Using scene templates to diversify events in memoirs.

Today's post is written by writer and editor Lisa Cooper Allison. Join her on Wednesday, April 3, for her online course Creating a Memoir Screenplay.

In most memoirs, there is a sense of loss - a rupture in relationships, displacement, a shattered dream, the death of a loved one. The more painful the event, the more you will want to write about it. However, in the process of working through it, you will find that some (or many) of your scenes are unnecessary. To determine what is important and how to write about it, you need to identify the key moments of your memoir.

Key points of the memoir

They are part of Blake Snyder's methodology, proposed in his book "Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need." These turning points collectively create a dynamic plot that largely follows the "hero's journey" - although, once you understand the concept, it can also be applied to other types of stories, such as the "heroine's journey."

Even in nonlinear memoirs, these moments can be found. Defining both the key moments of the memoir and their functions will help you shape your material in a way that ensures your book includes the right details in the right place to tell the story you want to tell.

Let's assume your book is about a breakup. The first drafts could cover your initial meeting, the moment when you truly committed to each other, the beginning cracks in the relationship, the arguments that led to a major conflict, resulting in everything coming to an end. This is great starting material, but even when the relationship plays a central role, you'll likely need to condense it.

Before making significant cuts or processing your book for thorough editing, you need to identify the main line of your narrative or the line of internal transformation occurring with the narrator. Creating a list of turning points based on the key moments in your book will help determine how your narrator changes and which scenes illustrate this.

Continuing with the example of a breakup, the turning points list may show that your book is a horrifying tale of violence, and the breakup is a moment of victory that concludes your story. However, you might find that you are actually writing about something else, and the breakup is either an unhappy (or desired) side effect of the main story, or it simply serves as a catalyst that initiates your journey.

Once your main line is clear, you can determine how much space the relationship occupies, where the break in the relationship is, and how to describe it so that it serves a specific function.

Examples of memoirs and relationship breakups

To illustrate how this looks, let's consider how relationship breakups are depicted in four different memoirs (note: spoilers follow!).

A rupture, like the mundane world

Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" tells the story of what she learns about life, love, and herself after her divorce. Her ordinary world, that is, the world before the quest begins, is one where a woman realizes she wants to get married. Her divorce is significant because it sets the tone for what happens next, but it is not the story itself, nor is it the catalyst that invites her on her journey.

In one of the opening scenes of the book, Elizabeth lays her head on the floor and realizes that she no longer wants to be married. Then, in the first 35 pages of her memoir—where she goes through a divorce and enters into an unhealthy relationship with another man—she decides to travel to Indonesia after an invitation from a medical professional (the catalyst of the story). Almost nothing is said about her marriage or divorce in the book. But what if relationships play a more significant role? How would that change the place and direction of the breakup?

A break as an opening for something new

According to Blake Snyder, the turning point can either be the moment of the "hero's peak" or the moment when the world collapses around them. In the new memoir by Suzette Mullen, "The Only Way is Through," she recounts the life-threatening risks taken to become who you truly are. It is a story about identity, where one of the main conflicts revolves around the question of whether to stay in a marriage that has lasted for 30 years.

A rupture, like decay

Divorce also plays an important role in Abigail Thomas's memoir "A Three Dog Life" about her second husband. Many writers hope to replicate the success of this book due to its unique handling of time and perspective. The story works precisely because it has something resembling a plotline centered around her relationship with her second husband. In fact, the book's short vignettes mainly describe their fate, marriage, divorce, and reconciliation. It is because of this plotline that the turning points of the book can be identified.

A breakup, like relief

Sometimes a breakup becomes a victory that concludes a story. When this happens, you need to decide whether it is the end or just a preparation for it. In Carmen Maria Machado's memoir "In the Dream House," the protagonist spends much of the story contorting herself into a shape that she believes will please her partner. The book is filled with moments of attraction and repulsion, where she is rejected only to find herself once again under the sway of this toxic relationship. In the moment of "Everything is Lost," she breaks up with the woman from the dream house, but then has a change of heart and claims it was all a mistake. Or was it? The protagonist is overwhelmed, knowing that the relationship is poison, yet she feels powerless against its sweetness. In the moment of "Breakthrough to the Third" – or the moment when the heroine finds a way to solve her problem – she completely cuts off contact, making the breakup final. This is not the end of the book, but it is where the heroine's healing begins.

You can apply this method to your memoir by following these steps:

• Study all of Blake Snyder's turning points, such as the midpoint, "All is Lost," or "Break into Three."
• Identify the scenes that serve as turning points in your memoir.
• Use the scene list to determine your main narrative line.
• Approach the main scenes in such a way that they fulfill the primary function of each turning point.
• Discard everything that doesn't fit and doesn't belong to the memoirs.

By learning to do this, you will be able to optimize the recycling process. As you carry out this work, you will feel more confident about what truly belongs in your memoir, and most importantly, you will know which details are the most important.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this article, join us on Wednesday, April 3, for the online course Creating a Memoir Script. Lisa Cooper Allison is an author, speaker, writing coach, and host of the podcast Writing Your Resilience. Over the past two decades, she has helped clients and students turn difficult experiences into art, and she teaches courses on memoir writing, the psychology of writing, and book proposals. A recipient of the 2022 Lancaster Lebanese Confessional Story Award, her essays and stories have been published in various outlets, including Risk!, The New York Times, HuffPost, Hippocampus Literary Magazine, and Kenyon Review Online.