A word about Memoir

I have a sudden urge to talk about memoir.

There is something stultifying about the amateur's approach to memoir. A painstaking attempt to be more or less truthful (and save yourself from your relatives' rage) is constraint enough, but why also forget the rules of narrative engagement? Why take a trip into the territory of:

we would whenever we could
I used to and we always

If you want to write a nice, air-brushed family record this style might suit, but if you're in the business of winning readers outside the family it won't.

When a story teller goes into detail about a character's background and daily routine, they've usually got a plot agenda. They think you need all that to understand the unfolding drama, the tensions, the narrative twists, the crazy responses of their imagined people.

I complained recently about St Stieg Larsson's details on the daytoday doings of Lisbeth Salander and how I just didn't want to go to IKEA with her. A reading friend quickly explained the dramatic/character revelatory purpose of this and I was humbled.

But I defy anyone to prove that it works in memoir without a plot.
Find some gutsy bits of your story and tell it like it's fiction.

See earlier post about present tense. I've gone back to past but it was an interesting excursion. Hilary Mantel I am not (: