I’ve been obsessed with beginnings for as long as I can remember. A beginning serves as a kind of overture, setting the tone for everything that follows. So naturally, I’ve always adored a good dedication page.
A book’s dedication page precedes the narrative, serving as a threshold between the reader and the story. It primes the emotional register before the reader truly gets started.
I keep a note of my favourite dedications in a special folder. Among them is this one by poet and memoirist Joy Harjo:
“For the water spider, who, when the earth was covered with water, carried an ember on her back so we could make fire to keep the story going.”
Though often only a single line, a dedication at the beginning of your life story has the power to be transcendent, even mythic. But it can also be grounded and simple, if you choose.
Dedications can also be funny! I love this one by award-winning author T Kingfisher:
“Dedicated to a strong independent chicken, a bird in a million.”
My point is that you don’t have to take the exercise too seriously.
If you’re currently working on your private memoir or autobiography and feeling stuck about composing a dedication, breathe. You’re in exactly the right place. The following exercise and examples will help you reach inward to pull out the unifying golden thread you’re searching for. Maybe it’s a single line. Maybe it’s a paragraph or a poem. Either way, it’s totally up to you.
How long should a dedication page be?
Short. One to three lines is standard. The dedication page is not the place for explanation or elaboration. Its power comes from precision.
A dedication is emphatically not an Oscar acceptance speech. You don’t need to list every person who comes to mind. That’s what the Acknowledgements section is for – and yes, LifeBook offers a dedicated space for exactly that kind of litany too, if you want it.
Who should you dedicate your life story to?
The question of who your life story should be dedicated to is a deeply personal one. I won’t pretend that I can answer it for you, but I can give you an exercise to try.
In Daniel Coyle’s Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy and Fulfillment, he describes an activity called the Mental Round Table. Here’s how it works…
Picture yourself sitting at an empty round table, then ask yourself: who are the people who most want to see me flourish? Visualise them pulling up their chairs and taking a seat at the table with you. These are your people – the ones who genuinely want you to succeed.
Think about the people in your life who have seen you at your worst and stayed or the mentors who may never know how much they helped shape the person you became. There are also the people who mirror your best qualities back to you, reminding you who you truly are.
It’s a simple, undemanding exercise, but I like it because it quickly narrows the whole wide world of faces down to a precious, trusted few.
Look at the faces now seated around the table with you. Who among them made your life story possible? Who sat with you and believed in you across your journey? Whoever they are, those are the people who have earned a place in your dedication.
How do you write a dedication page?
In my years of ghostwriting memoirs, I have often seen the dedication page treated as an afterthought. Authors sometimes assume it will write itself once everything else is done. (It rarely does.) In practice, many authors find that it’s actually the hardest sentence in the entire book to compose, and that’s not because it requires the most skill but because it requires the purest clarity. The best dedications are honest, direct and specific enough to be unmistakably personal.
Now, take pen to paper and see what you come up with. You can start with For or To and then name someone from your round table, if you like. You could leave it there, with just a name, or you can add another line or two that says something true.
Remember that a dedication often cannot be prepared in the traditional sense. Instead, it has to be found. The process may require going past the first several answers that suggest themselves, past the polite and the obvious, until the one true sentence you’re looking for finally arrives. And when it does, it will carry a quality of inevitability. It will sound as though it could not have been otherwise.
What’s your dedication style?
Sometimes, the fastest way to find your own words is to draw inspiration from someone else’s. Below are a variety of dedication page examples to get you started. Read them slowly, and something will catch.
The Anchor (for a partner, parent or grandparent)
“For Robert, who knows that I must go but waits for me to return.”
–Jill Heinerth, Into the Planet (a memoir about cave diving)
“For my mother, who taught me to look, and for my father, who taught me to see.”
–Jackie Higgins, Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses
The Legacy (for future generations)
“For my children –and their children’s children –in the hope that they will always be able to hear the birds sing.”
–Stephen Moss, Ten Birds that Changed the World
“To my parents, for the first stories. To my son, for the future ones.”
–Irene Vallejo, Papyrus
The Debt (for a mentor or someone who changed your path)
“To John, for convincing me that everyone who is interesting has a past.”
–Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle(a memoir about homelessness)
“To Pat Covici, a great editor, and better yet, a generous friend, this book is affectionately dedicated.”
–Saul Bellow, Herzog
The Elegy (for those who are gone)
“For the ones who didn’t make it. And for the ones who did.”
–Edgar Gomez, High-Risk Homosexual (a memoir about the queer community)
“… for the child I once was.”
–Cheryl Strayed, Wild (a memoir about grief)
The Witness (for those who are misunderstood)
“For those who have struggled to find a seat at the table.”
–Patric Gagne, Sociopath: A Memoir
“For the girl outsiders.”
–Tiya Miles, Wild Girls
What do other LifeBook authors say?
Our LifeBook authors frequently tell us that writing their dedication page was the moment when a memoir stopped feeling like a project and started feeling like a gift. If you would like to learn about the writing experience from people who have already been through it, take a look at our testimonials.
Ready to begin writing your own dedication page?
The chapters of a private memoir or autobiography tell your life story, which begins to pour out (trust me on that) once you get going, but the dedication page tells the reader why it was told in the first place and who it’s really for.
Remember, you own the territory of your memory. If a family member tells you that it didn’t happen that way, you can honestly say, “You’re right – it didn’t happen that way to you. But it happened that way to me.”
Your dedication should reflect your truth. After all, it’s your legacy.
Written by LifeBook Memoirs ghostwriter, Bailey
