Memoirs can be as different as the individual lives they represent, and that is part of why they are such a wonderful and valuable genre of storytelling. As we’ve said before, the act of writing a memoir is also powerful, healing, and transformative. But it’s also a lot of work. For any long project, part of ensuring your success is setting yourself up with everything you need. Writers love a trinket or special tool, and you should absolutely find whatever makes writing feel good—that perfect keyboard or pen, that particular mug, or even that computer program that makes some things easier. But I think we all know that the real things we need to have for a successful memoir are not things you can “add to cart” and set on a desk. In the video below Amanda discusses 5 must-haves for a successful memoir and scroll on for Emily’s version below!
Reading is essential to improving your writing skills, and reading like a writer means seeing past the glossy end-result into a book’s structure and the author’s choices about how the story is told. Learning to read like a writer doesn’t mean learning how to merely imitate but learning the craft by example. We’re excited to announce the launch of our Memoir Method Book Club! Your first session is free, so sign up to save your seat here.
A Clear Message
Your first memoir must have is not a thing at all. It is a clear topic and a clear message. These two things go hand in hand and are deeply connected, but are also distinct things that should be differentiated. When we talk about your memoir’s topic, we are talking about the actual thing that happened to you or the thing that you did. The topic is concrete and specific: my cancer diagnosis and my journey to remission; my first year teaching in an urban school; adopting my second child; going through particular trauma.
Too many people don’t narrow the topic and, by default, the topic ends up being their whole life. Unless you have had a very boring life, your whole life is not going to fit in a single book in a clear and compelling way. That does not mean you can’t include scenes from other times in your life; it means rethinking how you include those so that your topic stays clear.
The second thing you need is a message. Your message is simply what you want your book to teach. Think of it as the thing you learned and therefore the thing you want to teach others, or as your theme or moral. The message should be more abstract and broader so more people can find common ground with you through the message than through the topic: trust in God and move forward and know that you will be okay; when you set out to heal yourself, understand that you will have to leave parts of your old self behind; when you set out to understand where you come from, your identity will be shaken in that process for the better. With a narrowed, concrete topic and a clear, broadly appealing message in place, the next step is choosing the audience who will most readily receive that message
A Target Audience
A second must-have for any memoir is a defined audience. Many writers resist this, insisting their memoir is “for everyone,” and while that may be true in spirit, it will not help you when you sit down to write. The purpose of naming a particular audience is not to write to them line-by-line—you must write for yourself and edit later—but to give you a practical filter for what matters, what to include, and what to cut.
Don’t stop at generic demographics like “women 35–65” or “middle-class, East Coast parents.” Those markers don’t tell you how readers will connect to your story. Reframe audience as psychodemographics: how they think, where they go, who they spend time with, what gives them joy or causes frustration, what their worldview and way of being look like. That richer picture reveals what elements of your story will land and why.
You don’t need to be constantly imagining readers while drafting—that will derail your voice—but a defined audience helps you make the many small choices that add up in a book. When a scene could be a flashback or a brief contextual note, when a detail could stay or go, let your psychodemographic audience guide those micro-decisions. With topic, message, and audience in place, you gain a practical framework and growing confidence to make smarter, clearer choices as you write.
A Working Outline
We may sound like a broken record with this one, but an outline is the third must-have in any memoir writer’s journey. An outline helps you hold a 200‑page story in your head. Its keeps you moving forward instead of circling the same opening chapters.
An outline is a scaffold for your structure and a writing plan to help you over the 4-12 month drafting process. We recommend approximately 20 chapters (give or take!). You start to divide up the story in those chapters with key turning points, and that becomes visible structure lets you rearrange, develop, and test the arc on paper. It also gives you a start on proposals and traditional or hybrid press requirements.
That doesn’t mean an outline is a prison you must exist in throughout the drafting process. It’s a working plan, and some times working plans need adjustments as you go. But you can’t edit a blank page, and it’s much harder to be clear in how to adjust your plan if you never wrote it down or formalized it.
Accountability
Writing a memoir is hard work. It takes stamina, focus, and patience over a long period of time. You are capable of that kind of work, we have no doubt about that. But another element of what sets the work of creative writing apart from other kinds is that for sometimes for that long period of time, you are the only one prioritizing that it gets done.
We are often so conditioned to prioritize others over ourselves (especially women), so often this means everything other than your creative work comes first. When everything else comes first, the things on the bottom of the list often fall off or get postponed to rare and far-apart times. This makes it very hard to finish, because when your only working sessions are weeks or even months apart, the task itself becomes harder. The mental effort to remember your structure, emotionally connect with the scene you want to write, and get into your writer’s frame of mind is greater the longer between each session.
When we reach out to find accountability, then we are finding people who will hold us responsible to ourselves. We deserve to be able to prioritize our creative efforts in a way that they don’t fall to the bottom of the list four weeks out of five, and having active accountability helps us keep on track.
That does not mean that accountability needs to be punitive. Setting punishments for yourself or having someone scold you isn’t going to be sustainable over the long term. Supportive accountability looks like sharing your goals with someone who is invested in your progress and can help you remember why it is a priority.
Community
One of the fifth memoir must-haves is community. The cultural vision of the lone wolf author—locking yourself in a cabin or a snowed-in hotel—doesn’t serve most memoir writers. You can write a book by yourself, but you will not have a rewarding memoir experience if you won’t let anybody else in; once you publish you have let people in, so you might as well start the writing process by sharing ideas, wins, and even some of the writing.
Community gives you support that unlocks creativity: the most unencumbered, brilliant ideas flow when you feel totally supported. Being around others who are doing the same work helps you adopt the identity and mindset of a writer. Regular contact—a weekly cadence in the memoir method or any steady group—keeps you energized and re-energized by high‑minded conversations about craft.
Community does more than cheer you on or offer small feedback; it makes you part of a writing community, and that means you are a writer. Feeling like a professional writer who deserves to write this book speeds your process and makes it feel better at the same time. Whether you join a group, work with a coach, or assemble these must-haves on your own, community is simple to get and it will give you clarity.
PS. Searching the internet for writing, publishing, and book marketing advice can be exhausting to say the least! If you’re ready for hands on, one-on-one support for your memoir, check out The Memoir Method. We’d love to welcome you into this nine-month group program specially designed for women writing their first memoirs. And don’t forget, if you’d like to chat with Amanda about the program (or any other services we offer), you can book a free consult any time!
