Writing & Selling Your Memoir

How to Craft Your Life Story So That Somebody Else Will Actually Want to Read It

There’s more to writing a memoir than just writing your life story. A memoir isn’t one long diary entry. Rather, it’s a well-crafted story about a crucial— often exceptionally difficult time in someone’s life. Writing & Selling Your Memoir gives you the knowledge and skills you need to turn your most important personal stories into compelling and meaningful reading experiences for others. In this insightful guide, literary agent Paula Balzer draws on her experience working with New York Times best-selling memoirists and carefully explores the genre, providing you with step-by-step instruction on how to: • Identify strong opening and closing points • Find and develop a strong central hook that your readers will relate to • Structure your memoir for maximum readability • Use dialogue and pacing to enhance intimacy • Approach honesty and truthfulness, but also know when it’s okay to embellish the facts for entertainment value or to protect the identities of your “characters” • Build a successful author platform, get an agent’s attention, and get published Full of tips, techniques, detailed exercises, and examples from best-selling memoirs as well as sidebars from well-known memoir authors, Writing & Selling Your Memoir teaches you how to approach an often tricky genre and tell your story without sentimentalizing it.