Don’t structure your memoir like a diary

My students often come to me and say they have a really great memoir idea. My excitement builds until they say, “I'm going to structure it like a diary.” And suddenly, my enthusiasm fades.

Some writers may believe it’s easier to write their memoir like a diary, but the problem with this is two-fold:

1. Your book won’t have solid structure.
2. Your book won’t hold your reader’s attention. 

It’s easy to create a bunch of disjointed, random things that happened using diary entries. Unfortunately, this is the opposite of plot. 
You might be thinking, “Well, why do some diary style books work?” The answer is that they don’t actually consist of disjointed, random events. Instead, one event brings about the next one. There’s this illusion of diary writing, but it’s really just traditional plot with breaks thrown in.

For instance, in Bridget Jones’ Diary—is the narrator just recounting random events from her life? Not at all. Instead, there is a story, one about seeking Mister Right. Almost everything recounted in this novel is related to this search. 

The same is true of The Diary of Anais Nin, which is about Anais Nin’s relationship with Henry and June Miller. 

The problem I see in most memoirs written in diary format is that it really is a day-by-day account of what a person did. It’s just a bunch of random facts and events, which quickly causes any reader to become bored.

If you do want to structure your memoir as a diary, you can make it work. I’d suggest writing it as a narrative first and only once you’ve created a fulfilling story for your reader, then would I suggest going back and breaking the story into diary entries.

Hope this helps you!