# How to Write a Memoir: Frame, Scenes, Real People - Feldar > How to write a memoir: choose the frame, find scenes in memory, write about real people fairly, shown on Frederick Douglass, with a free planning template. - URL: https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-write-a-memoir - Site: [Home](https://feldar.com/) · [About](https://feldar.com/about) · [Blog](https://feldar.com/blog) · [Careers](https://feldar.com/careers) · [Pricing](https://feldar.com/pricing) · [Download](https://feldar.com/download) · [Changelog](https://feldar.com/changelog) - Machine index: [llms.txt](https://feldar.com/llms.txt) · [full site content](https://feldar.com/llms-full.txt) --- On this page - The short answer - Memoir or autobiography - The frame and the time span - Finding scenes in memory - Structure - Writing about real people - Truth and reconstructed dialogue - Worked example - Free memoir template - Common mistakes - Writing a memoir in Feldar - Sources - Questions Updated November 10, 2026 · By the Feldar team ### How to write a memoir 12 min read How to choose the part of your life worth a book, turn memories into scenes and write about real people fairly, shown on a classic memoir, with a planning template to download. #### The short answer - Decide what question the book answers. A memoir is one part of a life, not all of it. - Choose where it starts and where it ends, and leave out everything outside that span. - List every memory that might belong, then keep the ones you can see, hear or smell. - Write those as scenes, with the person you were then and the person you are now both on the page. - Pick a structure: in order, with a present-day frame, by theme, or in braided threads. - Decide how you will treat each real person before you publish, not after. - Don't invent events. Where you reconstruct dialogue or compress time, tell the reader. #### Memoir or autobiography Both are true stories told by the person who lived them. The difference is scope. Autobiography The whole life, usually in order, from birth or childhood to the time of writing. Often written by someone the public already knows. Memoir One part of a life, chosen because it answers a question: a childhood, an illness, a marriage, a job, a single year. Anyone can write one. Most first books about a life work better as memoir. You don't need to be famous; you need a story with a shape, told honestly. A memoir also borrows the tools of a novel: scenes, dialogue, a person who wants something, and a change. #### Choose the frame and the time span The frame is the question your book answers. Everything that helps answer it stays; everything else, however true or vivid, goes into a different book. Write the question in one sentence before you draft. QuestionWhat does the reader want to know by page ten? How did she leave? Why did they stop speaking? What did the illness take, and what did it give back? StartThe last moment before things began to change, or the first moment they did. EndThe point where the question is answered, even if life went on. TurnThe moment you became someone different. Most memoirs build toward it. A narrow frame makes a stronger book. Here is how three broad ideas become frames: Too wide A frame Time span My childhoodThe year my father stopped speaking to his brother, and whyOne year My career in nursingThe winter I worked nights on a ward during an outbreakFour months My mother and meClearing her house after she died, and what the letters in it told meSix weeks, with flashbacks #### Find the scenes in your memory Start with an inventory, not a draft. List every memory that might belong, one line each, without judging. Then mark the ones you can actually see: a room, a voice, a smell, the weather. Those become scenes; the rest become short passages of summary that carry the reader between them. - Walk through a house you lived in, room by room, and write what happened in each. - Take an object you still own, or one you lost, and write where it came from. - Write the first time you did the thing the book is about, and the last. - Write the sentence someone said to you that you still hear. - Look at photos, letters, diaries, school reports and old calendars for dates and details. - Ask someone who was there what they remember. Note where it differs from yours. In each scene, two people are on the page: the one who lived it and the one writing it now. Let the first act without hindsight, and let the second say what it means. The pull between them is what makes a memoir more than a diary. #### Choose a structure Chronology is the default, not the rule. Pick the shape that answers your question best: In orderFrom the start of the span to the end. Clear and strong when the change builds steadily. FrameA present-day thread, such as a trip home or a hospital stay, with the past told in between. By themeChapters arranged by subject (food, money, church, work) rather than by date. BraidedTwo or three threads that alternate and meet at the end: your story and a parent's, for example. One seasonA single short period, told closely, with the rest of life only glimpsed. Whichever you pick, the turns of a novel still help: an opening state, a moment that starts the change, a midpoint, a low point and an ending. Our guides on [three-act structure](https://feldar.com/guides/three-act-structure) and [outlining scene by scene](https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-outline-a-novel) work for true stories too. #### Write about real people Your story includes other people, and they didn't choose to be in a book. A few decisions, made before you publish, protect them and you. ConsentYou don't need permission to tell your own story, but showing someone the pages that concern them before publication avoids many surprises. Decide case by case whether to ask, tell, or neither. FairnessGive people their reasons. Write one line of each important person's side of the story, even if you disagree with it, and check the book doesn't contradict it unfairly. NeedAsk whether each private detail (health, sexuality, money, a crime) is needed for your story. If it isn't, leave it out. DisguiseChanging names and identifying details protects people who play a small part. Say so in an author's note. Our [name generator](https://feldar.com/tools/character-name-generator) can suggest names that fit the period and place. A general caution, not legal advice: laws on defamation and privacy differ by country. Broadly, publishing a false statement of fact that harms someone's reputation can lead to a claim, and in some places even true private facts can. If your book makes serious claims about a living, identifiable person, talk to a lawyer who works with publishers before it goes out. #### Truth and reconstructed dialogue Nobody remembers conversations word for word, and readers know it. Most memoirists follow a few honest rules: - Don't invent events, people or outcomes. That is fiction, and readers feel cheated when they find out. - Reconstruct dialogue to the substance of what was said, in the way that person spoke. - Where you aren't sure, say so on the page: "I think", "as I remember it", "my sister says otherwise". - If you compress time, merge two similar conversations or combine people, say so in an author's note. - Check what can be checked: dates, places, weather, the song on the radio. #### Worked example: Frederick Douglass's Narrative Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was published in Boston in 1845, and it is in the public domain. It covers the first twenty-odd years of his life, about 34,500 words in eleven chapters by our count, and ten years later he wrote a much longer account, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). The 1845 book works like a memoir: it leaves most of his life out and answers one question. QuestionHow does a man held as a slave become free, in mind first and then in fact? StartHis birth in Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland, on a date he never knew. EndAn anti-slavery convention at Nantucket on August 11, 1841, where he first speaks to a white audience. TurnThe fight with Edward Covey, a farmer known for "breaking" young slaves, in August 1833. You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. That sentence, at the start of the Covey chapter, names the frame out loud. The whole book is built on its two halves. ##### The structure, part by part Douglass tells it in order. We grouped his eleven chapters into four parts and counted the words in each from the Project Gutenberg text. Chapters What happens Its job Words I to VChildhood on Colonel Lloyd's plantation: a mother he saw a few times at night, hunger and cold, the cruelty he watched.How a man was made a slave8,700 (25%) VI to VIIIBaltimore. Mrs. Auld starts teaching him the alphabet; her husband forbids it, and he learns to read anyway.The first turn: in mind5,600 (16%) IX and XBack in the country. A year with Covey, the fight, a failed escape plan, the Baltimore shipyards.The second turn: in body14,800 (43%) XIThe escape (details withheld), New York, marriage, New Bedford, a new name, the Nantucket speech.Freedom, and what he does with it5,300 (15%) The longest part holds the turning point. Douglass spends his words where the change happens, and moves quickly through the years around it. ##### One scene, up close Chapter VI holds the scene the whole first half turns on. As a scene card: Chapter VI · Baltimore, the Aulds' house ###### The alphabet ThenA boy of seven or eight, newly sent to the city, taught his A, B, C by a kind new mistress. What happensMr. Auld finds out and forbids it: learning "would forever unfit him to be a slave." TurnThe boy hears in that sentence what his master fears most. NowThe man writing explains it: "From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom." What changesHe loses a teacher and gains a purpose. The next chapter is about how he learned anyway. Both narrators are on the page: the child who only hears an angry husband, and the adult who knows what the words meant. That is the double vision step three asks for. ##### Real people, and what he left out Douglass names his enslavers, but he protects the people who helped him. The white boys in the street who taught him to read, in exchange for bread, stay nameless: I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids Naming them would not hurt him, he explains, but it might embarrass them, because teaching a slave to read was close to unforgivable where they lived. Chapter XI goes further. He opens it by saying he will not tell how he escaped, because the details could endanger the people who helped and close the route to others. He tells the reader what he is withholding and why. That is the honest way to leave something out. ##### Memory, marked as memory He is open about the limits of what he knows. In chapter I: "I have no accurate knowledge of my age." He estimates it from something he overheard his master say. When he quotes an overseer's excuse for a killing in chapter IV, he adds "as well as I can remember". And chapter IX begins, "I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates." Each line tells the reader how much weight the memory can bear. #### Free memoir planning template The frame, a memory inventory, the shape, scene cards, a page for each real person, truth notes and a checklist. Copy it into whatever you write in, or download it as a Markdown file that opens in Word, Google Docs or Feldar. THE FRAME The question this book answers (one sentence): Starts (date, place, age): Ends (date, place, age): What changed me (the turning point): REAL PEOPLE Person · Named, renamed or composite? · Their side, in one line [ ] Each private fact is needed for the story Copy template [Download .md](https://feldar.com/assets/templates/memoir-planning-template.md) #### Common mistakes - Starting at birth because that is where the life starts, not the story. - Summarizing years instead of showing the few scenes that changed you. - Settling scores. Readers stop trusting a narrator who is never wrong. - Leaving out your own part in what went badly. - Inventing a scene because the true one is less dramatic. - Explaining every feeling instead of letting the scene carry it. #### Writing a memoir in Feldar In Feldar, each chapter can have an [Outline of scenes](https://feldar.com/features/scenes), which suits a memory inventory sorted into chapters. The people and places in your life can sit as cards on the [Canvas](https://feldar.com/features/canvas), and you can import old diaries or drafts as DOCX, PDF, Markdown or text files. Anything Feldar suggests appears in blue and stays only if you accept it. In a memoir the facts have to be yours as well as the words: use suggestions for shape and wording, never for what happened. For the rest of what the app does, see Feldar's [book writing software](https://feldar.com/novel-writing-software) page. Scenes CHAPTER VI - 1 The alphabet Mrs. Auld teaches me my A, B, C. - 2 Forbidden Mr. Auld stops the lessons. I learn why. Draft Page #### Sources All checked November 8, 2026. Frederick Douglass[Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23) (1845), Project Gutenberg eBook #23; quotations and word counts from this text Later account[My Bondage and My Freedom](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/202) (1855), Project Gutenberg eBook #202 Memoir length[The Manuscript Academy, word count by genre, 2026](https://manuscriptacademy.com/word-count-by-genre-literary-agents-2026) #### Questions What is the difference between a memoir and an autobiography? An autobiography tells a whole life, usually in order. A memoir tells one part of a life, chosen because it answers a question, such as a childhood, an illness, a marriage or a single year. How long should a memoir be? The Manuscript Academy's 2026 guide puts traditional memoir at 70,000 to 90,000 words. Self-published memoirs can be shorter. Count yours with our [word counter](https://feldar.com/tools/word-counter). Can I use real names in a memoir? Many memoirists do, especially for family and public figures. Many also change the names and identifying details of people who play a small part or didn't agree to appear, and say so in an author's note. If you make serious claims about a living person, get legal advice first. Do I need permission to write about my family? You can tell your own story without permission, but your family will read it. Showing people the pages that concern them before publication is often kinder and avoids surprises. Laws on privacy and defamation differ by country, so this is not legal advice. Can a memoir include dialogue I don't remember exactly? Yes, if you reconstruct it honestly: keep to the substance of what was said and how the person spoke, and mark uncertainty where it matters. Don't invent conversations that didn't happen. Should a memoir be written in first person? Almost always. Past tense is the most common, because it lets the person writing now reflect on the person you were. Present tense can work for a book told very close to the moment. #### Keep reading [Guide How to write a book Nine steps from idea to revised draft, shown on A Christmas Carol.](https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-write-a-book) [Guide How to outline a novel A worked example, scene by scene, and a free template.](https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-outline-a-novel) [Guide Character development Arcs, want and need, traced through Elizabeth Bennet.](https://feldar.com/guides/character-development) [Free tool Word counter for writers Counts, pages and how your length compares by genre.](https://feldar.com/tools/word-counter) [Free tool Character name generator Names by culture and era, for the people you rename.](https://feldar.com/tools/character-name-generator) [Guides All guides Every Feldar guide to starting, planning, writing and publishing a book.](https://feldar.com/guides)