This week in Memories to Manuscript, my course to get started writing your memoir, three writers read scenes from their lives. Different decades, settings, and emotional terrain.

But as I listened, I found myself noticing something deeper; not just what they wrote, but what good memoir writing requires. Here are five things that hit me as they read their work:

1. When You’re Stuck, Stop Structuring—Start "Scening"

One of the writers admitted she had been thinking and thinking and thinking about how to reorganize her memoir: Where does this go? What’s the arc? How does this fit together?

Then she finally told herself, Just write a scene. And everything shifted.

Structure feels productive. It feels responsible. It feels like forward motion. But thinking about your story is not the same as entering your story. The fastest way out of paralysis is to drop into one lived moment:

• Where are you?
• Who is in the room?
• What is said?
• What is felt but not spoken?

Write that. The structure of your story will reveal itself later.

2. Replace Adjectives with Details that Do the Emotional Work

One of the readers included a simple gesture in her scene: A child handing over a beloved stuffed animal. No commentary. No explanation. Just the action. That detail carried more emotional weight than any adjective ever could.

You don’t have to tell us someone was tender. Show us the thing they did.

You don’t have to tell us it was a difficult time. Show us the silence at the dinner table.

Specific details make readers lean in. Adjectives make them skim. Trust the small, concrete moment to carry the feeling.

3. Restraint Creates Tension

One writer did something masterful without even realizing it. She didn’t explain everything. She let the scene unfold without telling us what it meant. She didn’t jump ahead to interpretation. And as I listened, I found myself leaning forward.

When you don’t over-explain, you invite the reader closer. Memoir isn’t about dumping everything you know onto the page at once. It’s about pacing revelation.

You are allowed to let the reader discover alongside you. Mystery is not manipulation; it’s craft. 

4. Stay in the Scene—Don’t Drift Into Reporting

There’s a subtle shift that happens sometimes in early drafts. You begin in a scene, and then suddenly you’re summarizing. You zoom out. You analyze. You explain what happened from a safer distance.

That voice has its place. But if you leave the scene too quickly, the emotional electricity fades.

Practice staying inside the moment:

• What did you see?
• What did you hear?
• What did your younger self understand, and what didn’t she?

You can reflect later. First, step back into the memory. Try writing it in first-person, present-tense. Do you see the difference? There's an immediacy that draws the reader into the scene when you write it as if you're the age you were when the moment actually occurred.

5. Of Course This Feels Hard

At the end of our session, one writer said something I loved. She said she was amazed at how driven we are to tell our stories… and how much work it is.

Yes.

Memoir asks for emotional courage, clear thinking, vulnerability, and precision. It's not casual work. 

But hard doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Hard often means you are near something real.

And the fact that you keep showing up? That says something about the story inside you. 

If you are in the messy middle of your memoir, take heart. You don’t need the whole arc figured out, or the perfect structure, or a polished interpretation. You need one honest scene. Start there.