How to Start Your Memoir with Intention with Michelle Kicherer— August 21

Are you in the earlier stages of memoir writing? This workshop is designed to provide tangible guidelines for how to start a memoir with intention.

We’ll look at techniques for forming story arc, for developing stronger characters and for writing scenes that will create an impact in your memoir. This workshop will focus on tangible editing tools for your memoir, including how to take an inventory, what your story is “about” and what areas of your life to focus on (and which ones might belong in a different book).

We will look at examples of several very different structures from writers like Melissa Febos, Mary Karr, David Sedaris, and Jeannette Walls. Together, we will dissect storytelling components of their work and learn tangible tools that we can apply to our own work.

What students will learn:

• Understand what a strong memoir structure looks like

• How to apply a novel-like story arc to your memoir (and this includes playing with unconventional form)

• How to pinpoint and expand upon moments of tension in your memoir in order to create the greatest impact, both on your narrator (you) and your reader

• Understand how to insert humor and memorable scenes in your memoir

• How to brainstorm scenes to include (or not)

• How to drafting a story outline (and when in the process might work best for you)

• How and why you should write character sketches

Workshop Takeaway

Students will learn how to get started on their memoir, which parts of their story might work best as starting points, and how to edit your work in the early to mid stages of memoir writing. [optional!] Writers will be given the option to connect after the session to find accountability partners and writing groups!

Additional info

If you can't attend this class live, it will be recorded! Students will receive a recording the day after the class, and it will be available for 30 days.

About the Instructor

Michelle Kicherer is the author of the novella Sexy Life, Hello, which Kirkus Reviews gave a “Get It” recommendation and called “An eye-opening satire that is as cheeky as it is unsparing.” She is a book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and Willamette Week, a former nonfiction ghostwriter and her fiction has been published in The Masters Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review and many others. Michelle is the founder of Banana Pitch Press and is a writing instructor and coach, where she often encourages writers to “get a little weirder.” Find her on Instagram and Substack @MichelleKicherer.