“Everyone has a different life story. Things happen rapidly for someone, and things move slowly for others.”
Barun Sobti
Is it possible to know someone’s story unless they tell it themselves?
We all think that the life stories we have are borderline boring. However, at some point or another, you must have searched for how to write a book about your life, and then forget about it. It is because we all have started believing that the stories we have are not worth telling. Also, we have been reading life stories that have something exotic, something spicy, something controversial to create stirs, as well as some exaggerated accomplishment stories.
Well, that’s not the case with most people. What if we tell you that people love to read real-life stories that are relevant to them and they can resonate with? For example, maybe celebrity life storybooks grab attention immediately. However, if a life storybook written by ordinary people with all the everyday life’s interesting details is published, people will love to read it too.
Your life story: Why do readers love life story books?
We all have a legacy that we leave behind. Some of our legacies can touch billions of lives or may impact a few people deeply. That is why writing a book about your life lets people know who you are, know your struggles and experiences, and it can impact them by letting them find solutions they were looking for their problems. You can motivate them through your life story.
Readers want to read your life story for many reasons, including:
Emotional association:
Readers can relate to the characters and experiences you share in your book of life story and can associate themselves emotionally.
Mental stimulation:
Reading life stories is a good source of mental stimulation.
Hope:
Through your life story, you can provide a ray of hope to someone living a hopeless life in a dark and scary world.
Relatability:
Life story books from successful and famous people are something people look forward to as they can relate to the life events addressed in the book.
Empowering role models:
Writing a book about your life can provide someone an opportunity to consider an empowering role model to follow in their footsteps and learn how to live life.
How To Start Writing A Book About Your Life?
You must be searching for how to write a book about your life and still confused about where to begin it. Maybe there is a story in your life that is worth penning down. Here is the most basic rule you should know while you have an intrusive thought of writing “my life story”
Autobiography vs. Biography vs. Memoir
One can write page after page of memories, without even knowing about it. So first of all let’s learn some terminologies first.
Autobiography, Biography, and Memoir are all about life stories but there is a difference in perspective of writing and scope. An autobiography and biography both explain a person’s life. The difference is just the writing perspective; a biography is written by someone else, while an autobiography is written by the person itself. A memoir, on the other hand, covers a specific part of the person’s life for dissection and explanation.
For instance, an autobiography is if you are writing a book about your life that includes your school life events, how you started college, how you graduated from university, and how each stage helped you grow as a person and lets you succeed in your entrepreneurial journey.
On the contrary side, in a memoir, you can skip all the details and just focus on your initial struggles after university, explaining how your entrepreneurial hustle was fruitful for you in building your empire.
How to write a book about your life: Tips and Tricks
Remember, there is no magical method like “one size fits all” for writing one’s life story; you may skip some of our tips if they don’t work for you. Anyway, read till the end if you want to learn how to start writing a book about your life:
Use your diary or journal to start writing a book about your life
If you are a person who often aims to:
“Oh, I have so many stories to tell, I should start my life novel right today”
You must have been writing a diary or journal with a bunch of stories full of your everyday life happenings somewhere in your study room drawers. All you have to do is convert them, restructure them properly, and write a proper manuscript.
However, if this is not the case, you can start journaling all the life events in a journal and pen down the most interesting stories you can think of. You can write it randomly or complete one story at a time.
There is no need to rush. You can take your time, and just focus on your memory to extract the most out of it. It does not need any exceptional writing skills. However, you must write details about the key life events that will be included in your book. The penning down of stories will help you build incredible non-fiction plotlines.
Form an outline using your stories
To present your life stories rationally, you need to organize them through some form of coherence. Well, there is no rocket science involved in it. You can do it in the chronological order of events, however, you can choose any approach you want. After all, it is your life, and you are the one to decide how you want people to go through it. You can organize your life events by theme or can opt for reverse chronological. It totally depends on you. Just ensure you don’t confuse readers with it and it does not turn out to be what we say “haphazard storytelling”. Or else, the book will not have the impact you are expecting.
Confirm your book’s genre and theme
It is important to remember your autobiography’s genre and theme before learning how to write a book about your life. It will become easier for your readers to resonate and relate if you have a proper theme of the book and they will engage on the go.
To decide your book’s theme, create a list of “my life’s story” and add all the events to it to evaluate what is common in them and determine your book’s theme. This will eventually describe your book’s genre.
If you select a few events to include in your book and get it written by someone else, it will be a memoir. It will be an autobiography if you enlist all of your life in your book and write it by yourself. But it can also be categorized differently.
You can market your book easily through this technique. For example, Long Walk to Freedom, an autobiography by South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela, who was actually the first democratically elected President profiles Nelson Mandela’s early life, education, coming of age, and 27 years of prison sentence. You can easily tell what this book is all about by reading its name.
Must add references from your family and friends
Memories get cluttered with time and you may forget the events and timelines in correct order. That is why it is important to ask family and friends for fact-checks and add references from them in your book as well. It will help you get a new perspective on the details you may have missed. You’ll be surprised to see your story so concrete through this process. Also, this is a good way to complete your story faster. Adding quotes and experience sharing from your family members and friends enhances the memory-sharing experience for your readers.
Write your first draft
It’s time to type down your book’s first draft after completing all the basic work. The first draft of your life story will be lengthy, scattered, and probably very unpolished. However, you can make it correct by keeping the following things in mind:
- You must let your readers feel your emotions through writing; it is the best way to engage them. Just make them laugh, cry, surprise, feel bad, and even shock them by adding emotional elements enhanced by suitable adjectives and adverbs tastefully in your draft to hook the readers.
- Dialogues are necessary to make your book sound real. You may have more or less exact conversations in mind that you can convert into dialogues. It will make your book about the story in your life just as interesting as a fictional book.
- Draw your reader’s attention from page one, even if you think that my life’s story is dark and bleak. The first few pages of one’s life story are opportunities to present something interesting to read. It may be anything like a dramatic moment or a big secret.
- Readers must feel that you are going to share some deep secrets of your life story only the reader knows. So you must write in such a way.
- Although autobiographies are non-fiction books, in the end, they’re stories. That is why you must use the necessary storytelling elements for compelling impact. You are your book’s protagonist, so build your setting accordingly. Also, the plotline, conflict, and a satisfied ending must be there.
- Don’t strive for perfection or you will keep doing it between writing. Leave grammatical errors, spelling, sentencing, and punctuation for the editing process. It will help you write your story flawlessly without going back and forth for editing and proofreading.
- The recipe to add flavor to your story is to use humor and wisdom. Let your readers know your “This is my life story and I am going to shine in it” approach. Letting people learn through your wisdom is difficult and the best way you can do it is using humor to do wonders.
Finish your book
You’ll never learn how to write a book about your life until you know how to complete it. Book writing, especially one’s life story is overwhelming for many due to their steam being lost in the middle. However, it is quite normal for any writer to get a creative block and lack motivation in the process. The key reasons are boredom, repetitive topics, and lack of thrill in storytelling.
But, that does not happen too often and your book’s first draft must go through the proofreading and editing process. Here is how you should do it:
- Proofreading and editing:
First of all, take a break as soon as your book’s first draft is finished to gain a fresh perspective. Don’t do anything related to writing, relax a bit, and if possible, travel for a short escape. Now proofread the first draft of your book for:
- Grammatical errors
- Punctuation
- Weak narrative
Do not perform extensive editing at this point and just correct that does not feel right. Mark down the sections where there’s a need to add more information.
- Refine your draft:
Once you are done with your first proofreading, create a second draft to proceed to refine it. Follow these steps to refine your edited first draft:
- Remove all the errors highlighted through proofreading.
- Add all the new information in the sections you marked along with any additional notes.
- Delete all the content that you feel is not the best fit or flawed.
- Share your second draft with family and friends to read to know their point of view.
- Edit your draft again after receiving the feedback.
- Repeat these steps as much as required.
Draft new manuscripts and get them read by different people. You’ll eventually come up with a final draft that is nothing like your book’s first draft. This final draft is an ideal depiction of what you really trying to convey as your personal story of life.
How To Write A Book About Your Life: Few Things You Must Know
We have discussed the basics of how to start writing a book about your life. But there are also a few things that you must know while penning down your life story in a book form:
Adding old photos to your story is fruitful
Old photos bring back lots of memories and are great for adding to your life storybook. In the case of ebook writing, you can also use old video recordings. Photos have some emotions and gestures that remind you of the particular events and their tiniest details. It is the best idea to win your readers’ trust and provide them with something engaging to hook with the book.
Handle sensitive issues carefully
There are not many examples of books written to highlight the rosy picture of a person’s life. Many people focus on writing a book about their lives by focusing on the unpleasant, and not-so-good events and happenings. That is why writing and publishing such stories is overwhelming and challenging.
One of the best ways to write a book on dark, and difficult topics is to keep in mind the potential public backlash as well as from the media. For example, ableist descriptions in any book can hurt the sentiments of the autistic community, or the demeaning and discriminatory language in books that promote racism may offend the African American community.
That is why while writing a book about your life, you must be careful and precise while detailing sensitive issues. Use appropriate language, choose your words carefully, and get the book proofread before publishing for people’s opinions about narratives.
Prioritize your readers
Maybe you are writing a book about your life thinking that it is my life story, and I am the one who will steer it. But let us give you a reality check. Your reader will just go through your book’s first pages to decide if it is worth reading or not.
That is why keeping the reader’s interest in mind while writing an autobiography is important. Here are a few techniques that will help you out:
- Use fiction-writing practices to employ engaging elements
- Focus on specific audience segments for a better response.
- Balance your book with wisdom and humor to make your book’s content digestible.
- Do not just write to vent out your problematic life or brag about your successes in life.
- Keeping the balance between narrating your life events and the lesson you want to teach is important so readers can resonate with your book.
Do You Know How To Write A Book About Your Life? Are You Struggling With Your Autobiography?
Writing is not everyone’s cup of tea and that is why most people struggle to share their life experiences through books. But not to worry as Book Writing Genie is all ears to listen story in your life and convert it into a successful book. Whether you need help editing your drafts for your autobiography, want our team to pen down your biography, or it is just about a memoir; we are here to help.
Reach out to us for a professional consultation.
Bonus Tip:
A book about your life is something you will be proud of completing no matter what subject it has. If you want to learn how to write a book about your life, enroll yourself at community colleges for crash courses for motivation. It will keep you continue researching, writing, and progressing more efficiently. Also, there are a lot of online forums and communities of writers and publishers with memoir or autobiography experience. You can interact with them and get suggestions for your book.
Wrapping Up
And that’s how you can create a memorable gift for all your followers and readers that’ll stay in their hands and their minds over and again. Remember, once you are done writing a book about your life, you’ll realize how strong you were to live through all that has happened in your life.
You can always learn how to write a book about your life and come up with a manuscript that defines you as a person, your trials and tribulations, your achievements, your mistakes, and much more. And remember, you must share a copy of your book with those who took an active part in building what you are. It will help them remember the legacy you are going to leave behind.
