On Writing: Fiction, Autofiction or Memoir.

Which is best for you?

Under the Same Stars - Autofiction?

Ten shun!

Fiction is fiction, autofiction is fiction heavily based on real life, and memoir ( and biography) is ‘reality’ ( or at least highly fact based).

Lot of people who bring memoirs or biographies for assessment ask me if their writing would work better as a novel or as autofiction.

The answer? It’s very hard to say. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not.

When it’s true, it can work both ways.

My first book, ‘The Scent of Dried Roses’  I originally wrote as a novel based  (somewhat) on that true life story.  But later I turned that into a memoir, written in a novelistic style,  after I realised the novel I tried to write didn’t work.

On the other hand, my novel ‘Under The Same Stars’ came about after the non-fiction book I was writing about myself and my brother, and the relationship between England and America  ( my brother lives in America) turned out not to work. So I converted it into a novel.

There are some distinct advantages to writing a life story as fiction. Sensitivities can be a problem when you are writing about people close to you. It’s certainly something that bothers the people I know who have tried to write a memoir.  Memoirs can upset the people being written about. Writing any memoir is likely to violate an implicit pact of confidentiality that exists between you and those close to you.

But being honest - and you must be honest in a memoir - can still be painful, both for the writer and those being written about.

I solved the problem in my memoir by showing everyone involved the manuscript and saying they could take material out that they found uncomfortable. No one took me up on the offer,  so I got the best of both worlds - my conscience was clear and the unedited manuscript made it into print.

As for ‘exposing’ myself to the world, I guess I simply wasn’t a very private person when I wrote the memoir. I didn’t much care about hanging out my ‘dirty washing’ because I believed that opening up our private worlds was a way to establish greater intimacy between all of us.

The same problem of ‘consent’ arose when I was writing a column about family for The Guardian. I always showed it to my wife and children ( if the children were old enough) in advance,  for feedback.  It didn’t always save me from conflict, but once more I would always abide by their comments.

Fictionalising a story seems to be a simpler solution to life writing because then you can camouflage real-life characters, which gives you an element of deniability and a defence against accusations of impropriety. Also, most of us don’t have sufficiently interesting personal material to write a memoir ( my life was very boring , but my mother’s suicide when I turned 30 turned it into a both a drama and a mystery story).

Novels you could think of ( wrongly ) as ‘easier’ - because you can fill in the dramatic gaps with your imagination.  As I do. In many of my books. I use my personal experience very heavily.