How To Write Someone Else’s Story

AMONG THE TOP INQUIRIES that appear in my inbox each week are requests for information on how to write about someone else. I also get this question in person, at dinner parties and everywhere else I go whenever the topic turns to what I do. Many boomers are helping parents write memoir. Many people are writing about their sick children or spouses, abusive relationships they once had or perfectly happy friendships they enjoy and want to know either how to write someone else’s story, or how to write for someone else. As a memoir coach and writing teacher, I always love this question, even though its answer is more complicated than you might think.

How to Write About Someone Else

If you know me at all, you know I love punch lists. I usually put them at the end of pieces or books, but in this case I’d like you to have a look at mine before you read on. My reasoning here is for you to see writing about someone else as a process and not something you are going to rush through and quickly dispatch from your digital to-do list. After all, you are entering the serious business of writing here, as well as the enormous responsibility of handling someone else’s story, so you want to do it right.

Also, there’s this: After conducting an online search for “memoir interviews,” I was shocked by the glut of bad advice about the art of the interview, most of it making this pursuit seem like a one-to-three easy thing to do. Joyous, yes. Fascinating, absolutely. But easy? Never. And so, let’s start with the punch list for writing about someone else.

Marion’s Punch List for Writing About Someone Else

• Discuss your topic
• Decide on a narrator
• Establish what you need to know
• Do your interviews
• Expect to learn things you never expected to learn
• Check the facts
• Feed and care for your notes
• Experiment with voice
• Write

As you can see above, how to write someone else’s story begins with discussing with that person what the story is about.

If you are writing a piece for someone, is their intent to document their whole life’s tale? If so, I suggest you begin your education in how to write about others by learning the difference between memoir and autobiography. Read that, and then come back here and let’s proceed.

After reading that piece, you now know that if the other person wants you merely to record his life story, you are writing autobiography. While you will benefit from much of what follows, you should now read about best practices in taking an oral history as established by The Oral History Association.

For the rest of you, there is memoir. So let’s move on.

What is a Good Memoir Topic?

Here is some shocking news: When writing memoir about someone else, your topic is not the person. Your topic is a large, universal theme that will make others want to read about that other person in the context of that theme in your piece or in the book you write. The rule of thumb I teach to all my students in my online memoir classes is this:

Memoir is not about what you did.

Memoir is about what you did with it.

In short, memoir is about something you learned after something you’ve been through. But what is that thing? Try to narrow it down and attempt to agree on what the story is actually about. If you can discuss this with the other person, please do, but here’s a tip when dealing with family or friends: Don’t go into these discussions unprepared. Just as you know well to bring a Bundt cake or a Jell-O salad when visiting your great Aunt Mary, I suggest that you never visit a relative empty-handed. Why not bring along my handy dandy little algorithm?

It’s about x as illustrated by y to be told in a z

And then use it. Even if the piece is purely autobiographical, and meant to be read only by the family and closest friends, it will be far more entertaining if you take on a theme and explore it fully. Choosing memoir topics and ideas is an essential skill you need to have.

Find that One, Unifying Theme

Ask yourselves: What is that one, unifying theme that you see in this person’s life? What insights did she gain from her adversities in the war? Perhaps the person was adventurous, or tremendously giving; maybe your friend or relative was a teacher or the one who stuck around when his or her spouse walked out and maybe, as a result of that experience, this person knows something real about how to hold one’s course and keep a family together. Write the piece through that lens. You might even find that your co-writer or subject is quite accommodating to this when she understands that you see her as the very personification of strength or perseverance, or the embodiment of grace under pressure.

What I am referring to is areas of expertise, and everyone has a hundred or so of them. Find yours and/or hers and write about one of these  areas of knowledge that we acquire while we go through life’s ups and downs.

Start thinking more broadly than you might otherwise do – about theme, point of view, narrator and areas of expertise — and suddenly that interesting aunt of your might be someone we all might like to read about.

Who is the Narrator of Your Memoir?

Who will be the narrator of this tale? Is this your parent/child/spouse? Who is narrating this book? Are you? For help on this decision, I strongly suggest reading this post on who is narrating your tale. It will help you with perspective and point of view.

How to Conduct a Memoir Interview

Now let’s move on to those interviews.

Sometimes we merely want to write about someone else as a topic. In my first book, Another Name for Madness, I chronicled my mother’s decline into Alzheimer’s disease. She began her descent at 49-years-old. But the story is not about that. If it was, why would you read it? Following my own little algorithm, I can say that the book is about what love will bear as illustrated by by my family’s struggle with our mother’s decline into Alzheimer’s that was told in a  book.

Your assignment is the same. The story cannot be about someone else. It must be about something of universal interest that this person illustrates. Again, why else, would anyone read it?

“Oh, but she is so interesting,” you’ll reply, to which I’ll reply, “And that’s what the reader will tune into: What makes her interesting? Do you know?”

Dig deep, and suddenly you are no longer writing a story about your mother, but writing about the will it takes to survive the death of a beloved spouse of 52 years as illustrated by your indefatigable mother in a book-length piece of memoir.

Better, right? See the shift? Feel the interest zing? That’s what you want to get at in your interviews.

Expect To Learn Things in Your Memoir Interview

Setting out to write about her, I realized I knew painfully little about my mother, except that I adored her. And guess what? That adoration was a real set of blinders, giving me a distinct lack of curiosity. My first assignment then, was to get real and dig. So dig I did.

I interviewed her friends, setting out to cover the span of her short life until the illness. Two of those I interviewed had been pals with her since birth; another was her college roommate, and several had known her only as married woman and mother.

In that, I collected real data and came away with a set of easily-visualized scenes for the reader to experience. Why was this needed? Because before I took her away via that dreadful illness, I had to make you fall in love with her and I did that with scenes. By the time she begins to fade, you value what I was losing.

Making Lists Will Guide You

You can do the same. How? Make a list of the people you can talk to who know or knew your subject. Next, come up with a list of questions. And then be ready to partially ignore that list. Why? Because you also want to develop the flexibility to let the conversation take you in new and unexpected directions. So, know your questions, and make sure you get that answers to those, but also let the person direct some of the conversation. After all, they may know things you never thought to ask about.

Such was the case when interviewing one of my mother’s friends from childhood, who observed my mother as a young mother and noted the differences in tone with which she treated her two children, my sister and me. My sister was a small child and apparently, my mother was more tentative with her. I was born weighing nearly ten pounds and that, combined with my status as the second child, made my mother less nervous and allowed her to treat me more casually and with greater confidence. This observation on the part of my mother’s lifelong friend, Elise, gave me the leeway to talk about what she observed in my sibling relationship and what else Elise had observed about my mother and her children. As a result, the information I received gave me some of the richest material in my book. But I never expected it to occur. So be flexible and reap the rewards.

Memoir Requires Checking Your Facts

How to check those facts?

Look up the obvious ones – names, dates, places. Who was president? Who was alive and who was dead? Ask the person you are interviewing if there are scrapbooks or photo albums available. Perhaps there are college or high school yearbooks for you to use to check dates and spellings of names.

Never take anyone’s spelling, or memory, as the authority that it first seems. Check everything you are told.

How to Care for Your Memoir Interview Notes

When conducting memoir interviews, feel free to use your phone or digital recorder, but keep in mind that a literal recording gets no atmosphere. This is why, along with your digital recorder or phone, you must also record information in a notebook while you are doing the interview.

Having a notebook on hand will reward you mightily, giving you several immediate advantages over an interview done purely by recording. In that notebook, jot down what words make your interviewee lean forward, or fidget, what their eyebrows or mouth do as they talk of the more emotional moments of life. Note body language and posture. What is she wearing? Does he fiddle with his wedding ring or change the subject? Write it down. Capture the scene.

When I get home from an interview, I immediately transcribe all of my notes, both recorded and those in my notebook. Why? Because nothing embeds ideas like transcriptions, forcing you to go over that scene again and really think deeply about what you just heard and witnessed.

And when you are done with that notebook and that recording, file them in a way that makes them easy to locate and identify. You may want to go back in and listen and read again. And remember that under the worst of circumstances — that being if a legal issue is raised in your reporting — you may be responsible for proceeding those notes. Do not lose them.

How to Find a Voice When Writing Someone Else’s Tale

Finding your voice is different than establishing a narrator, and before you read this you might want to go back and re-read that piece about point of view and perspective. Then you will be ready to think about voice.

Your writing voice is the deeply personal tone you will take throughout the piece and, at least in the first few drafts, will probably sound more like an imitation of numerous other writers than it will of who you are in this piece. Just keep writing. Your voice will eventually drown out the one mimicking Ernest Hemingway or Mary Karr. Are you in pain? Are you amused? Are you on an adventure tale, learning something along the way as you enthusiastically lap up some lessons of life? Do you willingly know what you know, or was it embedded in you against your will?

These are the kinds of things you want to contemplate as you make your first attempts at getting the voice right. And when writing about someone else, these questions remain the same. Who is she in this tale and what relationship does she have to the lessons she has learned along the way? And if you are writing this together, the question becomes who are you in this piece and who is the subject, and how are you to convey the presence of those two people, if at all?

How to Write about Someone Else

But none of what has come above includes the actual writing, now does it? See how much work precedes, but is included in, that writing process? It’s a big job, and you must take it seriously because you, dear writer, are now engaging in the fine art of non-fiction, meaning that this must be accurate.

As you prepare to write, remember these points:

• Every person in a piece of memoir is there to do a specific job.
• We are not interested in someone’s entire life story.
• We are interested in a theme, in an arc, specifically in what this one story is about.
• We are interested in them in the context of one, specific tale.

Now your job is to select what to use from the information you have gathered. How? Include only those details that heighten and add to that tale.

Oh, No. Sit Still

Uh oh. I see what you are doing. You are getting out of the chair. No you don’t. You gotten this far. You want to write this, though it is right here that most writers go clean their kitchens or make soup. Oh yes, I know: You loved the work you’ve done to date, but have you noticed that to date it has all been about everything but the writing? Now, to the hard part. But first, ask yourself what it is that makes this the hard part? Why is writing memoir about someone else so difficult? I’ll tell you. In a word: Intimacy.

That’s right. I’ve been a memoir coach and teacher for more than twenty years, and through that work I have faced this moment with thousands of writers, and what I’ve learned is that it’s intimate in a way that nothing else is. Because of that, this is where things fall apart, especially if there was an unhappy relationship between you and this other person.

In this case, a writer is tempted to bolt from the desk simply because of this common sense question: Who wants to willingly go back into that kind of abusive relationship?

Memoir versus Therapy

Let me be clear here: That is not what I am asking you to do. Memoir writing is not therapy, where you re-inhabit, or reanimate, the experience. What I am asking you to do is quite different. I am asking you to look at it from afar. From here. Now. I am asking you to treat those people who did not treat you well as – wait for it – characters.

Let me repeat this here: If you are writing about someone who hurt you, look at him from here, now, with all you have on you, with all the information you have gathered. As a character.

If you are writing about someone who has done you no harm, try this: Take a deep breath, exhale, and pretend you are inviting this person to a very exclusive dinner party at which you will expect everyone to bring their best game.

Nope, Uncle Henry does not get to attend. Why? Because he monopolizes the conversation and talks about nothing but his (bad) health, specifically about his bunions. No, he does not get to come to the table. In fact, he is banned for life. Invite this other person instead because she is someone who will entertain your guests. Make your characters show up with their best conversation skills, their best stories and make them work hard. Don’t let a single one of them blah, blah, blah at your table. Instead, provoke them to tell their bountiful tales.

Getting Control of Your Story

This way of looking at others serves two purposes: It puts you in control and it makes you take only the best material from what you heard and recorded from your interviews. No bunion stories, please. Not at this dinner party.

Go on. I know you can do it.

Want more? Try this post on Five Insanely Simple Steps to Plan a Book.

Perhaps at this point you are ready to write memoir. Maybe you need a class in how to do so. Come join me. I have several online memoir writing classes running every month. I hope to see you in one of them.

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