We all have our own unique life story to tell but only a few of us dare to come forward and share it with the world. It’s never been easy to write your own life story and make the readers go through the same emotions as you have experienced in your life.
“Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form”
Jean Luc Godard
Even if you believe your life story is just plain and ordinary, it’s still worth sharing with the world as it may resonate with someone. Some people find facts more fascinating than fiction. Your unique life story may motivate someone to bring positive change in their lives. It can even help them distinguish the things they are missing in their lives to make them better.
Some people have the habit of writing diaries regularly about the events and anecdotes occurring in their lives. A book may even emerge from within this running diary of your life. You are not required to be a perfect writer to write your life story you just need the courage to start pouring your life story in the form of letters.
If you are contemplating writing your legacy life story for the first time then it can be quite challenging to get started. Start writing your life story in a meaningful and fruitful way to make it interesting and inspiring to your readers.
How to Get Started Writing your Life Story?
Finally, you have decided to share your untold story with the world but are unsure how to get started and don’t have an idea of how to write a book. In the beginning, it may seem a complicated process but once you start writing it step by step it may begin to take shape.
You can start by making a timeline of events that occurred in your life. Your goal must be getting your story down and recorded in writing. You can choose the method in which you are more comfortable whether it’s written in your own handwriting, typing it on your computer, or even typing on a typewriter. Some people even record in audio to convert it into writing later.
First, you need to organize your thoughts to jot them down. You need to show your readers what happened to you in the past and take them on the journey of your life. You need to plot your story even though it is reality which will help you to avoid repeating the same scenes.
In your life story, you need to introduce yourself and show your readers what type of person you have grown as, so the readers can empathize with you even if there are some dark corners in your life. Don’t jam-pack your book with every detail about your life because not all events need to be written.
Write stories of your life that will keep your readers interested to get them to keep on turning the pages of your book. Writing your life story can be a series of confessions about what happened to you in the past, so you need to write in the first person, present tense.
Why do you want to write a book about your life story?
You may be indecisive about if it’s even worth writing your life story for the world or not. You may worry if readers will find your story interesting. Is your life worth sharing with the world? What if the characters included in your story disagree with your recollection of events? If your writing is not good enough to interest the readers? Or what if you failed to find a publisher to publish your book?
Don’t get caught up in what the outcome may or may not be. Instead, you need to embrace the process of self-discovery.
“When you start reading in a certain way, that’s the beginning of your writing.”
Tess Gallagher, a poet and essayist.
Writing your life story can be the beginning of the journey of self-discovery for you. It’s like reliving every event in your story again and looking at it from a different perspective. Perhaps it may seem boring to you but your life may be rich with unique experiences. There might be bits of advice blended with your unique perspective on life that could interest the readers. In the following we will discuss a few forms of writing our life story:
Writing a memoir:
A memoir is not an autobiography or biography, rather, it’s a portion of an autobiography. It would be helpful if you read the memoirs of other people before you begin to write your own. In a memoir, the focus is more on emotions to bring forth the story. It may be an event, a choice, an experience, or a story tied together with a theme that happened to you at a certain time period in life. It doesn’t consist of your entire life story, although it needs to be well-structured and follow the conventions of a story.
To create a page-turner memoir the plot must be developed around the theme of your story. Create your story keeping the end in mind instead of wasting pages and chapters writing useless details, focus on a compelling bit of story.
Your memoir should be your personal experience in life and you need to be honest in your feelings but you need to follow a plot to structure a good story.
Although writing about your family secrets, dark memories and embarrassing moments can make you feel exposed or vulnerable, including them in your memoir may help you connect with your readers.
Writing an autobiography:
After reading the autobiographies of other people you must have a clear knowledge of what is an autobiography. It is a book written to record your whole life, from birth to the time of writing. Before you start writing, making a timeline may be helpful in recording every event and experience accurately in your autobiography.
Understandably, most of you have never written anything close to being monumental. Every writer has first bad draft but don’t let it discourage you, you can later edit it. The idea of writing an entire book of your life story in a professional manner may seem like a distant dream to you.
Some people may think writing down everything that’s happened in the past may need a second lifetime for them so they hire biographers to ghostwrite their autobiographies, who are experienced professionals, and experts in writing biographies and autobiographies.
Although there is a difference between biography and autobiography. If someone else writes the life story of a person it is a biography and if it is written by the person himself then it’s an autobiography.
It’s not necessary to be someone famous or important to write an autobiography but every ordinary person has something extraordinary to share with the world. You are an important person to yourself, your family, and your friends. So, your life story will be valuable for them. It will also help you to reflect on your entire life which will aid in self-understanding, healing, self-recognition, growth, and the art of letting go.
Your autobiography will be saved forever in a book to be shared with your generations in the future so they get to know about you and your life. Your achievements, accomplishments, and struggles in life will be recorded in it also allowing you to reflect on them.
Writing a biography:
You must have seen biographies about famous people and public figures in bookstores and libraries. Biography is the life story of a person written by someone else. The author doesn’t require the subject’s authorization to write a biography about them, it is written in the third person’s point of view in a formal and objective tone.
Biographies are also considered nonfiction stories, in which authors spin the story around the subject’s real-life events. The authors analyze and interpret events that occurred in the subject’s life finding the meaning in their actions, uncovering the blunders, accomplishments, and connecting details. The subject’s entire life is covered in a biography.
Before writing a biography one is required to research on their subject’s life thoroughly and ensure accuracy, highlighting important events of their lives. You will need to conduct interviews with people who know the subject personally. You need to maintain a balance between objectivity and empathy because you are writing the life story of a real person, so you can’t exaggerate.
You need to tell the story in an interesting way to keep the readers turning the next pages. Finally, you should describe what that person did and how it made a difference in the world. End it with a recap of important events of the subject’s life at the end.
Conclusion:
Telling your life story to the world can be made interesting if you follow all the necessary steps required to create a compelling story. You need to understand the reason why you want to write your life story. It may be to inspire others, record your family history, or for personal reflection. You must be clear about the theme or message you want to convey through your story. In the end, it can be a rewarding experience to recount your or someone else life story from the beginning to the end, or in portions.
