Flawed Characters in Memoir #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Yes, even in memoir, the protagonist needs to be flawed. Flawed in her understanding, her logic, and her actions. Other characters may be flawed as well. This can be difficult for writers. In memoir, you are writing about yourself. And it needs to be true!

            Okay, you may say. But which flaws do I include? How do I know which events to put into the memoir story and which ones to leave out?

We choose the flaw/s and events to include that pertain to the point we are trying to make with the memoir story as a whole.

            This is why you need to know the overall point of the memoir. What are you trying to show or prove? Which insight do you wish to share with the reader? It is very important that you know where you’re going in your memoir story. Knowing the point of your story will save you from writing pages and pages that go nowhere. By knowing the overall point, you also know whether you’ve made it or proved it through your writing, and—most importantly—you know where to end the memoir story.

           

This is true whether you are writing fiction or essays or memoir.

But trying to find the point to convey through your memoir can be difficult to discover. It can take memoirists and writers a long time to find. At least it did with me because I overthink everything—one of my many flaws! And I’m still not sure if I have it right.

When you start out, in fiction or memoir, your point may be vague; like, forgiveness takes time or love conquers all. The point of my memoir about attending college as a mother of five is “to seize opportunity so as not to be left with regret.” I’d been instructing my children to do this ever since they were born. But maybe the point needed to be a bit more specific to my story. I came up with: “Don’t let fear and doubt stop you from taking a chance at seizing your dream.” Still kind of heavy.

The flaw I’m tracking and dramatizing with this memoir is my inner struggle with inferiority, that I was not good enough to attend college. I need to show this through concrete events in my life. Much of this is through backstory, beginning with the origin scene. We’ll address that in another post.

 Writers need to consider their readers. In considering the readers of my college memoir, I believe feelings of inferiority are universal. But is it deep enough or specific enough for my memoir story purposes? I need to ponder this. Your thoughts on this would be beneficial to my memoir progress. 

As for seizing opportunity and having a second chance at my dream of a college degree, I learned about community college from another parent who was attending part time. This seems ridiculous now in the age of the ubiquitous internet, but back in 1998, when I was knee deep in kids—five, remember, the oldest with social and learning difficulties—this was new information to me. When I attended high school, going to college meant going away to study, fulltime.

In the story present—the time when the memoir story opens—I thought college had passed me by. I had no time for it now.  Then the Ivy League showed itself on the horizon in scholarship form because of awards earned at the community college level. And Inferiority moved into my home to live with me—permanently—taunting me daily: The Ivy League? You? A mother? Are you crazy? You got lucky in community college.

            Memoirists and writers may start with a general point to their story and then make it specific to the protagonist. Why her? Why now? Why does it matter to her?

This is where specific backstory comes into play. Through backstory, we find the why of the present story you are telling. We’ll address this next month. Please feel free to ask me anything about memoir and I will explain what I know through my blog posts.  

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Insecure Writers want to know: What are your pet peeves when reading/writing/editing?

            What really gets stuck in my computer keys is this mindset, usually by non-writers, that writing a story is easy. Now wait! We are writers. We understand how things in our story worlds must be logical. So let’s look at this assumption logically.

When you think about it, writers must create a whole new world that didn’t exist before in story, no matter what the genre. Historical fiction begins with the facts. Then the writer leaps from there to create a fictional world and situation. Fantasy and science-fiction work this way, too. The more the writer grounds the story base in fact or myths or beliefs, the more realistic the story seems. Each world needs to follow a logical set of rules just like in reality. Even in contemporary stories, writers must research facts and details to base their worlds in possibility. And this all takes time and effort.

Once the writer has a genre and sets up the world, she needs to populate it with characters; a protagonist, an antagonist, and secondary characters. Each character then needs his or her own backstory and belief system and personal problems.

Note: Worlds or characters or situations, begin with what works best for you. There is no one way to write. However, the worlds, characters, and situations must seem realistic to the reader.

Creating art from words requires discipline. Like any profession, one must commit to completing a project. That means devoting the time to the task, whether you are learning new skills and methods through workshops and courses, or quieting that nagging critic in your head so you can move forward in your story.

Writers are very brave. They must allow their characters, and thereby themselves, to be vulnerable on the page for all to see. Writers make mistakes. But they figuratively pick themselves up, put Band-Aids on their kneecaps if necessary, and dig in again. And sometimes, again and again. For writers understand that raw and true emotion intensifies tension in story. It connects readers to characters.

And the bravery continues when the writer begins to share her newborn story in critique sessions or with a critique partner. A writer is a fragile creature, as I’ve said before. The courage to “bleed on the page” as Hemingway said and then show it to others for their opinions is what makes writers so brave. The writer must be open to other’s thoughts on their creation, however, before sending it out into the world to see what agents or editors think or stepping into self-publishing. They should seriously consider any comments that come up more than once.

Maya Angelou had it right when she said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Writers are compelled to create stories. And they need to do it again. And again. And again. Writing a story is hard work. It’s the writer researching and calculating and understanding difficult phenomena. What do you think? Do you think writing a story is easy? If so, PLEASE, share some tips.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.