How novelists create plot

From a reader’s point of view, reading a memoir should feel just like reading a novel. Both genres follow the same rules. You want to tell the story in the same way. 

The challenge for memoir writers is that you need to write a story that feels like a novel, without making anything up. It needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end and there needs to be a quest. 

With that in mind, I want to talk a little bit about how creating a plot works in novels, so that you can apply these same principles to your memoir. 

Let’s take a look at Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen. Here's a quick summary of the first four scenes. 

1. Mrs. Bennett tells her husband that Mr. Bingley, a wealthy and attractive bachelor, is moving into town. She asks her husband to go visit him, hoping that Mr. Bingley will be interested in marrying one of their five daughters. Mr. Bennett says he has no desire to do any such thing.

2. Mr. Bennett surprises his wife and daughter with the news that he paid a visit to Mr. Bingley. 

3. Mr. Bingley invites the Bennets to a ball where the family meets Mr. Darcy. They all decide that Mr. Darcy is arrogant and awful when he insults Elizabeth (one of the Bennet daughters), calling her “tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt me.” 

4. The Bennetts get together with their neighbors, The Lucases, to gossip about the ball. Everyone agrees that Mr. Bingley was very taken with their eldest Jane, and also Mr. Darcy is proud and disagreeable. 

What I want you to notice here is how all of these scenes are connected. Austen uses causality to create her plot, which means that one event brings about the next one. There is a causal relationship between her scenes.

What is the plot here? Basically, an attractive bachelor moves to town. Mr. Bennett visits the new arrival. The bachelor invites the Bennetts to a ball. The Bennetts get together to gossip about the ball.

None of these events could have occurred on its own. It needed the event before it to happen first. In other words, Mr. Bennett wouldn’t have been able to visit the new arrival had he not moved to the town in the first place. The Bennetts wouldn't be gossiping about the ball had they not been invited earlier on.

Causality isn’t the only way to create the plot in your memoir, but it is a really effective way. If you can think like a novelist and connect the scenes in your book so that one brings about the next one, you’ll never have structural problems.


Think like a novelist, and you’ll have a book that keeps a reader turning the pages. Wishing you lots of happy writing!