Writing Lessons: What to Include in Your Memoir

WHAT TO INCLUDE IN your memoir? What gets left in? What needs to be edited out? How in the world is a writer to decide? When newly-published author, Sharon Dukett, approached me with this topic, I thought it would make a perfect Writing Lessons post. And it does. Sharon has just published her memoir, No Rules, with She Writes Press. Read along and learn how to decide that to include in your memoir.

What to Include in Your Memoir

by Sharon Dukett

When I revisited my earlier draft of what would become my memoir, No Rules, I knew it was too long. I hadn’t looked at it in years and I wanted to complete it. I’d signed up for a class where the instructor asked me how many words I’d written, and I realized I had never counted. I just wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I kept hoping to figure out the ending but I couldn’t find one. After all, how do you write an ending for your life? You are still alive. And how do you remove content that was important to you?

These are the dilemmas that memoir writers face.

When I finally figured out the length, I had over 170,000 words and no ending. By then I knew that 80,000 words was ideal and 100,000 words was the limit. I needed to cut my book by almost half.

My first hope was that it was really two books. What could be better? I’d met Frank McCourt, the author of Angela’s Ashes, when he’d just published his second memoir, ‘Tis. I’d asked him if he’d originally written the two books as one and he told me he had. Wouldn’t it be great if I had the draft of two books already written? I spent some time imagining where I could end one and start the other.

I had no shortage of material. The book takes place in the early 1970s, beginning from when I ran away from home at sixteen to join the hippie counterculture, and continuing for three years. During that time, I had roamed from California to Boston, hitchhiked across Canada, and joined an off-the-grid commune in upstate New York. I had enough material to make this into three books. But would anyone want to read three volumes about my life?  I did have some great stories to share, and I’d already left several of them out. How could I possibly cut another half?

My first step was to take an inventory of every chapter, write a brief summary of what was in it, and identify the takeaway for the reader. It was pointed out to me that readers have no interest in learning about the life of Sharon Dukett. But they do have an interest in reading about the human truths of another’s story that allows them to connect to it on some level. This helped me realize that interesting experiences were less important if they didn’t contain that element.

In addition to each chapter, the book as a whole needed an overall takeaway for the reader. What was the message I wanted to convey? What about my experiences did I want the reader to understand at the end?

As I went through the inventory chapter by chapter, I saw the major turning point to the story. It involved becoming aware of how much of my life had been influenced by the rules I was expected to follow as a girl and as a woman. And with that, my title No Rules was born. It is a title with a double meaning. At the beginning I am freeing myself from the rules my parents put in place for me, but the women’s movement awakened me to the rules enforced to keep women in their place.

Once I understood what I wanted the book to convey, it became much easier to part with my darlings. Did they forward the message of the book? Did they show how my life was influenced by the rules that were oppressing me?

Even characters had to be cut, but when you are writing memoir, characters are real people. It can be difficult to eliminate them without feeling strong emotions. By applying the same technique to your characters, you can ask what their role is in your story, rather than in your life. You may need them as the story moves forward, but if not, let them go. I found it easier to do this by archiving my original draft and never actually deleting them.  I’ve told myself that I may be able to use them in the future.

I should add that most books, including memoir, also have lesser themes that run throughout the story. You can keep these if they add interest to the book and contribute to the denouement where resolutions occur for any final conflicts.

When I finally reached 110,000 words, I felt I had cut as much as I could. I knew it wasn’t enough, so I asked for help. A woman I casually knew was an avid reader. We were just close enough that I felt I could ask her for help, but distant enough that I believed she would be objective. I asked her if she would read my manuscript and mark up the parts that she felt could be deleted. She agreed. I explained my book and its message, then I handed her two volumes of double spaced printed pages. I also gave her my new chapter with the ending I had just written.

Three weeks later she returned them, along with a grid she had created. The grid was a great idea. It could be useful for anyone editing a memoir. For each chapter she had a column with a rating from 1 to 10. You could do this by scene as well. Then she rated the chapter on how much it contributed to my takeaway. When we sat down and discussed it, she recommended that I cut the most from the least contributing chapters. She had made some notes throughout my manuscript that helped. When I was done using her suggestions, I had 93,000 words.

She also told me I needed to rewrite the ending. It wasn’t working.

This was my worst fear, since I’d struggled with finding it all along. As I worked through my edits on the second to last chapter, I tried to imagine where I should go next to end it. That’s when I realized why I was finding it difficult. I had already wrapped up the story in that second to last chapter, and anything else I added was unnecessary. I made a few changes, revised my Epilogue, and I was done. It was just under 91,000 words and my story was complete.

No Rules, an excerpt

From No Rules: A Memoir by Sharon Dukett

Chapter 1

January 1971

South Windsor, Connecticut

I slipped the floor-length dress I’d sewn from a purple Indian print bedspread over my head and pulled it down to cover the two pairs of long pants, three sweaters, and four pairs of underwear I’d put on moments before—then realized how huge my waist looked. If I didn’t wear my coat to cover these clothes, my mother would realize something was wrong. I yanked my dress sleeves over all my other sleeves. If anything showed, I’d be screwed.

While stuffing a pair of jeans and my fake suede jacket with a peace sign on the shoulder into a paper bag, I scanned the closet for my sandals. I’d need sandals in Southern California. I was certain it would be hot there, even in January.

With my meager belongings stashed for my journey, I took a last brief look at my room— the room in which I’d spent twelve of my sixteen years living in—and wondered how I could abandon all my things: the FM radio that my parents had given me for Christmas three weeks earlier, the guitar I had begged for when I was twelve, my notebooks full of poetry I’d written over the last four years. Above my twin-size bed was a poster I’d made with magic markers the previous spring, flowers and peace signs forming a border around large decorative letters that read, “War is Not Healthy For Children and Other Living Things.”

“Don’t get hung up on it,” I coached myself. “It’s only stuff.”

I crammed my arms into the sleeves of my brown corduroy winter coat, and could barely bend them. Grabbing the paper bag and my school books, I dashed toward the kitchen, knowing my mother was waiting there to say good-bye before I left for school. I took a deep breath.

“You’re wearing your new dress.” She sounded suspicious; I avoided eye contact. “I didn’t realize you had finished making it.”

“Yeah, I finished it last night. I’m late for the bus. I have to go.” I dove past her.

“What’s in that bag?”

“Gym clothes,” I shot back without turning around.

“It’s awful big for gym clothes.”

“I’ve got to run, okay? Bye.”

I bolted out the side door and let it shut behind me, not looking back to see my mother for what might be the last time in my life. But I couldn’t think about that. If I did, I couldn’t leave, and I had to leave. This was my only opportunity.

I knew she was standing by the door, following me with her eyes, that worried frown cemented on her lined, sad face.

While closing the chain link gate behind me at the end of our driveway, I recalled the dreams I’d had throughout my childhood where I tried to escape through this gate. I was always running with legs of lead that made me move in slow motion, trying desperately to run faster as long arms reached out to drag me back. I never knew what I was running from in those dreams, but I always awoke before escaping. I couldn’t let that happen now.

Dirty snow lined the road, remnants of yesterday’s storm. I snickered at it. Sunny California, here I come, I thought. Only one last ride on the school bus. My heart raced, making me almost dizzy.

Author bio: Sharon Dukett worked in a number of positions including cocktail waitress, medical claims examiner, computer programmer, certified PMP project manager, and deputy director in state government. In her debut memoir, No Rules, she was inspired to write about her awakening to feminism and her own strength during an early 1970s counterculture journey. Sharon wanted to capture an era that is often misunderstood to share a personal account of the growth that emerged and changed our culture. Sharon writes a blog titled Then and Now that she shares on her website and is working on a novel with a focus on climate change.

I hope you enjoyed reading about what to include in your memoir here in this marvelous guest post. Want more? Please come take a class with me and let me teach you how to write memoir.

• Memoirama: The everything-you-need-to-get-started-writing-memoir class. Live, online memoir class with Q&A. 90 minutes. This is the class to get you started writing what you know.
• ​Memoirama 2: Book structure. Period. No one is born knowing how to structure a book and no book can exist without structure. Book structure was taught to me by four of the best editors in NY publishing for my four published books. This course gets your structure up and supporting your story. Two hours. Live. You and six other writers.
• ​How to Write Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live. Ninety minutes. Co-taught with a former Pulitzer Prize juror, newspaper editor, weekly newspaper columnist and host of a nationally syndicated public radio show. Get your voice our into the world.
• ​The Master Class: Open to those who are writing book-length memoir. Seven writers. Six months. Once a month. All live. Get your first draft written.

And don’t forget to listen to my podcast. It’s called QWERTY, and it’s by, for and about writers.