There’s one big secret to writing your life story
It’s a secret every storyteller has known since people huddled in caves and around campfires to listen to others describing their adventures, such as what they did to trap that bear, how their neighbours attacked them with rocks, who turned out to be the hero and so on.
That same story would have been told again the next night, only this time with more detail. How Ogg stood up against the largest of the enemy, how he hit him between the eyes with a sharp rock, how the bad guys ran off when their leader went down.Perhaps the story was retold again and again, and each time more details were added. Now the gods might have come into it, helping Ogg pick just the right magical stone to fell the giant.
I’m sure you get the idea
By the time the story comes round again it has changed.Storyteller No.1 might have given a careful account, but storyteller No.10 lives in another valley. He heard it from storyteller No 9 and so he needs to make up a few details that were left out as the story spread through the communities.
And No.10 is not content with just telling what happened.He wants to reach out to his audience. He wants to really show them how it happened in a way that will keep them hanging on his every word until the end. Perhaps then he’ll get a reward – an extra share of food to take with him on his travels.
So the #1 secret here is this:
If you don’t know all the fine details, if you just can’t remember what Bobby said when he finally left, or those wise stories your grandmother told you as a child, or what you ate for lunch on the day President John Kennedy was shot, if you have the ‘feel’ of those words or events inside you but not the fact, it’s OK to make iup.
Yes, really.
Your readers will enjoy your ‘fictional’ stories far more than a bare, factual report of your life, and you will also get more pleasure from writing when you let go your fear of inaccuracy.
Your true story needs to be retold as entertainment that will appeal to your readers’ imagination and help them really ‘see’ your life as you want them to know it.
In the next post we’ll look at an exercise that will help you re-imagine the fine details of your life story.
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Book Recommendation:
Your Life Story: How to Turn Life into Literature by Kay H. Rennie