Writing Your Memoir: Finding the Theme

If you have written your memoir, are writing your memoir, or are contemplating the idea of writing your memoir, congratulations. Telling your story is a vulnerable undertaking, especially if this is your first foray into writing a book.

The crux of a good memoir is in its storytelling. You, as the author, are responsible for fleshing out the people and events in your life as characters, reflections, and perceptions. Even before building up all of that, what is your foundation?

Your readers are selfish (which isn’t a bad thing), and they want to see themselves or their needs and thoughts reflected in your story.

You need a theme.

You might not find your theme until you’re done writing parts of the story, but that’s okay! Follow your process, but don’t forget your theme. Ideally, a theme should be more than one word, should show us the tension (as opposed to resolution) of your story, and it should feel familiar.

Click on the arrows to answer each question.

Why should my theme be more than one word?

Themes can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. Your memoir is your story, and you are multi-dimensional. Themes like “love” and “friendship” are rich and complicated, but because of all their moving parts, they should not act alone.

Let’s use “love” as an example of a simple theme. Stories about love, while enjoyable, seem predictable. What kind of love are we talking about? What kind of dynamic does it develop and explain?

This ties in to the common writing advice of avoiding clichés.

This isn’t about a character saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs!” This is about connecting your theme to your story.

Let’s amplify the theme of “love” to “people re-learning how to communicate with one another in a relationship where small arguments become big misunderstandings.”

In this 21-word theme, whether I used the word “love” doesn’t matter. I could have, but my purpose was to more accurately describe the dynamic between my two characters.

Fun Tip: It helps, when you’re writing your memoir, to think about the people you’re describing as characters.

When the theme of your memoir uses more than one word, you avoid coming across as simple and predictable. People will read your story to find out what happens at the end, but what matters most is the journey that gets them there.

Why should my theme show my story's tension?

Why should my theme feel familiar?

Your story will be original because your experience within this theme is original. Keep this in mind as you’re writing your memoir. Your theme might change as you continue to reflect on your experiences, and that’s okay.

In case no one has told you this already, we can’t wait for you to show off your story!