Reader/Writer Contract

Rule #1 in memoir is that the writer never breaks the reader/writer contract. That contract is: ‘this is a true story’. The reader-writer contract is not written down anywhere. But it is assumed by every reader when they pick up a book that is categorized as non-fiction, or memoir or autobiography or true crime. 

Simply put, readers expect that the writer did not make this stuff up, that it is ‘true’, factually correct, that the writer is being as accurate as possible, that the writer is not telling lies, ‘telling stories, fibs, whoppers’, that what the author describes ‘actually happened’. Similar to a journalist’s code of ethics, writers of memoir swear to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, so help them God – or, to be honest, to tell their version of the truth, with the implicit understanding that subjective truths can (and will) often be contested by others who experienced things differently. […] 

Let’s imagine a reader-writer contract. What would it look like? 

1. The author, protagonist and narrator are the same person 
2. If the book is advertised as non-fiction, every ‘fact’ is verifiable.  
3. The writer portrays events as accurately as possible. 
4. The writer is accountable and answerable for claims made in the book.  
5. Memoir writers will strive to recall memories as accurately as possible and do research to fact-check them. 
6. Writers will be as honest as possible. 
7. Writers can in no circumstances make up things, put in stories that are not true or exaggerate events, or embellish incidents 

There are some immediate problems with these rules. Can you change names of people to protect their identities? Can you leave out things that are not important? For example, it is a fact that you go to the toilet several times a day, but is it necessary to tell us this unless it serves the story in some way? Can you conflate events that are similar? Can you make up dialogue that approximates a conversation you had? Can you shape the ‘ebb and flow’ of events, create character arcs and plot tension in order to make sense of life, which is often not ordered and random and chaotic? 

The answer is yes, as long as the reader knows you are doing that and understands how you shape your memoir. The reader/writer contract includes the understanding that you need to shape facts into narrative, and this means leaving things out, contracting long boring repeat episodes, even making two characters one, giving approximate dialogue – in other words, using narrative techniques that are common to writing fiction. Memoir is telling a story after all, not listing events, and if we are telling a story we need to use those storytelling tools to make our memoirs work. No one wants to just read a list of events that occurred to you. 

Writing the Radical Memoir uses salient theories about memory and the self to challenge assumptions about how we remember and tell the truth of our lives when we write about it. Innovative in approach and making new critical ideas accessible, each chapter maps out the key principles of such writers as Barthes, Lacan, Derrida, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Philippe Le Jeune and Joseph Campbell, invokes literary examples to show how other writers have mastered the idea before reflecting on how you can practically apply the theory to your writing. With original exercises and prompts for further reading that bridge the gap between the theoretical and how it might be put into practice, the book is attentive to the multiple facets of the genre of nonfiction writing.