When you set out to write your memoir, you will come across challenges. One thing that can derail you—and can cause most people to struggle and never make it to the drafting phase—is your outline.
Many people struggle to put together their outline. Sometimes they’ll even say, “Forget it, I’m going to be a pantser.” Pantser is a term that we use to describe someone who starts writing without an outline and sees where the story takes them. If you try to write your memoir by the seat of your pants, it’s going to make things so much harder.
An outline will give you the structure you’re looking for. From today on, whenever you think of the word “outline,” I want you to replace that word with the term “structure.”
Why Structure Matters
There are several important benefits from having a solid structure. First, your readers will recognize how things are organized on the page. When we read a book, we intuitively realize when a scene is picking up the pace and approaching something exciting.
When I think about structure, I think about building a house. Builders sit at the computer and hash out what the house needs—bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, an office, and more. They plan out, on paper, where all of it should go, such as the technical stuff, plumbing and electric, which is another layer of the outline. Finally, they take the plan and head out to the building site.
This is where structure works for builders and for you as a writer. You start a building by laying the foundation. Once the foundation is done, you frame the house and begin to see where each of the rooms will be built. It’s the same for your outline.
Without an outline, we can never have the structure we need to write a memoir. Structure helps you move quickly and efficiently through the writing process, and with much less self-doubt. When we already know what will go where, it’s one less thing to worry about.
When we create an outline, we’re taking care of what each chapter will do within the larger book. Writing a memoir is personal and intense. Structure is necessary so that we know what we’re going to work on every day.
There are four types of structures you can use to outline your memoir, and each one has its pluses and minuses. I have a favorite, which I’ve trademarked as The Memoir Method, that I’ll save for last.
The Three-Act Structure
The most common type of structure we see for any kind of narrative is the three-act structure.
We have three acts that will tell you what goes where. Act one covers the first 25 percent of the book. Act two covers the next 50 percent of the book, and act three covers the remaining 25 percent of the book.
The first act sets the stage and places us in the moment when everything changed. By the end of the first act, you should be entering a new world where you’re unfamiliar with what you’re seeing, experiencing, and feeling. Act two should be the “meat” of your story, which shows you experiencing all of the ups and downs, and what you learned from them. Finally, act three wraps up the story as you head toward that climactic moment when you learned what you needed to learn.
The reason why I discourage some authors from using the three-act structure is because of what’s called the “saggy center.” Remember, act one should take up the first 25 percent of the book, and act three should cover the last 25 percent. That means if you’re writing a two-hundred-page memoir, act two will need to be 50 percent of the book, or a hundred pages. That’s the saggy center. I’ve written dozens of books, but when I think about writing a hundred pages with no other structure, I start to sweat.
However, the three-act structure is tried and true. Movies and television shows almost always follow this structure, where something significant happens at 25 percent and 75 percent into the story. When I watch a movie, I like to watch and see if I can guess what point they are in the three-act structure. You can try this the next time you’re watching Netflix.
I’ve found that when you’re developing your memoir, that second act tends to trip people up. They get stuck and need more specificity. That’s the reason why the three-act structure doesn’t always work for people the way that they hope it will.
The Thematic Structure
Thematic structure is useful for memoirs that are more specific, such as business or leadership memoirs, which we do a lot of at Page & Podium.
I recently visited someone who was working with her sister on a hybrid memoir and recipe book for their family. I suggested the thematic structure to her. When we use thematic structure, we start by writing down all the themes we want to cover in our book. Then we pull stories from our lives and experiences, or sometimes others’ lives and experiences, that match those themes. Thematic structure is more common for nonfiction that is on the edge of memoir, because it focuses more on the message than the story.
In a traditional memoir, we lean on story-based structure to show what we learned rather than telling it. For example, we want to bring in real life and dramatize it instead of explaining our life lessons and wisdom. The thematic structure flips it. Instead of showing the lessons, we tell the lessons and use those stories to back it up. The woman I mentioned earlier planned to share recipes in the context of the family occasions in which those recipes lived, such as a favorite Christmas, Thanksgiving, or birthday cake recipe.
In many ways, this is the easiest way to write your memoir, because you are literally free. Stories aren’t required to fall in chronological order. Themes or examples don’t necessarily go in order either. I think this can work extremely well, but I also find that a lot of people I talk to about writing their memoir are looking for something that feels more like fiction, and that’s what we specialize in at Page & Podium.
The Hero’s Journey Structure
In essence, The Hero’s Journey is a twelve-part structure. It moves away from thematic organization, which can feel a little choppy, and into something that feels more like a full story arc. It’s often visually depicted as a wheel.
Think about a wheel sectioned into thirds. The first section of that wheel is what moves the hero—you—as they’re called to action in a new world. As the hero moves into the second third of this wheel, they must navigate a new place. They emerge triumphant in the last third, with new wisdom and knowledge under their belt.
The main issue is that The Hero’s Journey contains twelve very specific steps. Your memoir may or may not fit into those twelve steps depending on how your life has played out. A lot of first-time memoir writers find that when they use The Hero’s Journey, the pieces of their life don’t fit within that twelve-part framework. It can be difficult to adapt because no one wants to write a memoir that doesn’t feel authentic to them. Sometimes, it can be more trouble than it’s worth.
Another issue to consider is that The Hero’s Journey is based on origin myths from different cultures and it tends to focus on one person, the hero, who was historically always a man. I don’t think that means you can’t use it for a woman’s story, but it’s worth noting.
The problem with The Hero’s Journey focusing on a singular hero is that most of our memoirs are relational, especially memoirs written by women and people who want to serve others. Much of our life is built around who we’re interacting with, who we’re helping and supporting, and who’s supporting us. The Hero’s Journey does have a point at which you meet a guide who walks you through trials and tribulations, which gives your memoir a spot for another person. But for many of us, it wasn’t only one person who made an impact on our lives.
The Hero’s Journey also lacks a place to talk about our community and cultural context. That’s not to say that you can’t include that, but it isn’t built into the framework so you’ll need to adjust the structure (which you will likely do at some point in the development stage regardless of structure). If your story is about community or a group of people, you may struggle with The Hero’s Journey. You can do it, but pay attention to how that’s going to affect you.
The Memoir Method Structure
The Memoir Method is the structure that’s at the core of our group program we’re launching in a couple of weeks. It’s based on a quadrant system, which makes it a little more structured than the three-act structure, but also less structured than the twelve acts of The Hero’s Journey.
The Memoir Method’s quadrants give us space for everything, from introducing your community and the context you live in, to the adventurous and exciting stories of your journey. We use each quadrant to set yourself up for the next.
In the opening section, or first quadrant, you set the stage for all the people who are part of your life’s story. This is your chance to introduce everyone who comes in later, whether they’re part of your life now or not. If they’re going to play a part later in your story, we build in a scene to introduce each of them. You’re also going to use the first quadrant to lay the groundwork for the problem you’re going to overcome. By the end of that first quadrant, you should have a clear picture of your dilemma and what you’re going to do.
The second quadrant is what I call a non-agentic period, or a period when we don’t feel like we’re in control. We know something is wrong, but have no idea what to do about it, so we go through all the steps to figure out how we’re going to get through it. In most memoirs, the secret is not somebody else. The secret is us. As we round out that second quadrant and enter the third, we discover the theme of our book. Of course, we’ve built the theme along the way, but it becomes much clearer to us as we reach the third quadrant.
In the third quadrant, you’re going to start testing your agency by trying different things. We’re going to see you struggling, and either fail in a way that made you think it was all over, or succeed in a way that isn’t actually going to work.
The fourth quadrant is where we get our triumphant moment. In The Hero’s Journey, this is where the hero brings back a solution that saves the day, but that’s not usually how our lives work. It’s usually a mix of good and bad. Unlike earlier, when you sought out all these different options, the fourth quadrant is where we see you find yourself.
If you join our program, we provide breakdowns of what’s happening in each of those quadrants. What’s great about The Memoir Method is that it gives you a lot of flexibility. You’ve got to hit each of the points within the quadrants, but you can move them around as long as you have a general framework for what you’re doing at each point of your story. As long as it matches that four-part framework, you should be able to follow your creative impulse and see where it takes you.
We talk about a lot of things like The Memoir Method here and on our YouTube channel, so be sure to follow us there so you never miss an episode. If you’d like something that you can take home and use right now, I highly recommend The Memoir Method checklist, which you can download here.
If you’re interested in The Memoir Method, you have a two-week window to sign up beginning January 11. We’ll hold registration open through January 25, and will begin our very first cohort on February 1.
I would love to have you as part of the program, and hope you’ll head over to download our checklist and learn more. I’m also more than happy to chat with you about whether this program is the right fit for the book you want to write.
If your memoir feels like it’s on hold because you’re too busy diving down the Google rabbit hole to find the answers to your writing and publishing questions, then I have a free download just for you!
The Memoir Method Checklist will guide you through every stage of writing and sharing your memoir with the public. From developing and outlining to publishing and promoting, following this checklist will help you write a memoir that you are proud to publish. If you download it today, you’re get a free bonus training video that dives deep into all the things you need to do to clarify your memoir’s theme, messages and intervention before you outline your book.
Happy writing!
