Memoir book coaching: what a coach does for a life story

What makes a memoir different

A how-to book is organized around what the reader needs to learn. A memoir is organized around what happened and what it meant. That creates problems a business book does not have:

• Choosing the story. A life holds many stories. A memoir that tries to tell all of them usually tells none of them well.
• Finding the shape. Chronological order is the obvious structure and often not the best one. The book needs a beginning that pulls a reader in and an ending that answers the question the beginning raised.
• Deciding how much to reveal. Every memoirist meets a chapter they are not sure they can write. Deciding what goes on the page, and how, is part of the work.
• The other people in it. Family, partners, colleagues. Writing honestly about them, fairly, is one of the hardest parts of the job.
• Emotional weight. Some memoirs ask the writer to relive the worst years of their life. The pace of the work matters.

What a memoir coach helps with

The core of the job is the same as any book coaching (see what a book coach does), applied to a life story:

1. The thread. Helping you name the one question or change the book follows, so you know what belongs and what does not.
2. The reader. Is this for your family, for people going through what you went through, or for anyone? The answer changes how much you explain and what you leave out.
3. The structure. A chapter plan that moves, often built around turning points rather than years.
4. Scene and summary. Showing the moments that matter as scenes, and covering the rest briefly. This is a craft skill many first-time memoirists have to learn.
5. Momentum. Regular sessions and deadlines so the hard chapters get written instead of skipped.
6. Honest feedback. Telling you when a chapter is about you processing an event rather than the reader understanding it. Both matter; only one belongs in the book.

Questions to ask a memoir coach

Add these to the general list in how to choose a book coach:

• Which memoirs have you coached, and can I talk to one of those authors?
• How do you help writers decide what to reveal about other people?
• How do you handle a writer who gets stuck on a painful chapter?
• Do you work on structure first, or do you start with free writing?
• Will you read whole chapters, and how quickly do you return feedback?
• What do you do if you think the book should be a different kind of book?

Red flags

• A promise that your story will sell, find a publisher or become a film.
• Pressure to make the story more dramatic than it was.
• No interest in who the reader is.
• Treating the hardest parts as content to push through rather than chapters to plan with care.

When a coach is not the right help

• You want the book written for you. Many memoirs are written with a ghostwriter who interviews you and drafts in your voice. See book coach vs ghostwriter.
• You have a full draft. You need a developmental editor to read the whole thing. See book coach vs editor.
• The book is really a how-to book. If your story is the proof behind advice, the structure should follow the advice. A coach who works on nonfiction more broadly may fit better.

The coach, editor or ghostwriter tool weighs these for your situation in eight questions.

Where Scribe fits

Scribe Media has published more than 280 memoirs alongside its business and how-to books. What its coaches do is laid out on Scribe's book coaching page. An independent coach who specializes in memoir is a good choice for many writers too.

Questions