On Writing Memoir with Structure and Purpose

In this episode of Talking Book Publishing, hosts Kathleen and Adanna sit down with memoir expert Wendy Dale to explore the art and architecture of writing memoirs. Wendy introduces her transformative approach to storytelling through her "Memoir Engineering System," which emphasizes writing with structure and clarity from the very first draft. Listeners will discover the essential difference between scenes and transitions and how mastering these two components can dramatically improve their storytelling.

Wendy shares how emotional truth, rather than a chronological list of life events, makes a memoir compelling. She provides practical insights into the importance of outlining, crafting meaningful scenes, and integrating transitions that emotionally connect moments. With her signature humor and candor, Wendy makes a case for turning your life experiences into a page-turning narrative while staying true to your voice—whether deeply emotional, humorous, or somewhere in between.

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Transcript

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Kathleen Kaiser: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of talking book publishing. I'm Kathleen Kaiser, along with my co-host, Adanna Moriarty. And today we have Wendy Dale, who is going to be talking to us about memoir.

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Kathleen Kaiser: She really does have a sort of a new method of considering or how to write. Your 1st draft of your memoir, and that is such a big topic and so many people love reading memoirs. I thought this would be an interesting conversation. So, Hello, Wendy, welcome.

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Wendy Dale: Thank you so much, Kathleen.

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Kathleen Kaiser: So tell us you you well, tell us a little bit about yourself. You know a little background. I know you all coach and different things you have had your book published. Tell us about that.

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Wendy Dale: So I've been a memoir writer for a very long time. Once upon a time I wanted to write a book. I really always wanted to be a novelist, and when I 1st started writing I thought, Well, why don't I write a memoir? It'll be so much easier because you don't have to come up with plot. You just write about your life. Well, that was a huge mistake. Obviously I didn't know what I was doing. That was many years ago in my twenties.

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Wendy Dale: I eventually did get that book published by Crown, and so I've been a memoir writer for a long time, and then, like I don't know. 12 years after getting that book published, I eventually went into coaching. So I currently run memoir writing for geniuses. We offer courses and coaching, and what I really believe in

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Wendy Dale: is, I don't believe in fixing your book by fixing the prose itself. I'm a real believer in structure. So I think that's what makes me different when it comes to coaching. I believe in teaching people concepts. I feel like, if you learn concepts, you can write a book in a fraction of the time, instead of writing, and then rewriting and throwing pages out. There are concepts that need to be learned, and very few people teach those concepts. So that's kind of the mission I'm on.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Okay, so that's part of what you've done. And now you have a book on that, and you teach that correct.

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Wendy Dale: Exactly so. The memoir engineering system came out in January. That's

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Wendy Dale: really a summary of all of the concepts. I've actually been a memoir coach for 17 years now. So yeah, talking about really critical concepts that it's important to understand, so that you don't have to go to editor after editor. I see so many writers working with multiple developmental editors.

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Wendy Dale: and I honestly feel like that shouldn't be happening. I feel like the subtitle of the book is, make your 1st draft your final draft, and I don't mean that the prose should never be polished when I say that.

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Wendy Dale: But I really I see so many people writing a draft and kind of throwing the whole thing out and starting over. And that really frustrates me, and I feel like that doesn't have to happen if people write their book right the 1st time, which means understanding the concepts that go into writing a memoir.

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Adanna Moriarty: So like, what what do you mean by concepts? Can you kind of, yeah, absolutely nice.

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Adanna Moriarty: You've said it a few times, and I don't understand.

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Wendy Dale: I know. Oh, I can't wait to talk about it. I love the question. Yeah. So really, I spent 15 years as a memoir coach analyzing thousands of memoir texts because I was convinced that there was this code that all memoirs rely on, and what I found really surprised me. It took me many years. I mean, there are obviously lots of tiny details in this process, but

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Wendy Dale: to simplify it, what I really discovered was that there are 2 components in memoir.

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Wendy Dale: and those components are scenes and transitions, and they follow very different rules. If you use either one. The premise of the memoir engineering system book is that if you use either of these components in the wrong way, your plot won't work, your structure won't work. So everything I teach is really based on understanding. 1st of all, whether you're writing a scene or a transition.

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Wendy Dale: And when you know that now you have different principles that you apply in writing each one.

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Wendy Dale: So do you want me to keep going? Yeah, okay. I don't want to talk too much, but but I love this topic. So once you get me started, it's hard to get me to stop. So just as a starting point to help people understand the difference between scenes and transitions.

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Wendy Dale: Well, 1st of all, I will say, this exists in any written story. This is true in novels as well as memoirs. You have scenes, and you have transitions, and the easiest way to spot them

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Wendy Dale: is the way that time is used differently in in scenes versus transitions. So with a scene, a scene occurs at a particular point in time.

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Wendy Dale: so you'll often have a time anchor such as one day that Thursday at 3 Pm. 4 h later. Right? That indicates the beginning of a scene anytime, and a reader has different expectations of a scene. A scene is, a reader expects to be there with you during a scene.

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Wendy Dale: After a scene we get a bit of transition writing, and if you start based on our conversation today, if you go through, start going through novels and memoirs. You will see this happening. I've had so many people say this to me. I never realized this right. So, following a scene, you will have a chunk of transition writing, and this transition writing uses time differently. So this is the easiest way to spot it. There are different principles between scenes and transitions.

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Wendy Dale: But you'll notice after one day the doorbell rang, and we'll get a scene, and something will happen right. We're there when something happens in the scene, and then we get this transition writing. That kind of pulls us out of the action, and the way to spot it is that time is used differently

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Wendy Dale: over the next few days is a way to spot transition writing, or else there's no use of time. It's just the narrator talking about their life. You know I'm the kind of person who's always appreciated a good film that's transition writing as well. There's no sense of being there in a certain place in time. So that is the key to what I teach people. You have these 2 components. You have these 2 tools, and you have to use them in the right way, and if you do, your structure will work.

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Adanna Moriarty: That is so fascinating. I'm I mean.

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Adanna Moriarty: obviously, I mean, like, movies have transitions like, you know, everything has some kind of a transition from scene to scene, but I like that idea of breaking it down so like if you're if you're writing a memoir, and

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Adanna Moriarty: and you have

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Adanna Moriarty: a moment in time or whatever like. I mean before, before we started recording, Wendy and I actually talked about a memoir that I've been working on where I've been like, you know. Do I write it in short stories? Because it's something I've struggled with over the years, I mean, I have now been working on it for like 15 years, because I can never figure out how I want to structure it. So like, you know, to me, because the short stories would be all the scenes.

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Adanna Moriarty: That's what it would be.

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Wendy Dale: Well, okay. So the way I explain. And this is a complicated topic, and I'll try not to get too deep into it. But short stories consist of scenes and transitions. Right? So your scenes are where things happen. Scenes are the building blocks of plot you read when you when you say, here's what's kind of fascinating. It took me many years to learn this, but when you say one day

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Wendy Dale: you create an expectation in your reader's mind that something will happen

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Wendy Dale: the minute you say one day there's a knock at my door.

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Wendy Dale: Your reader is going to expect for something to change. And so there's actually, I see memoir writers commit this error all the time. They're talking about all this stuff happening. And it's creating this expectation for plot. So scenes are the building blocks of plot scenes are where things

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Wendy Dale: happen. Even if you're writing a short story, you have scenes and transitions. Transitions are connecting those scenes within a short story, because you can't write a short story with just a scene. You need multiple scenes to tell a story.

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Wendy Dale: So you still need transitions. Now talking about writing a memoir in terms I think you're talking. I guess it would be chunks of story, right? So kind of an essay style memoir. Is that what you'd break it into little mini stories that add up to the whole story? Is that what you're saying.

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Adanna Moriarty: Yeah, that was, it's a concept that I came up with for a few years ago at the 805 Writers Conference. It was 2,019, actually. And I was talking to

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Adanna Moriarty: a producer like, that's what she, you know, she takes stories and turns them into TV and movies. And and we were kind of just like talking through my my memoir. It's a very specific one year in time, you know, story.

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Wendy Dale: Then.

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Adanna Moriarty: And we and we kind of came up with this idea of writing it into short stories and it and it got me very excited about it, because I'd always, you know, kind of struggled with

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Adanna Moriarty: with how I wanted to structure it. But when I, when I started to turn it into short stories. I actually gave it to a developmental editor to just kind of look. I have like 60 pages just to look at it and see what she thought, and she was like. I don't know if this is going to work, you know, because it's too disjointed in each one. It doesn't carry you along like chapter to chapter. Would

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Adanna Moriarty: because it's very definitive, like, you know, this ended here, and then we move into the next. But

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Adanna Moriarty: but I mean, life is kind of like that. I feel like. So when you're right. If you're writing a memoir, you know.

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Wendy Dale: Okay, let me talk about the problem that you're having with your memoir, and I understand why you would get that feedback that it feels a little bit disjointed. So what you're describing is what I call an essay style memoir, and some people do write essay style memoirs, and I do help people structure them.

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Wendy Dale: But I always tell people if there is any way for you to create and write a traditional memoir, a chronological memoir, I suggest that.

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Wendy Dale: And the reason is that the problem with an essay style memoir is, you're probably using a different idea in every chapter. Is that right? So like what is chapter one about Adanna.

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Wendy Dale: roughly, or am I asking you too much information about.

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Adanna Moriarty: Yeah, I don't know if I want to get into it that much.

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Wendy Dale: Want to get into it.

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Adanna Moriarty: I was just sort of using it anecdotically. Oh, I can't say that word right now. For you to be able to explain your process because.

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Wendy Dale: Perfect.

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Adanna Moriarty: I mean, my story is deep and not something that I really wanna do here.

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Wendy Dale: Fair enough. So let me use a fictional example. Let's just let's say that you're trying to structure a book. It's a travel narrative. It's a book about moving to London, right? And so that's the book that you want to write. Some people are tempted to write chapters, thematic chapters so it can feel easier to write a chapter on food

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Wendy Dale: and travel and people you meet right and pubs. Right? So you have these thematic chapters. The problem with. That is, that

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Wendy Dale: your reader might start by reading a chapter on food.

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Wendy Dale: and so that covers. I don't know a 2 year period of time, but in order to read the next chapter, I forgot what the next chapter is transportation. We have to go back in time to talk about transportation. Now, why is that a problem?

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Wendy Dale: Well, it destroys any sense of a search in your book, right? And so if you're creating a movie, you have this conflict to be resolved if you're writing a novel, there is a conflict to be resolved. The problem with doing thematic chapters in a memoir. Some people do it, but I have some cautions against it, and you're hearing those cautions against it. And the reason is, it destroys any sense of a search because you're breaking up time

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Wendy Dale: in your memoir, you're using an idea. So it's not wrong. You are creating structure. You are connecting all of your stories around the same idea. But you lose that sense of a search that's so important for creating suspense and for keeping your reader turning the pages.

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Adanna Moriarty: Oh.

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Adanna Moriarty: yeah, I you know, I mean, I feel like memoir is uniquely difficult to write, anyway, because, you know, like you said, I think a lot of people go in thinking. Oh, like I already know the story. I already know the story, because it's my story, but you still have to write it to engage

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Adanna Moriarty: a reader. You can't just be like, you know. I was born. I went to school. I married this.

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Wendy Dale: Yes.

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Adanna Moriarty: I mean, you know, like that's that's boring which I think is a trap of some nonfiction. Anyway, when people say I don't like to read nonfiction a lot of times. It's because it's very.

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Adanna Moriarty: almost clinical. There's no emotion in some nonfiction, you know, but a memoir, is

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Adanna Moriarty: it? It does carry you through like a like a novel. I mean, it has to have emotion, and you have to connect. I, you know, like I like to use the

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Adanna Moriarty: Oh, what's it? Called the Glass House.

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Wendy Dale: The Glass Castle.

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Adanna Moriarty: The Glass Castle. I mean, like she wrote a beautiful book. I mean that book from the moment you pick it up. It doesn't feel like a memoir. It feels like, you know, a tragedy with hope. I mean, it's beautifully written, and it carries you through page by page by page by page, you know, to the end, which is, you know

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Adanna Moriarty: it. It's a hopeful end, but it's also kind of a bummer, like the whole book, you know, like where you're like. Wow! I can't believe this person. This is real like her story is incredible, but she really makes you feel it. And she and she transitions with, you know, as a little kid, when those early chapters you feel the little kid to adulthood like her, her prose changes through the whole story, and I think that's a gift in

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Adanna Moriarty: in writing about yourself, because it's massively vulnerable to write about yourself, anyway, and put yourself out there and let people read about you, and I think some of us get stuck there because you're like, Oh, my mom's still alive. I don't know if I want her to read this about me.

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Adanna Moriarty: Do you find that with clients like? How do you overcome those things so they can write, you know, a really beautiful story.

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Wendy Dale: So let me go back to where you started, which is, how do you make your memoir interesting? Right? And I love the examples. What you were giving, and I was born. And then I went to school, and I got married, and I had kids. And you know, that's

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Wendy Dale: that's not an interesting memoir. That's the story of your life, and I really have a lot of empathy for people who write that way, because I used to think that was plot, you know. When I 1st sat down to write a memoir, I thought, Oh! And I really had a short period of time. I was writing about my travels, 2 years in my travels.

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Wendy Dale: and I thought that I would write down everything that happened to me, and that would be a good story, and it just wasn't. So. One thing I help people do is figure out how to take the events from your life and turn them into plot. And, if you really understand, sorry to harp on scenes and transitions. But if you really take these 2 building blocks.

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Wendy Dale: there's this almost magical way of taking the events from your life and turning them into plot.

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Wendy Dale: So let me say plot. It took me 15 years to discover the definition that I use for plot, and it's 2 words, and it's connected events. So the problem with most people's memoirs is that they're talking about. I got married, and then I went to school. Then I got married. Then I had my 1st son, and they're just talking a bunch of stuff that happened to them.

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Wendy Dale: The difference between that and plot is that these things need to be connected in some way. So by connecting these events by connecting them around, you know it was the worst 5 years of my life. It all started with this horrible marriage. I don't know. I'm making this up on the spot right. But now you've started to tell me a story instead of well, I got married. Then I went to school then, or maybe the other way around. Then I got had my son.

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Wendy Dale: You're just telling me random events. So random events are the opposite of plot.

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Wendy Dale: Connected events are plot. So you take what I have people do. Maybe this will help you, Dana, with your memoir.

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Adanna Moriarty: Maybe.

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Wendy Dale: Start by. I hope so. You start by figuring out what happens in a very specific sense, which will eventually become your scenes. So when I say very specific sense. I don't mean I got married. That's too broad, I mean, you know, are very specific, like, I give birth to my son one day, and it's the most incredible moment of my life. So now, that's 1

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Wendy Dale: point one specific point in time, I give birth right? So that has the potential to be a scene. So I have. People write down what their scenes would be these very specific moments, and people say, Well, how do I choose, and I say, what is emotionally affecting, what matters to you? And here's where you have a ton of freedom as a memoir writer.

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Wendy Dale: These moments that are emotionally affecting. Pick the moments that matter to you, and they will also matter to your reader, because those are the ones you want to write about. So that is usually what I tell people to use as their criteria for choosing scenes or not. What moments are emotionally impactful. What do you want to write about, which is great, which is a lot of freedom for for a memoirist.

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Wendy Dale: Now, if they left it at that, we would have a bunch of disconnected events, you wouldn't have a memoir. So the second step is taking this list of scenes that a writer wants to put into their memoir, and now connecting them with transitions. That's what transitions do. They're this chunk of writing in between your scenes that tell your reader

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Wendy Dale: what the scene they're about to read

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Wendy Dale: has to do with the one they just read, and it's magical because it goes from. I got married. I went to school. I had a son to this story that you're creating. And so the overall point you're making is happening in your transitions. What is actually occurring in your book? The events, the actions are happening in your scenes. So scenes are a combination of things happening, but they're related to one another, and the way you relate them to one another is using transition writing.

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Wendy Dale: I tried to make that simple. Did that.

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Adanna Moriarty: No, I think, yeah, that that I do think that makes sense. And it also, I mean, does that mean that you can open yourself up to you know, writing your scenes independently, and then going back in and filling in your transition. So if you, if you're like, I want to write about this event. You can write about the event, and then figure out how to connect it to the other events.

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Wendy Dale: Exactly. It's a little bit I love that you said that no one has ever asked me that question. I was like, yes, in fact, that's what I suggest people do when they're working on their memoir is really just write out their scenes, and I also tell them if you don't really know what your chapter is about.

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Wendy Dale: Just write your scenes because scenes are like bricks.

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Wendy Dale: right? You can so, and and and transitions are like cement. Right? So if your restructure isn't working.

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Wendy Dale: you have to throw away your transitions, your transitions are tying everything together. So if you don't know about structure, you shouldn't be doing any transition writing.

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Wendy Dale: However, if you write a good scene, you can be stockpiling bricks. As you figure out your structure, so you can be writing all these scenes, and you can piece them together later. You can. You can put in that cement later to create this brick wall. So if you don't yet understand structure, write disconnected scenes, and piece them together later, because they really do function like bricks.

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Adanna Moriarty: I love that well, one of my favorite writers. That's how she writes, she writes, and then you know.

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Adanna Moriarty: pieces it together, and then ends up with a thousand page book. So it's a it's a concept that I've been familiar with, for I don't know over 20 years now, because I think it's amazing, and she doesn't. She writes fiction. So you know, to write fiction. It's so out of order and so against the you know, the timeline, and how most people think of writing, which is, you sit down and you write a book.

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Adanna Moriarty: You start in the beginning, and you, you know you go through the climax, and you come out at the end, and you have a story, and then you go through and you clean it up, and you cut scenes, and you know whatever. But I mean for me the way my brain works. I think that

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Adanna Moriarty: to get a whole book out of me it's better to be able to write it in pieces and and put it together. So I have a question. So with this, with your structure, right where you do scenes and transitions. Is there a balance to them, or like? Are your transitions longer than scenes like? What does that look like in a process.

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Wendy Dale: Ask me this question a lot. It really is a matter of style. It is so. Some literary writers like this, long transitions because they get across ideas. Transitions tend to be more ideas based. They tend to be, have more of a global picture of the story.

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Wendy Dale: And so some literary writers of Ann Patchett's book, for instance, Ann Patchett, the novelist, wrote the book about truth and beauty about her, her friendship with, I want to say with Lucy, and I'm forgetting his name.

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Wendy Dale: Lucy. I'm not even going to say it, because I'm going to get it wrong, anyway. Ann Patchett wrote this beautiful memoir, and it's

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Wendy Dale: it's tons of transition writing with little tiny scenes. There really is these little tiny scenes, and I give it to my clients, to my students as an example of you can have really long transitions and really tiny scenes. Or you can, you can actually have a book with really long scenes and tiny transitions that really is a matter of style. So there isn't any magic formula, any magic percentage that you should be following.

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Wendy Dale: What?

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Wendy Dale: yes, so. So there isn't any any man. Yeah, it really is a matter of style, scenes and transitions. How long each one is.

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Kathleen Kaiser: So in your method do you go into how people

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Kathleen Kaiser: dive deeper into not just what on the surface look like, what they were doing but the internal motivation in those scenes? Or does that set up as part of your transition formula?

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Wendy Dale: No, okay. So I talk about subjective writing and the importance of subjective writing in your book. So you have 2 tools to create structure. So I don't want to confuse the terms. Here you have 2 tools to create structure. You have scenes and transitions. Now within scenes or transitions. You have 2 different kinds of writing. You have objective writing and subjective writing, and I call objective writing anything that a video camera would pick up.

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Wendy Dale: Dialogue is objective. Anything you know. I pick up the glass. I walk across the room. It's a rainy day, anything, a video camera. It's the generic version of what happened what anyone would have reported happening. The subjective writing is really how you create emotion in your reader, and the subjective writing

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Wendy Dale: is is your interpretation of what's happening right? So as you pick up the glass, it's what you're thinking in that moment, and that is actually the interesting part of memoir, memoir and literary fiction share a lot in common. Very commercial fiction doesn't have a lot of subjective writing. It's this happened. This happened. This happened. This happened right. But literary fiction and memoir are filled with the writer's thoughts.

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Wendy Dale: And that is the way you create emotion in a reader. It's so important. And that happens in your transition writing, and in your scene right.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Yeah, I find the internal monologues sections of of different scenes I usually are much more revealing than what's actually happening. That's kind of the set dressing.

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Wendy Dale: I so agree with you, Kathleen, I absolutely agree that where the emotion comes out, yeah, what happens in a memoir, so people are so concerned that their book's boring, and they want to fill it with lots of stuff happening. But I tell my writers that as long as your reader is emotionally affected. They'll never be bored.

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Wendy Dale: and so worry about affecting your reader emotionally. They're not so concerned about all these twists and turns in your memoir. Worry about the prose worry about the subjective writing worry about. As Kathleen as you said the internal monologue. Sometimes I describe subjective writing as your internal monologue.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Yeah, same, thing. Yeah.

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Wendy Dale: Yep.

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Kathleen Kaiser: So, and your and your program

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Kathleen Kaiser: do you do you think people need to sort of just go through it and get it all out, or should they sit and work on each section over and over? How do you look at that.

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Wendy Dale: So when I say, make your 1st draft your final draft. What I mean by that is, we figure out the plot for your book. We figure out your structure at the outline level. And this is not a general outline. This is an incredibly specific outline that says, every scene. 1st of all, every chapter in your book.

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Wendy Dale: every scene in every chapter, plus the every transition, so that you know that your structure is working now every scene is described in a sentence, and every transition is described in a sentence.

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Wendy Dale: But so so it's a very concise outline, but it's a very specific outline.

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Wendy Dale: So I have people so that I tell people it's really easy to move around a sentence in your book a sentence. I'm sorry it's really easy to move around a sentence in your outline. You can tweak your outline as much as you'd like right? That's very easy to do. So. Now we're moving things around at the outline level, instead of moving around hundreds of pages, which is

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Wendy Dale: emotionally difficult. I personally hate throwing out pages that I love, that I spent a long time writing. It takes a long time, and it's also very hard to fix the structure when you're dealing with hundreds of pages, I can't do it. So when people come to me with a completed manuscript, and the structure is just not working, I have them do the exact same, go through the same process

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Wendy Dale: as people who are just starting their memoir. I have them put their manuscript to the side. We're not throwing your manuscript away. We're putting it off to the side. And we're going to work with this. We're going to create this outline. We're going to fix your structure so it's hard for them to do. But I asked them to forget what they've written and to like. Let's think about your story at the outline level. Let's create a story with no structural problems. Let's create a story with plot at the outline level which really doesn't take that long.

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Wendy Dale: And then we go back to your manuscript and we say we can salvage a lot of scenes right? You can't salvage the transitions. You really can't, but you can salvage a lot of scenes. But now you know where the scenes go. So you start to insert them in the right place in your outline. And that's how I have people fix their book really quickly fix memoirs with structural issues.

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Adanna Moriarty: That process sounds so intense to me, I mean so I mean, and but I mean it makes sense. It makes sense. It's just not how I like to write.

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Wendy Dale: Dana. But but would you rather spend 15 years and not finish a memoir.

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Adanna Moriarty: No right. That's what I was. Gonna say, I was going to say that that's probably why it's taken me 15 years to write this book because I you know I I'm more of a

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Adanna Moriarty: like concept. I guess you know, like I get an idea it pops in. I write. I write that scene, and I move on. And so I mean right now I have a bunch of kind of

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Adanna Moriarty: it's like a puzzle, you know. I mean, I know where all the where they all go. It's chronological, I mean. I know where they'll go. I just don't have the pieces that weave it back together. So this is. This is super educational for me. Thank you.

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Wendy Dale: Say that I hear you right. Outlining is not fun. It's really not. But when someone puts it to me, hey? If you spend 3 weeks outlining your book.

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Wendy Dale: And you're going to save 15 years of your life like, suddenly, like, Okay, yeah, it's not going to be this fun process. But it's this huge return on investment. So that's when it's really worth it. So

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Wendy Dale: think about that, Adanna, yeah.

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Wendy Dale: And outlining.

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Adanna Moriarty: Got it.

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Wendy Dale: Yeah.

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Adanna Moriarty: So.

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Adanna Moriarty: Yeah, no, I think that it's like I said, I mean, I for me. I I think one of the issues always for me is that you know memoir is about me, and I would rather

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Adanna Moriarty: I would rather

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Adanna Moriarty: write about, you know, some fantasy world right like that's usually how I like to go. So that's the other place that I get stuck. And I'm guessing. I mean, you've been doing. You've been teaching people for 17 years. So I'm guessing that you you run into that where people are. Maybe you know a little bit like, Oh.

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Adanna Moriarty: I really want to write this, but it's you know it's deeply personal. I don't know if I can. How do you coach them through those moments? Those you know, the sticky moments where they have a great story to tell, but it's scary.

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Wendy Dale: It is scary it really is. But what? There's something kind of incredible that people need to realize that we don't like perfect people.

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Wendy Dale: We really don't I? This one client way back when and she was kind of perfect, and you know she was. She had, I don't know at least one master's degree, had been a model, was married to a man who was not only a doctor, but also a lawyer, grew up in the biggest house in her neighborhood was the richest family in town

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Wendy Dale: really like her.

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Wendy Dale: you know, like, I mean, who we don't like perfect people. And when she started opening up and telling me about the problems in her relationship with her mother.

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Wendy Dale: I'm like, Oh, you're a human being now. I see myself in you. It's so counterintuitive. It's so terrifying to reveal that you were scared that you made stupid decisions, that you went through really difficult things. But when you do, you get rid of the shame and people relate to you. You heal yourself, you heal others. It's actually really incredible. So it's getting over that fear.

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Wendy Dale: And this whole world opens up to you. People actually relate to you in a completely different way, and you can change their lives as well as changing your own.

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Wendy Dale: So.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Well, that's 1 of the good parts of memoir is that they have a lot the the growth.

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Kathleen Kaiser: And usually it's something like what you were saying with that client with her mother

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Kathleen Kaiser: when you get right down to it. I've never met a perfect person, and I grew up with a woman who thought she was perfect, my mother. So I've always been leery of perfect people, and it's when you really get to know them. They have more problems than a lot of other people. And that's why they've got to be perfect

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Kathleen Kaiser: because they're so afraid of what's inside. And if they can reveal that, that's such a great a. It's a great release for them. But it's great for other people to read, because we all have problems. Nobody has a perfect life.

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Adanna Moriarty: But it's just dropping the mask of that. That's hard, I mean.

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Kathleen Kaiser: 24.

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Adanna Moriarty: A lot of people dropping the mask and getting, you know, really deep, really personal, really vulnerable. When writing a story. It's really hard, I mean, I see it even in poets like, you know, it's it's which poetry is all vulnerability. But it's hard sometimes to put it out there and let other people read it. It doesn't mean you can't write it. It's the the bridge to.

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Adanna Moriarty: or, as Wendy would probably call it, a transition from, you know, writing it down.

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Wendy Dale: Yep.

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Adanna Moriarty: And letting the world read it like, that's a hard, that's a hard thing. And and I think that you know

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Adanna Moriarty: people get stuck and memoir in that place.

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Wendy Dale: Some kinds of memoir, too. Right? I mean, they're humorous memoirs. Some memoirs go really deep. You can affect your reader emotionally, using different emotions. Right? So you don't always have to go to the deepest, darkest part.

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Wendy Dale: I don't. If people tell me I don't want to write that, Wendy, do. I have to write that, do I have to write about what happened when I was a child, that I've never told anyone, and I tell them no right. You don't have to tell me everything. Memoir is not. Here's a chronicle of my deepest, darkest secrets.

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Wendy Dale: Your reader is looking for a good story with some emotional truth to it. Right? You can be truthful without telling me everything that you've lived through. So if there are some things that you want to keep to yourself that you're not ready to share with the world. That's okay. You can still write a good memoir, but you do have to let me into a certain extent, because we can feel it when you're not giving me anything right. As Kathleen said, your internal monologue, that's what makes it interesting. So what are the thoughts that go through your head.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Yeah, that that

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Kathleen Kaiser: because there are some really humorous ones that I've read that, you know, just when you when you're reading a book and you break out laughing.

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Kathleen Kaiser: That's really great, because you're sitting alone with the book, you know, reading it, and you break out laughing. I've had friends that that's 1 of the reasons they like audio books is because they're laughing at something they're hearing, and they don't feel as uncomfortable as laughing at pages. And I've never understood that, but it's like the humor if somebody can make you laugh because making someone laugh. I worked with comedians a long time ago.

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Kathleen Kaiser: That's the hardest thing in the world to do

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Kathleen Kaiser: the hardest thing in the world. Make people cry like that. You can be sad because everybody can tap into that, but to give someone joy to give them a different perspective of what's comedy and what makes them laugh to go? Oh, my God, you know, and they smile, and they laugh that you have achieved something doing something like that.

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Kathleen Kaiser: And the good books really, even in fiction.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Debbie, and even some of my favorite writers, usually once.

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Kathleen Kaiser: at least once and sometimes twice, but never more than that. They make me laugh. They make something, they just twist something, and I just break up laughing because they make the character do something I hadn't expected, especially with. I read a lot of series, and they'll do that, and it's the same thing with the memoir, if you have something really poignant, great. But if you have a moment that just sort of explodes everybody's expectations, and they laugh at it.

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Kathleen Kaiser: I think it's wonderful, because that's that's hitting something at a reader that 99% of writers I don't think ever do.

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Wendy Dale: Absolutely. Yes, and, as you said, it is hard to be comedic on the page to make people laugh. Not everyone will be able to do that. I tell my writers don't compare yourself to each other, because sometimes you'll have an incredible literary voice, and they transport me, and they make me cry, and then someone else will be really funny. What I tell people is, it's just really important to sound sincere.

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Wendy Dale: right? And that's in the subjective writing that's putting us inside your head. Make it sound sincere, so don't try to be what you're not. You don't have to write this super dark memoir about these family secrets that you don't ever want to tell anyone. You need to affect me emotionally. There are all kinds of emotions that we can. There are all kinds of ways. You can affect me emotionally. You can use humor, you can make me cry, or you can have sort of a lighthearted tone. There's so many different types of memories

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Wendy Dale: memoir out there, so they need to expose yourself on the page is not really what memoir is. In fact, there's been a lot of criticism for these really dark memoirs, for illness, memoirs. A lot of publishers are hesitant to publish them. Misery memoirs right. There's a little bit of a fear that it'll be too dark, too depressing.

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Wendy Dale: right? And so there! So the idea that you have to expose yourself too much, I think, is a fallacy. I don't think that's true at all.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Well, I wish more of us probably had a lot more humor in our life, and things would be a lot better. I think a lot of people have lost their sense of humor, and you can't go through life being angry and mad. You've got to be able to laugh. You've got to be able to laugh. And I think at this time with your own personal story, if you can see the humor in what you did tell it.

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Kathleen Kaiser: you know there are, you know, when you sit back. I did something the other day that I just sat there, and I started laughing my head off at myself. It was like, if you can capture something that you know it's just so absurd, and you see the humor in it. People will love it, and yet you're only.

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Wendy Dale: Absolutely.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Like a little teeny thing.

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Adanna Moriarty: I I wanna ask a question in this, in the outline process of this whole thing.

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Wendy Dale: Yes, go for it.

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Adanna Moriarty: Of your method, because I mean you sit down and you outline your book right? So you outline the scenes, you outline the transitions within a chapter. So you do. Chapter scene transition.

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Adanna Moriarty: But I mean writing things come up. So I mean, what happens when you're writing and something you didn't think about comes up. And you have this outline and all these transitions. And you know you've done this whole structure for your entire memoir.

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Adanna Moriarty: And then you're writing. And you're like, Oh, yeah, because that's what happens. I mean, I think, to all of us who write like at some point you're going to be like, Oh, yeah, and off someplace. Else. Right? How does that work, I mean is that, do you have to redo the outline? Do you ditch that that random scene.

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Wendy Dale: I love your question because I'm going to convince you to outline your memoir. So I love the questions that you're throwing at me so absolutely writing is this process of you come up with new ideas as you sit down to write new ideas, new scenes. You remember new things. So what I tell people is this outline is this guide?

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Wendy Dale: But

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Wendy Dale: I also tell people, the more you outline your book, the easier it is to write your memoir. The more you write of your memoir, the easier it is to outline your book. So it's not this perfect outline that you write this perfect outline. And now you write this perfect book. From this outline you write a really good outline that helps you understand how structure works in memoir, and by the time you finish this outline.

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Wendy Dale: you have learned the concepts about how to create structure, so that now you have the freedom, as you're writing your book to say, oh, you know what? I came up with a new scene. Well, I understand structure. So I understand how that's going to affect my overall chapter. So it's not a problem to insert a new scene. It's not a problem. So you think, oh, I'm just going to yank out this transition, or I'm going to. Oh, actually, I don't need to. You understand structure by the time you finish this outline. So you have freedom

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Wendy Dale: to to roll with new ideas as they occur to you.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Well, that's 1 of the reasons I don't write outlines. I do cards, and I have a bulletin board, and I put them up because then I can change the cards, and I do them by the color of the character whose point of view the scene is written in.

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Kathleen Kaiser: so that I know who's going, what where, and I can move things around very easily, like when a new, because it always does when you're writing, a new scene comes, or you remember something, or like the muse takes over and takes you down this new road. And it's like, Oh, this is interesting. You can make it a card, and then I see where it goes on the board, and it's a great way to

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Kathleen Kaiser: the best thing to me is knocking, getting each one of those written. It's so nice to run a line through it, you know. That's what I do. So I can visually see. Oh, I've made it this far.

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Wendy Dale: I love the idea of cards. I lose things. That's what I would do it all I know. Then I would lose the cards. But no, I actually love the idea of cards because it goes back to this idea of scenes, or like your bricks. Right? So you have all these bricks, and I love Kathleen, saying, Oh! And I cross it off, and I finish them. I love that idea actually.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Yep.

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Adanna Moriarty: She has a huge whiteboard, too, that the cards go on. It's not like they're just floating around the house, and she's playing with them while she's sitting at the dinner table. They're on a big, you know, that she can stand back and look at it's you know. It's funny, because, I mean, we talk to, we talk to writers. And we talk to editor. I mean, we talk to all kinds of people, all the time on the podcast and

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Adanna Moriarty: you know, I always kind of thought that my method was a little bit more of the pantser method, but

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Adanna Moriarty: but it. But it's not because I have the whole plot in my head. I just don't write it down.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Well, I always see writing it down makes it real.

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Kathleen Kaiser: You've you've got something concrete. It's nothing else. It's a roadmap, you know. You can take a diversion. You can find another road to go.

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Kathleen Kaiser: but I always think I'm I love roadmaps, anyway. So.

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Wendy Dale: Well, I like maps, too.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Yeah, you have a big one behind you.

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Wendy Dale: I do. But and so, Deanna, what I would say to you is that it's not just any outline that we have people, do we? There are certain

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Wendy Dale: things that need to go in your one sentence, description of your scene. So in out this outline that doesn't have to be the final outline. It's not the final blueprint for your book. We're teaching people what structure consists of. So I'm teaching people the concepts that go into structure.

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Wendy Dale: For instance, let me just give you an example. This is what really matters more than the outline itself. When I have people describe a scene, it's very important that their one sentence, description of their scene include the main event that gives their scene a reason to exist.

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Wendy Dale: Something always happens in a scene. That is why your scene exists in a book that is the beginning of plot.

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Wendy Dale: And so it's very important in describing your scene, that that event is present. In fact, that is what we connect with transitions. Are these main events that give a scene a reason to exist? So it's really less about the actual outline and more understanding. Oh, this is what creates structure in a book. This is how to take memories from my life that really aren't related to one another and turn them into plot.

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Adanna Moriarty: Well, I think.

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Kathleen Kaiser: This is a great great discussion.

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Adanna Moriarty: Yeah, me, too. And I think that I mean it has been really enlightening, because I do think that it's a little bit. It's like deconstructed before you ever put it together, and that you know. And and I don't think that most people look at writing quite like that. I think you know, a lot of times. It's we have to have the whole concept. And then we.

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Adanna Moriarty: you know, like everything's kind of ensconced in that concept. Right? But I think this has been

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Adanna Moriarty: a good great conversation.

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Wendy Dale: Thank you.

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Adanna Moriarty: Wendy, can you tell everybody what your book is called again? Because we mentioned it in the beginning? But

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Wendy Dale: It's called the Memoir Engineering System. Make your 1st draft your final draft, and I do have to say, Kathleen, my 1st memoir. It's the story of freeing a man from prison for a crime he didn't commit. And it's a comedy it's called Avoiding prison and other noble vacation goals. So I'm a huge fan of comedy. I hear you.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Oh, that's really great, and give everyone your website address.

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Wendy Dale: So the easiest way to find us is free. memoirclass.com, which will send you to our website because our website address is really long, but I'll give it to you anyway. It's called genius memoirwriting.com memoir. Writing for geniuses is the company I run.

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Adanna Moriarty: And and so on. That is, I mean, they can find your book. They can find out more about if they want to work with you as a coach. I mean all of those things.

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Wendy Dale: Yeah, memoir writing for geniuses, Google, that I also have a Youtube channel. It'll probably come up if you Google memoir writing for geniuses is probably the way to find us or free memoirclass.com, which will shoot you right over to the website.

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Adanna Moriarty: Okay, well, and I'll put all of those in our show notes. So you know, I think this has been great. I don't know is there anything else that we wanna go into right now, or do we.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Do you want to wrap it up with any like? Do you have some like a couple steps, everybody, or a couple of things everybody should consider before they embark on this journey.

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Wendy Dale: I would say, I would say. Structure your book 1st and learn a few concepts, and you'll save yourselves year, and you'll save yourself years of writing time. So that's really what I believe in. It took me a long time to understand. The simplicity of plot equals connected events, and it's a really important concept. It will save you at least 15 years. Write it, Dana.

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Adanna Moriarty: So I mean, what is the average time that you're

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Adanna Moriarty: clients? Students, you know. Come to you and write a book in. I mean, what is a?

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Adanna Moriarty: We'll go inside.

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Wendy Dale: Chess.

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Adanna Moriarty: Years to Wendy's.

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Wendy Dale: We suggest you from start to finish. If you apply yourself a year, a year is very realistic. Some people do it faster, but a year is is realistic. Yeah.

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Wendy Dale: from beginning to end to the finished book.

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Adanna Moriarty: So you save yourself. 14 years.

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Wendy Dale: Right. There you go. That'll be our new model, our new motto. Right.

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Adanna Moriarty: Your new Tagline, save yourself 14 years, and writing your memoir.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Yeah, I.

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Adanna Moriarty: Love it.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Okay. Well, Wendy Dale, it has been wonderful to have you as a guest. And thank you. This has been really informative. I think people learn a lot, and I think a lot of what you said will click with people to understand. It's not that hard and not to get, you know. Bury yourself in the minutia. Get out there, get the concept, get it structured, figure it all out, and I highly advise. They pick up your book and take a look at it.

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Wendy Dale: Super. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to both of you.

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Kathleen Kaiser: Alright, bye, bye.

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Adanna Moriarty: Bye.

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Wendy Dale: Bye.