Journalist and author Bob Greene tells life stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. I had the pleasure of working with him and representing his work in international syndication in the 1990s when we both worked at Tribune in Chicago. Here are some books and tips about preserving life stories he's written.

Memoirs: When You Get Stuck, Write What Excites You

For years I’d resisted writing a memoir. Like many writers from troubled families, I was often congratulated for “the material” of my life and urged to write it all down, writes author Maud Newton in Lit Hub. And sure, I grew up in a weird family, an extreme family, a difficult and sometimes abusive family, but I couldn’t envision writing an entire book about it without a great deal of distance from my experience, without the freewheeling transformative tools of fiction. It wasn’t that I shrank from the idea of sharing the truth of my experience. I’d written personal essays, and I’ve always been a candid writer. But I imagined that writing a book of pure autobiography would feel like being locked in a tiny room with my past: probably boring, possibly injurious, absolutely depressing. I wanted to write about things I didn’t know or understand yet—and of course memoir allows for this, as I knew at some level from many years of reading and enjoying people’s books about their own lives, and as I know much more.

How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide

We start the road to writing a memoir when we realize that a story in our lives demands to be told, writes Zining Mok in Writers.com. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” How to write a memoir? At first glance, it looks easy enough—easier, in any case, than writing fiction. After all, there is no need to make up a story or characters, and the protagonist is none other than you. Still, memoir writing carries its own unique challenges, as well as unique possibilities that only come from telling your own true story. Let’s dive into how to write a memoir by looking closely at the craft of memoir writing, starting with a key question: exactly what is a memoir?

Memoirs: Writing for the Family and More

Did your parents tell you about their growing-up days? Would your children and grandchildren like to read about how they coped during the Great Depression? The Second World War? What their teenage years were like, asks Peggy Sias Lantz for the Florida Writers Association. What do you suppose your children and grandchildren would like to know about your own growing-up days? Do they know where you were born? Where you went to school? What you and your family and your friends did together? I’m talking about writing for the future family about the past family. These memories are important to generations beyond our own. Since we’re the writers in the family, I think it behooves us to record them.

Celebrity Memoirs: Who’s Naughty? Who’s Nice?

Playing out in bookstores across the U.S. is a star-studded battle to capture hearts, minds, and ultimately wallets as celebrities use their memoirs to bravely “set the record straight,” settle scores, and obtain legitimacy by becoming published authors. (No thanks to the unsung heroes, the ghostwriters.) Commentary on Substack by Paula Froelich. But, in order to win the bestseller war, these A-list authors must reveal all. As Barbra Streisand, whose book My Name is Barbra came out in November, told Gayle King on CBS Sunday Morning, “Listen, I didn’t want to write about any of (my exes). But my editor said, ‘You have to leave some blood on the page!’ ” And 2023 brought buckets of blood.

Starting off the year was Prince Harry, who finally became of king of something (the book world) with his explosively cringey memoir, Spare—also known as “WAAAH”—in which he sold out his family, aired one-sided petty grievances, and bemoaned the loss of his mother. Again.

That book has sold 1.2 million copies in hardcover, setting a bar no other has yet to meet. (All sales figures come from BookScan, which accounts for hardcover copies sold and doesn’t include audio books or e-book downloads.) Throughout the year we saw a smattering of celebrity memoirs from authors including Pamela Anderson (Love, Pamela: 60,000 copies sold); Paris Hilton (Paris: The Memoir: 53,000 copies); Kristin Chenoweth (I’m No Philosopher, But I Got Thoughts: Mini Meditations for Saints, Sinners, and the Rest of Us: 20,000 sold); Patrick Stewart Making It So: A Memoir: 54,000 copies sold); and Elliot Page (Pageboy: 70,000 copies sold). But are any of 2023’s celebrity tell-alls worth the $28 to $47 price tag?

To find out, I went through a random assortment, sifting through the good, the bad, and the downright awful. You’re welcome.

How Novelists Can Draw on Their Own Lives to Build in Fiction

Sales figures make it clear that memoirs are a huge genre today. But that’s not what I want to talk about by saying “using life as a foundation for art.” Poets already know this secret, so let me address myself to novelists, writes Niki Kantzios in the Florida Writers Association. My topic is: don’t neglect to take the straw of your own life and spin it into fictional gold!

What does that mean? Well, it can means incorporating in your novel things that have actually befallen you. They are real to you.

Introducing the Snapshot Theory. The Story Outside Your Story Is a Story Too.

Many writers have heard Ernest Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory” of writing from Death in the Afternoon. It goes like this:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

Hemingway’s sentiment makes a good deal of sense: You can’t include everything your reader might want to know in the story, writes Josh Sippie in The Writer. There just isn’t enough room – and, worse, you then leave the reader with no work to do on their part, nothing to infer. And readers like to infer; they like to participate in the story. If you, the writer, know the details that aren’t explicitly stated, you let readers read into things – and that’s what they’re here to do, right?

How Novelists Can Draw on Their Own Lives to Build in Fiction

Sales figures make it clear that memoirs are a huge genre today. But that’s not what I want to talk about by saying “using life as a foundation for art.” Poets already know this secret, so let me address myself to novelists, writes Niki Kantzios in the Florida Writers Association. My topic is: don’t neglect to take the straw of your own life and spin it into fictional gold!

What does that mean? Well, it can means incorporating in your novel things that have actually befallen you. They are real to you.

How to Write a Memoir. Start by Narrowing Your Focus.

If you’re planning to write a memoir, you’ll want to take your readers on a journey they won’t forget. In this post, we share tips for writing a memoir well, as well as share plenty of memoir examples, writes Brooke Warner in The Write Life.

Here’s how to write a memoir. First, narrow your focus.

Dig in Your Thumb Drive or Drawer: How to Make Old Writing New

With social distancing and sequestering still high on the priority ladder, it might be a good time to dig through the closet/flash drive and unearth that writing project you’ve been meaning to finish or thought was so bad that it was beyond repair. Dust Them Off! Pull those unfinished projects out and see which one jumps to the head of the line, begging for your attention. Give it a new, fresh view and the attention it deserves to get it. More tips by Anne Hawkinson of the Florida Writers Association.

Who Killed My Mother? Writing and Podcasting a True Crime Memoir

On July 4, 2020, Kory Shrum received two phone calls. One from her uncle, saying her mother was found dead in her bedroom from an overdose. A second from a homicide detective saying he believes it was murder—and her uncle is the suspect. In this podcast interview with Joanna Penn,  Kory talks about how she turned her trauma into a true-crime podcast and memoir and how writing helped her process the experience.

No One Lived in the Past. How Can Authors Accurately Describe History?

No one has ever lived in the past. Every human being in the history of the world has lived in their own present. The past is now, or should be, for the characters we create to populate crime fiction regardless of the time period in which we write, writes James Benn for Crime Reads. But there are challenges and pitfalls here because the past itself does not have the same shape or coherence as does the present which we inhabit. The past is filled with countless people, places, and conflicts which we turn into something called history to impose order upon chaos. No one has ever lived in the past. Every human being in the history of the world has lived in their own present. The past is now, or should be, for the characters we create to populate crime fiction regardless of the time period in which we write. But there are challenges and pitfalls here because the past itself does not have the same shape or coherence as does the present which we inhabit. The past is filled with countless people, places, and conflicts which we turn into something called history to impose order upon chaos.