Whether our project is fiction or memoir, when writing from real life inspirations, our rough drafts tend to run into common issues. The story often bounces all over in place and time, or “wanders” without clear conflict or focus. The narrative tends to have way too many characters and is episodic; one thing isn’t always leading to the next in a causal chain. Research gets in the way and our story becomes exposition heavy, featuring history lessons, letters, and interviews plunked to the page. The writing may even include a chronicle of the actual museum and library visits or trips we took in order to do the research and comes across sounding like a travel log. In other words, reality can get in the way of a good story. 

So, how to we deal with these common issues? Here are some approaches that may help you find focus and structure for your story.

When research gets in the way:

Us writers love to research and interview for our writing, especially when writing from family history. In fact, we love our research so much that we just can’t resist the urge to throw our own actual research to the page. We end up with “research scenes” in our narrative, where we take those days we spent sorting through family archives, or visiting the library and going on museum tours or tours of the city, or interviewing family members, and plunk all that down as “scene” on the page.

The result is a draft that is exposition heavy, featuring history lessons, those research scenes, letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings. “Tell,” instead of “show.” We get the background of the story, how we found the story, rather than the story itself.

The research scene is always fascinating for us as writers. For the reader? Not so much. It’s a little like being forced to view some other family’s vacation photos. I see characters digging into research archives and interviewing to track down a family story in about every second manuscript that comes across my desk (in both fiction and memoir projects). It’s that common. And I’ve certainly done it myself.

So, what’s the solution? Rethink situation to put your protagonist into the heart of his or her conflict. But that’s tough, because we aren’t always clear on what those conflicts, or story goals, are.

Here are the questions to ask: What does the protagonist in your fiction or memoir want/need/desire? What is stopping that character? What’s challenging them? What are they willing to do to reach their goal? Working out the story goals for your memoir or fiction is hard and time consuming, but so important, as your plotline is built on these goals.

For example, in a coming of age memoir, does your character want freedom from social constraints imposed upon her by family obligations? What will she do to reach that goal? Work towards moving out on her own? But what challenges does she face to get there? Lack of money? Angry parents? Lack of job prospects? How do these conflicts build? What will she do to overcome these obstacles?