Memoir structure and pacing: Multiple plots?
A writer on the AbsoluteWrite.com Life Writing Forum asked an interesting question. “Should a memoir have multiple sub-plots?” I love questions that make me think, and this one had me scratching my head. A best selling fiction work might have several sub-plots, each overlapping and interweaving to keep the pace racing along. For example, a detective story might have a love story embedded in it. Each plot has a plot line, with its challenge (catch the murderer or catch the lover), setbacks, and resolution. Would that work in a memoir? There are no rule books about memoirs that say what you can and cannot do. So without a rule book, I came up with two different “right” answers. The first “right” answer is that if you want to write a publishable book, and want to know what publishers are publishing, then take a look at the bookshelves. After you’ve read 10 or 20, you can get a sense of what’s out there, and how they work. While there are enormous variations, I think you’ll see a trend in the way they treat the sort of structure issue you’re wondering about.
Take for example, Tracy Kidder, a Pulitzer prize-winning non-fiction writer, and one of the founders of the literary non-fiction movement. In his memoir My Detachment, Kidder takes a straight-line approach, moving his story along with the unfolding of events. This is fairly typical. He starts as a young man, lets us know some of the issues that make him who he is, and then gradually shows how he signed up for military service, without any particular plan. It just seemed like the right thing to do. And so it goes, through his tour in Vietnam. The pacing is provided by the writer’s unfolding understanding of life.
And Harry Bernstein, in his highly publicized memoir, The Invisible Wall, does the same. Both of the stories have things going on in the background. Kidder’s memoir took place mainly during his tour of duty in Vietnam, and Bernstein’s took place in England, during the first world war. (Yes. That’s the first war! He got his first book deal when he was 93, giving new support for the old saying, “it’s never too late.”) In fact, the way events unfold in the world-story are important for establishing the pacing of the book.
One memoir I have read recently that does not follow a simple path was Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. As far as I’m concerned, she is in a genre of her own. Her memoir writing skills reach to the edges of my ability to analyze. In the memoir, she mentions that her author husband was “rereading a book to find out how it worked.” That’s a great tip from a professional writer about how to see into the workings of a complex piece. And the Year of Magical Thinking is complex. I need to reread it.
Didion has a brilliant knack for inviting me into her mind, and showing me reality through her eyes. Her writing reflects the inside our own consciousness, where time jumps around like crazy. I can glance up at my bookshelf, see a book about England, start musing about my trip there, reach for my cup of coffee and leap back to needing to put on another pot, all within a split second. But stories typically don’t report what happens inside the teller’s mind. The process of writing a life story really boils down to a translation from one language to another - from the language of thought and memory which leaps, swirls, and hides, into the language of story, which can be followed sensibly by a reader. They are very different languages. And if you are looking for a way to do that translation and tell an authentic story, a good place to start is along the throughline of your life events.
Most published memoirs don’t make use of multiple plots, which makes me believe that when we read about someone’s life, we are expecting a methodical unfolding, waking up in the morning with the protagonist and going through the day with them without too much literary device at work. This still provides plenty of opportunity for a rich story, just not a complex one. Take Jeannette Wall’s bestseller, Glass Castle, for example. She has a variety of themes. Two astonishingly self-centered parents with the emotional maturity of fifteen year olds. Her siblings, fellow inmates in this asylum, provide support and adventure. Drifting from town to town. Many crazy experiences. And gradually, from the chaos, emerges the seeds of adulthood. She plans to escape. And with all of this, she tells the events in the order they unfolded. Same with Tobias Wolff’s memoir “This Boy’s Life.”
The power of a memoir comes from the unique unfolding of a person’s life. I know that’s what I want when I read a memoir. I want to walk a couple hundred pages in their shoes. What sort of unique story do you have to tell? Perhaps when you tell your story, you visualize it unfolding along multiple plot lines. Which brings me to my second “right” answer. It’s your life, and if you feel your story can best be told with sub-plots, do it. If you want to really take flight, try packaging your story as “fiction based on real life.” This would give you the best of both worlds — the freedom to create a complex novel, establishing a pacing that you feel works best for the story, while at the same time, drawing from the rich source material of your own experience. On your book signing tour, answer questions about which parts are real and which parts aren’t. Your readers will feel like you’ve taken them into the heart of your story.
