How to Start a Memoir

If, like me, you have a place in your house that looks like the photo above, you also have the perfect metaphor for how to start a memoir. From my years as a memoir coach, memoir editor and memoir teacher, I know the question of how to begin plagues writers. They have the story, they have lived the experience, but no matter if the piece is a blog post, essay, op-ed or long-form essay, that opener can frequently feel – and remain – elusive. Let’s fix that, shall we?

How to Start a Memoir

The illustration above shows lots of chargers. In that pile there are chargers for a laptop, an iPad, two different phones, a portable speaker and a mini portable, all-purpose charger. This is the state in which many of us live, where different generations of Apple products require different chargers. Maybe it’s not the same with other companies’ products, but as any Apple user knows, the lack of a universal charger is a market defining aspect of Apple. And the only good thing I can think to say about that is that it makes a nifty metaphor for how to write a lede for any piece of memoir.

Let’s start there. The word “lede” comes from when newspaper type was set in lead. The metal was melted, type was created, ink was slathered, and pages were produced. Thus, the word lede was born, to differentiate the opening of a piece from the lead used to print it.

Here, for instance, is the lead type from my first byline in The New York Times. The linotype men, as they were known, would award us with one of these in a glorious rite of passage onto the pages of that great newspaper. (Yes, it’s backwards, and the linotype people, as well as printer and editors could read backwards and upside down to proof trays of lead type). Imagine my delight when I got line of type pictured here. I keep it on my desk to remind me to experience that same joy when writing.

Good ledes beckon us. They invite us into the piece. They also are the first identifier of what the piece is about and where it is going.

Just yesterday, in my role as a memoir teacher, I was speaking to a writer who was stymied by not having a lede. She was stopped. She kept saying that she could not figure out how to open her book. I get it. It can take time. But do not let it stop you.

What to do?

Keep writing.

The fact is that this fine writer possesses thousands of other written words in compelling scenes and complete acts. She is simply unsure which vignette, or plain or fancy sentence might best start her book. So, she must write on.

Keep writing. It’s the advice I give to everyone, since frequently, it is only after writing a full first draft, and reading that draft, that will you identify what you are arguing in your piece of memoir. Do not despair. Just write. You’ll get there. The single worst thing you can do is stop over an unwritten lede and let that prevent the writing.

How to Choose a Great Opening to a Memoir

Much like that mound of chargers, the right lede exists somewhere in your pile of thoughts. Sometimes writers get one instantly and on demand. How wonderful. But mostly, we wrestle with them. In that case, it’s your job to write a bunch of ledes and then match the one that powers up the piece and snap it on top. That is how to start a memoir.

In the same way only the correct charger will fit and power up an Apple device, only an appropriate lede will do the required job of inviting the reader in, informing them of what’s at stake and creating the curiosity needed to power on onto the next lines.

In that, numbers are usually a bad place to go. While opening a piece by writing, “I was born on May 5, 1995, on Parsons Boulevard, in Flushing, Queens, New York” may indeed be accurate, it will turn off any reasonable reader who immediately feels the burden of remembering all those specifics. Now, if you were actually born on a street corner – literally, in public, after your mother went into labor – that might be interesting, as in “Traffic screeched to a halt on the corner of Forty-third and Eighth eighteen years ago when my mother dropped to her knees and dropped me, newly born, onto a sidewalk amid midtown lunch hour.” Now, you’ve got me. But otherwise, readers want something other than mere facts.

What do readers want when reading memoir? Readers want story. Story is a magic carpet that takes us somewhere. So, go on: Let us step onto yours. Enchant us. Scare us, make us spit our tea onto the screen, delight us, stop us with a gasp, but remember always that story is what we came here for, and nothing kills story like a sequence of facts.

Powering up a piece requires understanding what the piece is about. What is your piece about? At The Memoir Project, we use The Memoir Project Algorithm. It goes like this:

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

It’s about something universal as illustrated by something deeply personal to be told in some form.

The algorithm does two things. First, it shoves you off center stage by telling you, plain and simple, that the piece is not about you. Instead, the piece is about something universal, as illustrated by something deeply personal to be told in some form. That “z” is always the form, or length, whether that form be a blog post, essay, op-ed, long-form essay or book.

The second thing the algorithm does is to say to your conscious and subconscious mind “just give me everything you’ve got on this one topic,” thereby narrowing down the field of thought from, oh, everything you’ve ever heard, felt, thought, eaten, read, bought, rejected and known to one single topic, such as mercy, forgiveness, resiliency or endurance.

In other words, the algorithm is a lifesaver for writers. I use it every day and invite you to do the same. Use it as you think about how to start a memoir and you will be forever blessed with its power.

So, what is your piece about? Write your lede based on that.

To do so, try looking at a lede as one of life’s great and rare opportunities to direct the conversation where you want it to go. Think about that. Consider walking into a family dinner made up of a crowded, loud table and being heard over the din when you announce, “Okay, people, listen up. Here’s what we’re talking about tonight.” Enjoy that, since for once, you get to choose the topic. Consider how empowering that is, and you’ll begin to see the power of a great lede.

Another fine metaphor for a lede is that it is the lens you get to place on the end of the nose of your reader. Place it and, to take this metaphor further, make sure it’s not cloudy, smudgy or cracked. You want to give your reader 20/20 vision into what to expect in the rest of the piece.

Where to Read Good Examples of Ledes

The number one rule of writing is reading. You must read all the time. What are you reading? I suggest you read over your head. Get that subscription to The New Yorker and read it. Get that subscription to The Paris Review and read it. Read the books that appear on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. And yes, without exception, read great poetry.

But here is a tip that I give to everyone I work with: Read good critics on any form of art. In other words, read good movie reviews. Read good reviews of Broadway shows. Read book reviews. And when you do, study how the writer zeros in on what the movie, play or book is about. Not the plot: What it is about, as in that x factor, referred to above.

Start there. Change your habits and get some muscle into your reading and it will strengthen your writing.

And then there is this: Here is a post about how to write the perfect first sentence of a memoir, complete with a list of great openings lines from fine literature.

Mind the Gap

How to start a memoir? Many memoir writers begin by creating interest between what was and what is, or what is and what was. They do so by creating what I call “The Gap.” If you’ve ever been to London, you recall the continuous announcements in the Tube stations to “Mind the Gap,” meaning to be aware of the space between the train and the platform.

Well, you need to mind your gap when writing a memoir lede.

When pondering how to start a memoir, can you open with a page or so of the worst of it and then jump back and tell the story from the chronological start, specifically from when things were not that bad. That’s a gap that will grab a reader’s interest by requiring them to ask themselves something like, “Wow, how is that person ever going to sober up?” Once they ask that, they’re hooked. Alternately, you can open with the best moment of this life experience and, after a page or two, jump back to the worst. That way, a reader carries into the story the promise that you not only survived but thrived, and that you can and will endure in your story of the terrible clever damage of abuse or decline.

Your assignment as a writer of a fine lede is to mind the gap by drawing from something dramatic to show us the promise of the book, specifically, suggesting the transcendent change we will witness in its pages.

How to Locate Your Lede   

When pondering how to start a memoir, remember that there are many ways to approach a piece of writing. In the case of memoir, it is helpful to remember that all memoir writing asks a question. What’s yours?

Another fine way to approach the opening of a memoir is to remember that every piece of memoir is a three-legged stool, those legs being the answers to the following three questions:

1. What is this about?
2. What is your argument
3. What scenes from your life will be deployed to prove that argument?

The Power of a Good Lede

In all, when considering how to start a memoir, perhaps the most important thing to remember is the image of those chargers. When you pop that lede on the top of the piece it should electrify the work, as well as the reader. But just like those chargers, only one will do. Only one will fit. And as a seasoned writer who has experienced falling in love with opening sentences and then needing to let them go, I offer you this: Make sure the lede is on brand for the piece. Too many times I’ve read gorgeous, literary, lilting ledes that have nothing at all to do with the piece that follows.

Like those chargers, the lede must fit the thing it’s meant to power up. So be precise. Write well, choose well and think about the argument of your piece, and get a lede that charges up that argument.

Want more help? Come see me in any one of my online memoir classes.

Memoirama: Live, 90 minutes. Everything you need to write what you know.

Memoirama 2. Live, two hours. Limited to seven writers. What you need to know to structure a book.

How to Write Opinion Pieces: Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live, 90 minutes. Get your voice out into the world.

And keep in mind that we are always keeping a list of those who want to get in the next Master Class, the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. Live, once a month. Limited to seven writers who are determined to get a first draft of their memoir finished in six months.

Photo by Bruno Figueiredo on Unsplash