How To Define Memoir? As a Whodunnit.

“IS IT A MEMOIR?” The question was more than a little plaintive, the asker really doubting that what she had submitted met any of the qualifications of our favorite genre. But she sounded really fragile at that moment, so I did not try out on her my new definition of memoir, instead saying something soothing and genuine and somewhat saner than I would say today were you to ask me to define memoir.

I told her that, “Of course it’s memoir,” which it was, because it fulfills the requirements for memoir – a clear sense of what it is about; an argument; a strong voice; a well-defined narrative.

What I didn’t say is what popped into my head recently and I’ve been mulling ever since, and I’m here to try out on you. To me, it seems the truest thing I’ve thought up yet about memoir. It’s this: Memoir is really a fancy crime procedural.

Picture it: You tune into your favorite CSI or Law and Order episode and there on the floor is a corpse, maybe in a pool of blood; perhaps there is broken glass strewn around or some water on the floor, open windows or a smashed-down door. Whatever it is, you immediately know that there is a mystery to be solved. It’s a whodunnit, after all, and you are drawn in from the first moment.

How did this happen, you start to wonder? What do those marks tell us, there on the wall? What’s the meaning of the evening gown or the open box of chocolates? Why does the dead woman have curlers in her hair?

Memoir is the same thing since, if you do your work, when you throw down what is at stake, we dive in and start to see the evidence and begin to solve for x.

I suspect this theory started percolating some years ago when I spent two years behind the scenes in the world of forensic science to write a great big, wild book with Dr. Michael Baden, the world’s finest forensic scientist. He got me access to autopsies and crime scene photos, blood spatter analysis school, a week-long forensic entomology class and much, much more that non-law enforcement people never get to see. I had a blast. My personal motivation for writing the book was to figure out why I watched those shows to begin with. What was it about them that I found so highly addictive? Of course, it became clear quite quickly when I realized that the human mind loves solving puzzles.  What detectives, forensic pathologists and all other manners of investigators get to do all day every day is solve stuff, and those TV shows mimic that life.

Oh, I thought, I see. And, I must admit, that by the time the book came out and we had promoted it, I pretty much gave up those shows. I was done with them. Or so I thought until this crazy idea popped into my head.

No, it seems I did not give up my love for solving things, but merely transferred it to another genre, that of memoir writing, where every day I work with writers worldwide to find their tale, establish what their books are about and help them write something that solves for that x factor.

What is that x factor? It’s what your book is about, and while I’ve written about this a lot, the topic never gets old for me since every piece of memoir has a different x factor, a different answer to the question, “What is this about,” though if you know me at all, you know that the answer never is “it’s about me.” No, it’s not. Not if you want anyone to read it. What it is about is the challenge you give to the reader in your opener — your alcoholism, your need to learn to meditate, your need to find peace in your own backyard — and along the way you will show us the obstacles to that goal, as well as the evidence of how you will solve your own puzzle and ultimately achieve transcendence.

The idea of memoir being like a crime procedural may take a while to warm to, but consider it. And, if you like it, it also gives you a walloping good answer to all those memoir naysayers who think that our favorite genre is all whining, all about people and their problems and all-too- sad.

“You’re wrong,” you can say to your annoying sister-in-law, or know-it-all brother, when one of them yet-again asserts that what you’re writing is a valueless bummer.

“It has enormous value,” you can say. Then explain that your piece of memoir has an x factor, that it is about the myth of closure, or about how dogs do things for people that people cannot do for themselves, or about how real emotional growth requires getting over the things you learned in your family of origin (make sure to grin as you say this one), and how some of those are great mysteries of life waiting to be solved. And, as to the bummer aspect, well, let them have it with the crime procedural explanation and let me know how it goes.

Need more help? Come see me in one of my online classes. The entry-level class, Memoirama, is a one-night, 90-minute class that is taught twice a month, every month but July and August. Follow that with Memoirama 2, and get yourself all set to enroll in the next session The Master Class. Can’t wait to hear about your work in one – or all – of these online memoir classes.

Photo credit: Alan Cleaver on Visualhunt / CC BY