Isn’t it confusing when you get two closely related things, and you have to pick one of them? Well, it is. When you hear the word autobiography, you know it’s something a person writes about himself. When you hear the word memoir, you know it’s something similar to autobiography, since we write ourselves in both genres. So, what’s the difference between a memoir and an autobiography? That’s what we are going to discuss in this blog post. And in the end, you will learn a tip that can help your autobiography and memoir become a bestseller book.
In this article, we will first talk about memoirs and autobiographies and their difference. After that, we will tell you which type is best for you and how you can write it. Moreover, in your writing process, if you need assistance and get queries in your mind related to the work, you can reach out to any expert autobiography writer.
What is an autobiography?
An autobiography is an account of one’s life that he writes to himself. On the other hand, someone else writes a biography about a person. Autobiography covers almost the entire life of a person. It describes a person’s life from when he’s born to the current phase of his life. There is no limit to who can write an autobiography. Anyone who thinks his life is worth discussing or wants his future generations to know about it writes an autobiography.
Who Can Write an Autobiography?
However, let’s talk about today’s world when a famous person, such as a movie star or a sports person gets more recognition and gets published easily. Traditional publishers like Penguin Random House and others have strict criteria for publishing a book. However, it’s easy for celebrities to publish their books since people already know and want to read about them. Thus, it doesn’t fear the traditional publishers when they publish their books.
Thus, if a person is a celebrity, he can easily publish his autobiography. However, it doesn’t mean a non-celebrity person cannot. Although it may require your effort to get your book published through an established publishing house. If you write a good book and it attracts the literary agent and publisher, you’re good to go. Moreover, now you can choose a self-publishing method for your books too.
Writing an Autobiography
First, you have to determine why you are writing an autobiography. Ask yourself questions: Why do you want to write an autobiography? Who are you writing it for? What’s the purpose of your book? Would people like to read your life story? How are you going to publish your book? You don’t have to rush into writing an autobiography at all. The reason behind it is that a person talks about his entire life in his autobiography. Even if you want to monetize your book, you don’t want to write it quickly. If you delay it to publishing, the more you can add to your biography, the better it is. However, it’s subjective, and it’s up to you if you want to discuss your life to a certain point.
Don’t Do These Things When You Write an Autobiography
Although, when writing an autobiography, it’s up to you to decide at what point you want to discuss your life. But you need to make sure you don’t skip discussing certain points of your life purposefully. You need to discuss your life entirely without lying or hiding it. Hiding can be acceptable in some cases, but you don’t want to lie about anything in your autobiography. It will not let your book become a hit.
What is A Memoir?
A memoir is almost similar to an autobiography. However, there is a small difference in which that memoir discusses particular events of a person’s life and emphasizes them. An autobiography discusses the complete life of a person. Memoir discusses only specific parts of a person’s life. Autobiography is written with a sense of describing one’s life, while we write a memoir as more of a lesson-learning thing for other people. Memoir is somehow similar to self-help books. The difference between both is that memoir is written focusing on the author. In comparison, self-help books discuss events from several people’s lives.
Who Can Write a Memoir?
We described above that you write about your entire life in an autobiography. You don’t want to lie at all and avoid hiding things in it. However, if you don’t think you want to talk about your life that way, you can opt to write a memoir. When you write a memoir, you talk about specific events of your life. You get more space to decide what you want to discuss when writing a memoir. Choose from your life several events that you think are worth discussing; people would love reading them and can get help from them. You don’t fear disclosing things since you don’t write about your entire life.
However, as we said earlier, if you think a certain thing shouldn’t be told in your autobiography, you can skip discussing it. But make sure you do it only 1-2 times in your autobiography.
Writing a Memoir
Before you start writing an autobiography, the first thing to do is sit down with a piece of paper and pen. And then brainstorm about your life events from the very start to the current phase of your life. Write all of them down on paper. It may require you more than a day to write about all the events that could be worth discussing in a memoir. However, you can always add more events to that list anytime you remember them. Once you have the list ready, you can turn on your creative mode and start writing your memoir.
Deciding the type
So, now you can figure out which type is best for you. If you want to discuss your entire life and have no problem talking about it, an autobiography is for you. If you want to only talk about events that you think can help people, choose to write a memoir.
This is Mandatory when you write an autobiography, Memoir, or any kind
This tip will help in increasing the chances of getting considered by a literary agent. It is that your memoir or autobiography’s starting needs to be one-hundred percent engaging. A person should not be able to resist reading further after reading the first few lines or a paragraph. However, you have to do it without lying about anything. That’s where your creativity is needed the most.
Moreover, the entire book should be engaging. So, basically, it’s about writing a superb autobiography or memoir. If the content is good, it will be a successful book.
Also Read: Barbara Roufs Bio, Wiki, Age, Family, Death
