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Chapter Template for Memoir Writers

8 Feb 2023 · 1 min

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Julie Broad (YouTube video) gives advice for memoir writers focused on treating chapters as mini-stories: each chapter should have action, obstacles, and emotions and its own story arc that feeds the book-level arc. Favored chapter openings include an inciting incident, striking dialogue, or a stunning revelation; chapters should lead naturally into the next.

Chapters

If you're writing a memoir, this would be more of a story to be told template. I still believe with memoirs there's an outcome of an outcome to be shared, but it's being shared via telling a story. And each chapter will have its own action, obstacles and emotions. And there should be a story arc to each chapter as much as a story arc to the whole book. I've never written a memoir, but the ones I love to read often open with an inciting incident, dialogue, or a stunning revelation, and then tell the story from there that then leads into the next chapter.