We all have stories to share, don’t we? That is what we do when we get together with friends and family: We catch up on recent happenings by telling each other what we have been up to since we last got together. We move seamlessly into recollections of past events, and soon everyone joins in the telling, relaying their own experience of these events.
Whenever you tell friends and family about recent events or past escapades, something revealing happens: The telling quickly becomes a collaboration. Your narrator’s account triggers shared memories in your listeners, who then offer different perspectives, and the actual story becomes far more than that of just one person. The collaborative recollection can be a surprisingly emotional and deeply personal experience for all involved.
The same process occurs when you read a memoir…
The pull of a life lived elsewhere
People are naturally curious. That is why memoirs and autobiographies are one of the most popular book categories. We all enjoy glimpses into someone else’s life, our curiosity being what draws us in. However, once you start reading, it becomes a collaboration between writer and reader.
I am currently partway through reading Tiffany Murray’s My Family and Other Rock Stars, chosen as book of the year a couple of years ago by several publications. It is a wonderful child’s-eye memoir of a girl growing up in England’s rural West Country in the late 1970s, surrounded by dogs, pigs, sheep, and a succession of world-famous rock stars to practice and record in the farm’s converted outbuildings.
Tiffany’s mother was a Cordon Bleu chef who catered for the musicians, so young Tiffany grew up surrounded by people like Lemmy, Adam Ant, and Iggy Pop. One time, she was woken in the middle of the night by Ozzy Osbourne dancing and screaming in the neighboring graveyard; another time, she spied on Freddie Mercury wearing a flowery dressing gown while he made tea before exercising his vocal cords in the practice room; another time, she served David Bowie poached salmon that he refused to eat, and she couldn’t look him in either of his differently colored eyes.
Every story in this book leaps to life from the page, but it is more than that because these stories provide a route into the reader’s own memories of growing up in that time. Half-forgotten—or even completely forgotten—rock stars come bursting back to life from a passing mention, while long-forgotten songs become earworms laced with nostalgia and countless triggered recollections of your own.
It is the same with a private memoir—perhaps even more so, because these books are written for people who will have a special connection with the memories they read about therein. Sometimes, all it takes is a brief anecdote that provides a fleeting glimpse into the past. To the author, it might seem just a mundane memory that anyone might have and hardly worth bothering with. But, just as Tiffany Murray’s stories of her (to her) very ordinary childhood spark a cascade of associated memories in the mind of the reader, so too can those “ordinary” stories open a world of memory when they are shared.
The madeleines we all carry
In Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust’s narrator is briefly nonplussed by his response to the taste of a petite madeleine dipped in tea, before the experience triggers a flood of childhood memories of when his aunt Léonie once gave him a petite madeleine dipped in tea. That memory rapidly expands to include vivid recollections of his aunt’s room, the house where she lived, the garden, the details of the town where she lived, and more.
In much the same way, Proust’s “involuntary memory” can be triggered by a phrase that Grandma used to say or a mention of a long-ago holiday. One brief mention during the recounting of a story, or when written down in a memoir, can bring the past alive for the recipient in glorious Technicolor. Few of us have served fish to David Bowie or listened in while Queen wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, but we all have memories and stories just as powerful to the people closest to us. You will surely have started a story with, “Do you remember when…?” Even before you can finish the first few sentences, those around you are joining in with their own triggered memories.
Writing these memoirs down is just the same, only the impact lasts for longer. Instead of a collaboration taking place in real time between narrator and audience, a written memoir spreads that collaboration over a longer timescale, so that shared stories can unlock a cycle of giving that carries on resonating through the generations (as in this story about how the phrase “You were born under a mulberry bush,” used by memoir author John’s mother, brought joy to his granddaughter when she encountered it in his memoir).
Whenever someone reads those memoirs, they are doing so much more than passively receiving. They will hit that point when something interesting starts to happen, when the story becomes much more than words on a page. They will remember what Grandma used to say, and from there they will remember her home, the town where she lived, the experiences they shared…
Write about the memory triggers
So, if you freeze in the spotlight whenever someone suggests writing your memoir, if you feel that you have lived an ordinary life with no stories to tell, remember that it is not just about finding interesting stories from your own life; it is about the shared experiences.
Think less in terms of “dramatic events” and more in terms of moments that act like memory-triggers—small details that quietly hand your readers a key to their own past. Here are a few places to start:
- Childhood scenes that you can still taste, smell, or hear. A school corridor, a grandparent’s kitchen, the route you walked home, the sound of a certain TV theme tune at teatime… These are the kinds of sensory fragments that often unlock a whole era—for you and for the reader.
- An ordinary day that now feels like a time capsule. A Saturday job, a family Sunday routine, the way your house ran when you were ten, the rules that everyone silently followed… On the surface, it is mundane; on the page, it becomes a doorway into what life felt like back then.
- A pivotal decision told from the inside. Not just what you chose, but how you reasoned, what you feared, what you hoped would happen, and what you told yourself afterward. These decision-making moments invite readers to measure their own turning points against yours.
- A moment of personal growth that was not obvious at the time. The first time you realized an adult was fallible, a friendship that changed you, the day you stopped believing something you had always believed… Quiet shifts often resonate more deeply than big plot points.
- A small object with a long shadow. A coat, a cassette tape, a postcard, a recipe card, a battered book, a particular mug… Objects are powerful because they carry history without explanation, and readers instinctively supply their own equivalents.
- A phrase someone always used (and what it really meant). The sayings, warnings, jokes, and half-complaints that shaped the atmosphere of your family. A single line of dialog can do what pages of summary cannot by bringing a person back.
Memoirs that linger rarely do so because the writer lived an “extraordinary” life. They linger because the writer chooses details that feel specific and true. In doing so, they give the reader permission to remember their own.
Written by Keith, LifeBook Memoirs ghostwriter
