posts I published following my three-year-old son’s diagnosis with ASD.

If you’re writing a memoir, here are three tips.

A memoir is not the same as an autobiography

An autobiography spans a person’s lifetime and doesn’t necessarily have an overarching story arc that ties it together. Sporting or political ‘memoirs’ are more technically biographies and often are not much more than a series of events or anecdotes in chronological order. It’s important to get the facts and details right in this sort of narrative. A memoir, however, tends to focus on a period or significant event in a person’s life, and is more about how the person perceived the events, was challenged by them, and learned from them.

See yourself as the 'main character' of a story

Any good fiction protagonist must be a well-rounded character, with flaws as well as strengths. If you’re only shining off the page of your memoir, readers will close the book in disgust. We all know that real people have warts. Memoir readers want to see a balanced, honestly drawn character.

See the events as a story

Readers have expectations of what a story will give them. They seek challenge, tension and a win (of some kind) at the end. If you know the rules about story structure, you’ll be better placed to write a memoir that will hook readers and give them exactly what they are looking for.

Looking for good examples of memoirs to read and learn from? You’ll find some of my favourites listed on this page of memoir resources.

Cecily Paterson teaches memoir writing in her unexcitingly named online course, Write Your Memoir. Her own memoir, Love Tears & Autism won Third Prize in the 2012 Australian Christian Book of the Year Award. She’s the author of seven MG/YA novels for girls, with an eighth title to be published with Wombat Books in 2020.

Confessions of a Genre Butterfly - Susan J Bruce

Photo copyright Susan J Bruce

The author platform. Do these words fill you with confidence? Do you say ‘I know who I am as an author and I know who I want to reach? I know what my brand is?’

Or do you think, ‘Eerk!’

Earlier this year I realised as I belonged to the second category, I really should do something about it. So I enrolled in Iola Goulton’s appropriately titled course, Kick-start your Author Platform Marketing Challenge. The first few days were fun and I was filled with a sense of purpose. They led me to rethink my author name (that’s another story for another time) and gave me confidence that I was going to succeed. I would make a good website. I would build a social media platform around my brand as an author.

But then we came to the question of genre.

We were given an exercise where we had to identify our genre and find websites of authors who write the same kind of books. The idea was to see what website elements (images, fonts, etc.) are consistent with our genre. If we write romance we want the reader to get a romancey vibe when they visit our website or look for us on social media. If we are a science fiction aficionado we might depict spaceships soaring through nebulae, boldly going where no one has gone before. It makes sense. People should see our name and associate it with our brand so they can know if they will like the kind of books we write.

But what if we don’t write in just one genre?

I know. All the publishers and marketing gurus have crashed to the floor in a dead faint at my words. It makes absolute marketing sense to write in one genre, at least initially. But what if our writing doesn’t fit this pattern?

What if we are a ‘genre butterfly’? What if we flutter from genre to genre like a butterfly flits from flower to flower, collecting all kinds of nectar as it goes on its way.

Our group discussions showed that I was not the only one with this particular affliction, but that didn’t solve our problem. How do we develop an author brand if our writing doesn’t naturally fit one genre?

It must be possible.

Tim Winton comes to mind as a brilliant proponent of literary fiction: stories that are generally more serious and have deep artistic merit. Then there is general fiction. General fiction tends to be more accessible than literary fiction. Some general fiction authors are, I suspect, latent genre butterflies. They gather nectar from different genres and meld it into a new story. The success of a huge number of general fiction authors means that those of us who like variety need not despair. And then there are age-defined categories like young adult (YA) and children’s literature, which can contain multiple genres.

But what if we like to write different types of genre fiction? What if we want to write a cozy mystery followed by a science fiction novel and a love story between two dragons? Can we do that and build our brand as an author? What do we do? There are several options:

1.                  Embrace our eclectic nature. Write what we like, when we like. The catch is that we will probably find it hard to build a brand and to sell books unless we are so prolific that we quickly build up a backlist of several books in each genre.

2.                 Become a genre blender. You like three different genres? Mix ‘em together! I recently read Kerry Nietz’s, Amish Vampires in Space. This science fiction author blended Amish fiction, science fiction, vampire fiction and Christian fiction together to create an excellent space opera with great characters. In his case, merging genres made for excellent marketing. It led me (and many others) to read the book and because I liked it, I bought the sequel (which was great too).

3.                 Establish a unique brand of our own. Genre is a handy way of categorising our writing but it isn’t the only way. We can look at the heart of what we write, find the common themes and build our brand around those themes. 

I wish I wrote contemporary romance or cute cozy mysteries set in a bookstore. Branding would be simpler. But just because branding isn’t simple it doesn’t mean it’s not doable. I’ve chosen to take the third route above. Just about all of my stories, short or long, have themes of overcoming. Many have strong romantic elements, or themes of belonging, and are set in an environment of adventure or danger. Nearly all my work contains animals. Some stories contain deep issues. After a lot of thought I developed my working tagline: Stories of the human spirit – and sometimes other species. If I can write stories that fulfil that promise to the reader, and promote my books accordingly, I’ll be doing well. And should my writing evolve and take on a more speculative bent, I can always change it to Stories of the human spirit – and sometimes alien species J.

My name is Susan J. Bruce and I’m a genre butterfly. How about you?

Go on. Confess in the comments. You know you want to! How do you approach branding as an author?

Edit: Since writing this article I've added some mystery to the mix. The mystery novel is going to happen after all. Check out my website by clicking this link.

Susan J. Bruce, aka Sue Jeffrey, spent her childhood reading, drawing, and collecting stray animals. Now she’s grown up she does the same kinds of things. Sue works part time as a veterinarian, writes stories filled with themes of overcoming, adventure and belonging, and loves to paint animals. Sue won the Short section of the inaugural Stories of Life writing competition and her stories and poems have appeared in various anthologies including Tales of the Upper Room, Something in the Blood: Vampire Stories With a Christian Bite and Glimpses of Light. Her e-book Ruthless The Killer: A Short Story is available on Amazon.com.  You can check out Sue’s animal art on Facebook.