Why Your Memoir Characters Might Not Be Interesting!

In fiction, the people who appear on your pages and play a role in the story you are narrating are called characters. As a memoirist, you must take memoir characters as seriously as a fiction writer does.

As with fiction characters so too with memoir characters

Vivid character development is as crucial in memoir writing as in fiction writing.

In fiction, characters must be developed into rounded figures that the reader will sympathize with and relate to. (No stick figures allowed!) This calls for details and exactness in depiction as well as for consistency in presentation.

The same is true of the people who appear in your memoir and play a role in your stories: your family, friends and colleagues are your characters.

How you portray your characters on the page, not how flamboyant or dramatic your people were in life, will make your story “interesting.” Without well-developed characters, how can you be surprised your memoir falls “flat!”

“But, I can fictionalize, can’t I?”

This call to take your character development to the next level does not provide you with a license for fictionalizing in your storytelling!

What is allowed in fiction and what is allowed in a memoir varies in many instances. For instance, take dialog. A fiction writer can write a detailed dialog but a memoir writer cannot “remember” in too exact a detail. Really: who can remember a conversation that occurred 40 years ago? The tone and the gist of the dialog, yes, but exact wording adding up to a 75-word quote? No.

An obvious solution? Use indirect dialog.

Not a memoir!

Memoirs that take liberties in character development are not memoirs but are autobiographical fiction. Calling autobiographical fiction “memoir” is like calling lobbing the ball over a lowered net “playing tennis.”

Here’s how to learn to Develop Vivid Characters.

In our distance-learning tutorial Develop Vivid Characters, you will learn how to answer the following:

• Are the characters in your memoir captivating your readers—rather than boring them?
• Are you at a loss—“Help! What can I do!”—about how to make the people in your memoir more relatable?

• Are you embarrassed by the “stick” characters you have presented? “She really was a complex person, but I don’t know how to show her that way.”

The Develop Vivid Characters Program is a text and audio program to set you in the right direction to write better portrayed and more delineated characters. Your readers will love the results.

On sale at a 50 % discount through July 1, 2025. Was $39.95, now $19.95.

For more info and to buy, click here.

The Develop Vivid Characters Program provides many examples of how you can create a strong, vivid character by describing him or her in sensual details. (The senses, of course, are: taste, sight, sound, smell, and touch.) The most effective descriptions of people make use of these.

This is only one techniquein thi program that will always improve your writing. The Develop Vivid Characters program includes many other techniques to make your characters memorable.

Remember: whatever you do today, make the characters in your memoir more vivid.

Good luck writing about the people in your memoir!

Best,
Denis and the Memoir Team

[To watch a video on developing characters in your memoir, click here.]

The Develop Vivid Characters Program

• Are the characters in your memoir captivating your readers—rather than boring them?
• Are you at a loss—“Help! What can I do!”—about how to make the people in your memoir more relatable?

• Are you embarrassed by the “stick” characters you have presented? “She really was a complex person, but I don’t know how to show her that way.”

The Develop Vivid Characters Program is a text and audio Program to set you in the right direction to write better portrayed and more delineated characters. Your readers will love the results.

On sale at a 50 % discount through July 1, 2025. Was $39.95, now $19.95.

For more info and to buy, click here.

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