Post #56 – Women’s Memoirs, Author Conversations – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Memoir Writing: Don’t Forget About Characters
Recently, Kendra and I were invited to write a guest article about memoir and character for the website: WOW-Women on Writing. As you know, for the past two days, we’ve brought you the insightful discussion of characters by Martha Engber, author of Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up: A Thorough Primer for Writers of Fiction and Nonfiction
A Guide for Bringing the People in Your Memoir to Life
By Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett, excerpt from article published by WOW- Women on Writing.
What makes a great memoir? A story about a woman who comes alive on the page, grabs you by the hand, and takes you along on her journey. Readers need to be interested in and care about people in a memoir, and they want to get to know your characters—whether they end up liking them or not. Yes, I just said characters because people are characters, too.
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Too often, memoir writers think characters and character development are for fiction writers. After all, they are writing about real stories and don’t need to worry about describing the people. But quite the opposite is true.
Sure, a memoir needs a beginning, a middle, and an ending. There needs to be plot and a story arc. But memoir, perhaps even more than fiction, needs well-etched people. To help you write about people your readers will care about, consider five dimensions of character—identity, description, demographic factors, psychographic attributes, and personality.
Click here to read the full article.
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