How to write a book about your life, in ten steps

How to begin writing a book about your life depends on the reader: pick them first, and the kind of book follows. Strangers need a memoir: one question, told in scenes. Readers who already know your name will read an autobiography. Relatives will read a family life story of any length. The table sets out what each one means for scope, length and publishing.

The memoir figures come from The Anatomy of a Bestseller (47 books; 46 measured, the Bhagavad-gita being unscoreable), whose five memoirs are When Breath Becomes Air, The Glass Castle, Born a Crime, Autobiography of a Yogi and Confessions. The page count is from KDP's print options.

There is a fourth route. You can write a book about your life as fiction: writing a novel about your life lets you merge people, change places and invent dialogue, but it is sold and read as a novel. The steps below still work for it.

Start with a list of memories before any first line. The 10 steps run from memories to a question, then to scenes, chapters and a draft, and end with a reader and an edit. Each step below has one instruction, one example and one test you can run before moving on.

1. Inventory your memories

Write down every memory you might use, one line each, in one sitting and in no order. Write "Dad's truck dying outside the county fair" rather than "my childhood". Add the objects, photos and letters that come with them. The test: you have enough when the same person, place or worry turns up in several lines.

2. Find the question your book answers

Read the list and write one question that the strongest memories share. The Glass Castle asks how Jeannette Walls got from her parents' world to Park Avenue, and its first scene, her mother picking through a Dumpster, puts that question in one image. The test: your last chapter must be able to answer it.

3. Set the time span

Start where the question begins and stop where it is answered, whatever that leaves out. Confessions follows Augustine from infancy to his conversion and his mother's death in nine books, then stops telling the story. The test: if a year adds nothing to the question, it belongs in a different book.

4. List the scenes

Turn each memory you keep into a scene: a place, the people there, one line someone said and something at stake. Dialogue is what turns a summary into a scene, and the five memoirs in the study use 15.4 quotation marks per 1,000 words, the most of any genre. The test: if you cannot recall a single line anyone said, the memory is still a summary.

5. Plan the chapters

Group the scenes into chapters, each with one turn: something that is different at the end. Use the chapter template below for each one. The memoirs in the study have a median of 13 chapters and a median chapter of 5,992 words, but Born a Crime uses 18 short chapters and The Glass Castle five long parts. The test: you can name the turn of every chapter in one line.

6. Write the first scene, not the first chapter

Begin with the scene you remember most sharply, wherever it falls. Openings come later, once you know the question. Born a Crime starts on its sharpest moment: "I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car." The test: one finished scene, of any length, by the end of the first week.

7. Draft in order of energy, not time

Write the scenes you want to write next, and fit them into order at the end. A chronological book can still be drafted out of order. Born a Crime is not told in strict order either, and its review flagged the chapters that jump in time without a signpost, so mark each jump with an age, a date or a place. The test: if a scene stalls for two sessions, skip it and come back.

8. Get a reader

Give the finished draft to two or three readers who do not know the story, and ask where they skimmed, where they were confused and where they wanted more. Family can wait until later, because they fill gaps from memory. Beta readers are the usual way to find them. The test: at least one reader who has never met you.

9. Revise for scenes and dialogue

Search the draft for "over the next few years", "eventually" and "by then", and check whether each one hides a scene you summarized. In the study, 53% of memoir chapters drew a note to dramatize instead of summarize, and all five memoirs lost momentum somewhere, four of them in the back half. The test: the second half moves as fast as the first.

10. Edit and publish

Decide who the book is for before you pay anyone. A family edition may need only a careful proofread, while a memoir for strangers usually needs an editor and a publishing route. What it costs to publish a book breaks down each route, with sources. The test: you can name the reader, the format and the budget.

To write your life story one chapter at a time, fill in the same five lines before you draft each chapter: a title, the scene it opens on, the question it raises, the turn, and the image it closes on. Five lines per chapter is enough to draft from; for 13 chapters, the median for the five memoirs, that is 65 lines.

1. Chapter title: a name you would say out loud, such as "The year we lost the farm".
2. Opening scene: the place, the date or your age, and who is there.
3. The question: what the reader wants to know by the end of the first page.
4. The turn: what is different at the end of the chapter.
5. Closing image: the scene, object or line the chapter ends on.

Add two notes under each chapter: the people you need to check facts with, and the photos, letters or records that belong to it. That list doubles as your permissions list later.

A memoir for strangers usually runs 85,000 to 115,000 words. The five memoirs in the study have a median of 99,578 words, from 45,486 (When Breath Becomes Air) to 157,026 (Autobiography of a Yogi). A family life story has no market to satisfy, so it can be far shorter, down to KDP's 24-page paperback minimum.

For trade lengths across all of non-fiction, see how long a non-fiction book is. The memoir guide has the five books' structures, openings and chapter lengths side by side. If you are writing for family, set the length by the material: a book of 20 scenes is a finished book if each scene is whole.

Write about other people as they would recognize themselves, and tell what you saw and felt rather than what you guess they thought. Change the names and identifying details of private people where the story does not depend on them, and show the relevant passages to the people in them before you publish, where you can. Anything someone might contest, such as an accusation, a health detail or a family secret, is a question for a media lawyer before publication. This page gives no legal advice beyond that.

For many people, "how to write a book about my life" means a book for the family, and that needs no publisher. Amazon KDP is free to use and prints from 24 pages, and Lulu prints copies without any bookstore listing. KDP's printing cost on Amazon.com is $1.00 + $0.012 per page for a black-ink paperback of 110 to 828 pages, so a 300-page 6×9 black-and-white paperback costs $4.60 to print, plus shipping.

On KDP, author copies are sold to you at print cost, up to 999 per order, but only once the book is live, which means "published and available for purchase on Amazon". Proof copies, up to 5 per order, can be ordered while the book is still a draft, but each carries a "Not for Resale" watermark. You can unpublish afterwards; it takes up to 72 hours, and used copies can still be resold. Books of 24 to 110 pages cost a flat $2.30 to print.

To write the story of your life for family alone, Lulu's personal printing option is built for it: "Use this option for personal books, gifts, or private distribution." It needs no ISBN or bookstore listing, has no minimum order, and charges manufacturing cost, with bulk discounts from 100 copies. For a life story built around photographs, Blurb's photo books start at US $12.00.