Episode Details

Your memoir may include a larger-than-life parent, a spouse facing illness, or someone whose choices changed your life. But if readers know more about that person’s inner world than yours, an important question arises: Where are you in the story?

When I began writing Accidental First Lady, I could have filled the pages with my husband’s political career, campaigns, and elections. My memoir began to take shape when I asked what I wanted, feared, believed, and learned during those 22 years.

In this episode of Making Memoir Magic, I share three signs you may have become a supporting character in your own manuscript—and three questions to help you return to the center of it.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why the most dramatic person in your life isn’t necessarily the protagonist of your memoir
• How to tell when everyone else has more depth on the page than you do
• The difference between reporting what happened and reflecting on what it meant
• Why you might disappear from a scene just as the material becomes vulnerable
• How your perspective today can deepen a scene from your past

Try this with one scene from your manuscript:

1. What did I want in that moment?
2. What changed in me because of it?
3. What do I understand now that I couldn’t understand then?

You don’t have to publish every answer. But knowing them can help you write a memoir that shows readers the person who lived through those events—and the person you became.

A question to take with you: Where are you in your own story?

Thank you for listening to this episode of Making Memoir Magic. To learn more about my course, Make Memoir Magic, click here. 

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