Memoir Genre (Middle Years)

Introduction

We're going to do impressions of some different writing styles all around memoirs, including teasers, diary entries, memories, and discussions. 

For the tasks in this remix lesson, you can choose to: 

  1. Write something true about your life
  2. Make something up about your life, or 
  3. Imagine someone else's life.

If you want to write about yourself, imagine one specific story from your life and use that each time so you can see the effect of writing about it in different ways.

If you want to write about an imagined life, here's the inspiration image we'll use in this lesson (or you can find your own).

Teens jumping into the water

Memoir is a genre where people tell (supposedly) true stories about their lives.

While an autobiography covers facts about the writer’s entire life, a memoir uses storytelling to recreate a pivotal event as they remember it (memoir = memory). It means that memoirs can include opinions and feelings about these events, while autobiographies have to stick to what can be proven.

We'll do five exercises. For each exercise, you'll get a snippet in a particular style of memoir, and then an example showing how you could apply that style to either your own memories, or the image.  

Once you submit, you’ll be able to read and react to responses from others in your group. 

If you're ready, let's write!

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