Brooke Warner’s recent article on managing time in a memoir got me thinking how often I drift out of a scene without noticing. One moment, I’m describing my grandmother’s kitchen at Christmas in 1959, and a line slips in that pulls the reader into 2026. A phrase like “I still love the smell of my grandmother’s gravy” or “looking back now” or “I remember it clearly.” Each one yanks the reader out of the past and into your present-day desk chair.

Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press and cohost of the Memoir Nation podcast, names this problem well in a recent piece for Memoir Nation. She points out that memoir has only one legitimate “now,” and it belongs to the scene, not to the writer sitting at the keyboard today. She writes,

The moment you narrate from your current vantage point, you break the spell you built for the reader.

A scene works because the reader forgets you are writing it. You built a room, and they walked into it. The instant you say “even today” or “to this day,” you remind them a narrator exists, sitting somewhere far away, decades later, telling them what to think about what they just read.

You do not need to hold their hand that way. Trust the scene. Trust the reader.

Cut the tells. Search your draft for phrases like:

Most of these can go. The sentence underneath them almost always survives the cut and reads stronger without the crutch.

If you genuinely need to share something your younger self did not know, you have another option. Warner calls it swiveling the camera toward the future instead of jumping to the present. Instead of writing “now I understand my father was scared,” you write “my father was scared, though I would not understand that for another twenty years.” You stay anchored in the past. You gesture forward without breaking the wall between the reader and the scene.

Open a page of your draft. Find every place you speak from today. Ask what the sentence needs to do. Then rewrite it from inside the scene, staying in the age and the moment you were living then. One “now”, fully inhabited, carries more weight than two.

Whether you like it or not, your family shaped you. The people in your life, the ones you loved and maybe the ones you struggled with, they made you who you are. So, writing about them isn't just about telling their stories; it's about understanding yourself.

Let me start with a question that might make you feel uncomfortable. Think about  someone from your past: a parent, a sibling, a grandparent, an aunt, a friend, a partner.  Choose someone who mattered, someone who changed you.

What made them memorable?

It's rarely the obvious things or the big moments. Sometimes it's just a gesture–the way your grandmother's hands looked when she was braiding your hair; how your father laughed at his own jokes; or the friend who always knew when you needed them without you asking.

These small details are gold in memoir writing. They're what make a person real on the page.

Here's what I want you to think about. When you remember this person, what do you value most about them? I don’t mean what you think you should value. What actually matters to you. Maybe they were generous; maybe they were stubborn and taught you how to stand your ground; or maybe they hurt you, and that wound taught you something about yourself.

People are complicated. Your family members are probably more complicated. And that complexity makes for compelling writing.

As you think about the person you've chosen, ask yourself this: How did they influence my life? What did I learn from them, whether they meant to teach me or not? Did they show you how to love? Did they model something you wanted to become? Or did they show you something you absolutely didn't want to become? Both matter.

Some of you might be nervous about writing about family. I get it. I was. In fact, I found it difficult to write openly about my parents until they had both passed away. The celebrated memoir writer David Sedaris found writing about his father difficult. A lot of what he has written was written after his father died in 2021. In a Guardian article he wrote in the months following, Sedaris recalls the difficult relationship with his father. He writes, “As long as my father had power, he used it to hurt me. In my youth, I just took it. Then I started to write about it, to actually profit from it. The money was a comfort, but better yet was the roar of live audiences as they laughed at how petty and arrogant he was” (read the full article here).

You might worry about what family or friends might think if they read what you really think of them. You might fear stirring up old conflict or old pain. That's normal. But know this: writing your truth, even the difficult stuff, is part of your story. You don't have to publish it. But you can still write it.

Family relationships involve conflict. Love and conflict often exist in the same space. The parent who pushed you too hard because they believed in you. The sibling you fought with constantly because you cared. The friend who disappointed you. These moments teach us about ourselves. They shape how we see the world and how we show up in relationships.

So here are five writing prompts to help you get started writing. Choose the one that speaks to you. Write for fifteen or twenty minutes. Don't edit. Just let the memory come.

Choose someone from your family or an important relationship. Don't describe them in general terms. Instead, write about one specific detail that brings them to life. How they moved, what they wore, a habit they had, or a phrase they always used. Let that detail be your entry point. Write around it until the person appears on the page.

Write about someone who mattered to you. What did you value most about them? Be specific. Not "they were kind" but rather "they remembered my birthday every year even after I moved away" or "they made me laugh when everything felt heavy." What quality did they have that you wish you had more of in yourself?

Think about how someone shaped you. Write about a time they influenced you, whether you recognized it at the moment or only later. Did they teach you something? Did they show you something? Maybe they changed how you saw yourself or the world? Write one scene that shows this influence at work.

Some of the richest relationships contain both love and conflict. Choose someone and write about a moment when you felt both. Maybe you were angry at someone you loved or maybe you disappointed them. Did the two of you have a disagreement that mattered? Write the scene. Show what happened. Let the reader feel both the love and the tension.

If you could ask this person one question, what would it be? Write out the question. Then write their answer as you imagine it. What would you want to know? What might they tell you?

One more thing before you go. Some of you have asked me, “What if I can’t remember exactly what happened or what was said?”

My reply is something along the lines of, “When you write about relationships, you're not trying to get the facts exactly right. You're not writing a biography or a documentary. You're writing about what these relationships meant to you. How they felt and what they taught you. Some details you'll remember perfectly while others you'll fill in with what feels true about that person and that time.”

That's the work of memoir. It's honest. It's your story. And most of all, it's your truth.

Take your time with this exercise. Write about more than one person if you want to. This is the beginning. You're gathering material. You're listening to the people who made you who you are. And when we read what you’ve written, we’re learning about the influence they had on making you who you are. That's what writing a memoir is all about.

Confused about the difference between memoir and autobiography? Discover why memoir might be the perfect choice for your personal story.

This is a frequently asked question. How do I start writing my memoir? Where do I start? Our minds are full of memories and stories. Which one should we start with? Do I need a plan? How do I structure my memories? Should I join a writing group or find a memoir coach?

The question of how and where to start can feel so overwhelming that many simply give up and put off the idea. Yet, here you are in my class, wanting to share and make sense of your precious life. Good. Hang in there. The fact that you’re reading this suggests you’re serious about getting started. I’ve got a few tips that might help you.

The Memoir Formula

A = is the universal theme or idea that your story reveals

B = is your specific experience told in story form

C = is where you are going to share the story (i.e. in a book, a private notebook, as a legacy document for the family, as a podcast, a personal essay, etc.)

Example: My memoir is about learning to let go of an old story in order to become who I was meant to be as illustrated by my transition from an academic to becoming a travelling storyteller to be published in a collection of short stories.