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Aug 10, 2015 · Many people have some smaller stories of each type sprinkled throughout their greater life story, though a person’s disposition, culture, and environment can influence which they gravitate to.
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It’s also a different kind of tool, and it occupies a...
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Jun 10, 2021 · Focus on the key events that brought you to where you are today. Start writing your story by remembering the life-changing moments that have shaped you. Identify the key events that changed your life for better or for worse. These can be positive events such as getting married, the birth of your children, graduating from university, creating a ...
- Decide Whether You’Ll Write Non-Fiction Or Fictionalize
- Choose An Approach to Time
- Do What You Need to Set Aside Any Fear
- Summarize Significant Events to Cover
- Allow Your Authentic Voice
- Avoid Telling The Truth in Oversimplified Terms
- Get Help Pulling Your Life Story Into Shape
There are many ways to approach life writing. You could follow a non-fiction approach and set down dates, facts and memories as close to events as they occurred as possible. Another option is to fictionalize and blur the line between fact and fiction. This approach to life writing may be useful if you want to: 1. Protect your identity or those of o...
Time is an interesting element to consider when deciding how to write your life story. For example, will your book cover birth to the present day? Or a few weeks or months spanning either side of a momentous life event? First-person narrators in fiction give us examples of narrative approaches to time we can also adopt in writing about our lives. F...
Many writers feel daunted when embarking on a new project. This is often particularly acute when writing about more personal experiences or real life where you don’t have the protective veil of fictional characters. When the acclaimed biographer of Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee, was asked whether fear is a useful emotion for a biographer, she replie...
Any one person’s life is a massive archive or trove of significant experiences and memories. As Hermione Lee says, the immensity of this ‘source material’ can feel overwhelming. As a preparatory step in deciding how to write your life story, summarize key events you want to include. Try to write just two lines for each incident or scene you’re thin...
As in fiction, in life writing the voice of the memoir author helps to create a distinct sense of character. The acclaimed memoirist and poet Mary Karr gives excellent advice to aspiring life-writers on voice in her book The Art of Memoir (2015). Writes Karr: Karr cautions against covering up aspects of your own voiceto appear more palatable a pers...
In Karr’s chapter, ‘The Truth Contract Twixt Writer and Reader’, she discusses the value of telling the truth (rather than ‘pumping yourself up’ for your audience): What Karr’s words strike at is that the ‘truth’ is often something more complex than what makes us look good (or others look bad). One of the important lessons in learning how to write ...
Writing memoir or a fictionalized autobiography is challenging because you are dealing not only with the standard elements of story(conflict, narrative, voice and more) but also personal areas. Some of these may be more challenging to revisit (or capture in prose) than others. Due to the many challenges involved (including the challenge of subjecti...
Sep 25, 2024 · Life stories with themes of cohesion, agency, and redemption are linked to positive mental health outcomes. It is possible to claim redemption and agency even in the worst of circumstances. The ...
Aug 10, 2015 · Here are three sets of people to tell your stories to: 1. “Declare yourself” to your colleagues at work. Doug Conant, the much-admired former CEO of Campbell Soup and founder of Conant ...
- Susan Cain
Jan 12, 2017 · Redemption and contamination stories are just two kinds of tales we spin. McAdams has found that beyond stories of redemption, people who believe their lives are meaningful tend to tell stories defined by growth, communion and agency. These stories allow individuals to craft a positive identity: they are in control of their lives, they are ...
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Apr 18, 2020 · The story of your life isn’t only present when you tell it to others, it is also a personal narrative that exists within us whether we recognize it or not. When we think about our past we are, in fact, telling ourselves the story of our life. How we interpret that story is, according to researchers at Western Washington University, reveals ...
