Where to begin your autobiography or travel book as a memoir writer

Autobiographies and travel books are written in a similar way to a novel. They are a story with a beginning, middle, and end. But where to begin? This is the question that haunts fiction writers. Where does the story really start? I once read that only 5% of opening chapters are still the first chapter once the book is published. This is also the case with every fiction book that I have written. But with an autobiography or travel book, you have a head start as you know how the story pans out.

 1) You don’t have to start in childhood. With an autobiography, it is tempting to start in your scraped knees and pigtails years as it’s the beginning of your life. But this often isn’t needed unless you had a particularly unique childhood that hugely impacted your future, or you are Elton John levels of fame and readers will be interested in every tiny detail. If, for instance, you are known for being a drummer in a band, you might want to start with the first time you held a drumstick in your hand and finally realised your calling. Or you might want to set the reader up for this assumption and surprise them by saying you hated drumming and then move on to the turning point.

 If you are known for a particular achievement or life-changing event, frame this as your starting point. It could be the first time you rode a horse or a Harley, when you made your first deal on the basketball court and your life as a trader began, or the morning of a routine parachute jump just before your equipment fails. All of these are where the story begins.

 2) If your book is about travel, then consider beginning with the inspiration behind the journey. Were you drawn to something, such as the re-opening of a Nepalese trail that had been closed to the public for twenty years? Or were you driven to travel when you were sitting in your office cubicle, the collar of your shirt too tight, the minutes ticking by slowly, and you realised that you had to leave right at that very moment. Start sketching out some ideas of what really made you decide to turn to adventure, dig deep, and try to either surprise your reader or connect with them by sharing a relatable situation.

 3) You can always start with a prologue (a chapter before the first chapter) but use it carefully. A prologue should usually be brief. It can be a flash-forward into the future or the past. It should excite the reader, want them to find out what is coming next, pose a question that needs answering or put the author in a situation so precarious that we can’t imagine what could fix it. A prologue should avoid being an info dump of the past twenty years or something irrelevant to the story. Think about renaming the prologue, for example, ‘Day 62’ if you are titling each chapter by the day of your adventure, as readers often avoid prologues and skip straight to Chapter 1. 

 Once you have a good idea of your opening, start writing. You can always change it later if you have a better idea. You can still use some material in other parts if you decide to scrap it and start again. We want to avoid spending weeks deliberating as self-doubt can creep in, and the project might grind to a halt without ever really beginning. Momentum is the key to both fiction and nonfiction writing, so start thinking about where your book begins and start writing that first chapter.

If you’d like to know more about how coaching can help structure your book, contact me for a free 30 minute call.