TL;DR
A book about your life can be a memoir, autofiction or a novel based on a true story. Memoir reveals what happened, autofiction blurs the line on purpose, and a novel changes names and events to serve the story. Choose by what you need the book to do, pick the turning points around one theme, and tell readers what kind of book it is.
To write a book about your life, start by deciding how much of it you will tell as it happened. There are three honest answers. A memoir tells it straight and takes responsibility for the facts. Autofiction uses your life as raw material and lets readers wonder which parts are real. A novel based on a true story changes names, merges people and invents scenes so the story can work as fiction. Once you know which you are writing, the rest is craft.
You do not need to cover your whole life in any of them. Every writer quoted below says the book is about a slice of it, chosen because it carries one idea.
Three routes, compared
| Route | What it promises the reader | What you are free to change |
|---|---|---|
| Memoir | This happened to me | Little: selection and emphasis |
| Autofiction | This is my life, rearranged | Names, events, subplots and invented scenes, with real parts mixed in |
| Novel based on a true story | This is inspired by real events | Nearly everything, as long as the essence stays true |
Scroll horizontally to see all columns. Arrow keys work when the table is focused.
Adele Annesi, writing for Jane Friedman, defines autofiction as short for autobiographical fiction, which uses elements of autobiography and fiction to examine decisive aspects of the writer's life. She lists its features: the writer and protagonist may share a name, their lives run in parallel, and readers feel a tension about what is real. Wikipedia adds that the French writer Serge Doubrovsky coined the term in 1977 for his novel Fils, and that autofiction resembles the roman à clef but usually admits it draws on the author's real life. Her examples include Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Teju Cole's Every Day Is for the Thief and Karl Ove Knausgaard's A Death in the Family.
How to choose
Four questions settle most cases.
Can you stand to be the only voice? Jenna Blum, a novelist who wrote a memoir, says fiction is sleight of hand, transposing real experience into imaginary scenarios, while memoir is revelation. In a Writer's Digest essay she describes writing a memoir about her dog and being pushed by a friend to include her own story, which she had meant to leave out. If you are not ready to expose your own part in the story, fiction gives you cover.
Do you need other points of view? Joan Jackson turned her family's story of caring for a brother with schizophrenia into a novel, partly because she wanted several viewpoints, including her brother's, and a memoir is told in the first person from the author's own. She says fiction freed her from trying to recall the facts of what was said and done, and let characters take over and move the story forward.
What will the book be sold as? Jackson also reports that publishers told her a story based on true events sells better as a memoir, perhaps because memoirs look more authentic. She ended up labelling hers "Novel: Based on a True Story." If you plan to publish traditionally, ask what the form means for the shelf you are aiming at.
Who will recognise themselves? She is candid that changing names and making scenes up does not stop people from recognising themselves, or from being hurt. She names it as a probability she had to accept. Decide ahead of time how you will handle the people close to the story.
Find the story inside the life
A life has no plot, so you have to find one. Annesi suggests a technique from Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream: give yourself time to remember, without worrying about chronology, and list the experiences and why they might matter. Then separate events from turning points, note what led up to each and what came after, and write beside it what you learned or discovered.
Annesi also quotes Vivian Gornick's distinction between a situation and a story: the situation is the circumstance, and the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer, the insight or the thing one has come to say. Your book needs both, but only the story gives it a theme.
Choosing is the hard part, and it is where memoirs go wrong. Chuck Sambuchino, writing for Writer's Digest, says people tend to write everything about their life, because it all really happened. He thinks a memoir that comes in a bit short, at 70,000 to 79,000 words, can be a good sign: it shows you picked the most interesting parts and avoided a tome. His target for memoir is the same as for a novel, 80,000 to 89,999 words, a guideline that matches how many words is a novel.
Decide what to invent
Fiction lets you do things a memoir cannot. Jackson says it allowed her to adapt the features of fiction, such as creating a narrative persona and scenes, and presenting characters without the restrictions of memoir. She also found that invention led to discovery. Writing a scene, she realised a character's drug addiction overlapped with another character's mental illness, and she built out new scenes because she felt the same despair she knew in life.
Three useful tests for each real event:
- Does the story need it? If not, cut it, however much it hurt.
- Does it work as a scene? If real events are slow, compress them. If real people are dull on the page, merge them.
- Does the change betray the truth you want to tell? Annesi borrows Dorothy Sayers's phrase "serving the work": the right amount of fact is whatever best accomplishes your vision for the story.
Joan Jackson's quote from Somerset Maugham is a fair warning. Asked if what he wrote was true, he is reported to have said he often could not recall whether it had happened or not. After writing enough invented scenes, she says, she too could not remember which ones really happened.
Structure and revise
Once you have chosen your turning points, treat the book like any other. Blum says she outlined her memoir as she did fiction: an outline, subdivided into scenes, mapped to her calendar. You can do the same. How to outline a novel shows the steps, and plot outline examples shows what a short outline of a published novel looks like.
Tom Bromley, the author who wrote Reedsy's eight-step novel guide, started his debut with the classic advice to write what you know, a romantic comedy set in a band, based on his own years in bands. He says you do not have to write about your own experiences, but starting from them is a perfectly good way in. His other lessons transfer: give the protagonist a goal and flaws, and make sure there is conflict.
Annesi's revision advice is specific to this kind of book. Revision happens in stages, and you try each key moment as a mini-scene, straight narrative, dialogue, summary or a mix. Your theme may also change while you write, so she suggests writing the story first for itself and revising it according to what it is really about.
Frequently asked questions
Is a novel based on my life a memoir?
No. A memoir is nonfiction told from your point of view. A novel based on your life changes names, events and details, and can use several viewpoints. Autofiction sits between the two.
Do I have to change the names?
The sources do not set a rule. Jackson changed names and made scenes up, and still expected family members to recognise themselves, so changing names reduces the chance without removing it.
How long should a book about my life be?
Writer's Digest's guideline for memoir is 80,000 to 89,999 words, and 70,000 to 79,999 is acceptable if you have focused on the most interesting parts.
Can I mix real people and invented ones?
Yes, in autofiction and in a novel based on a true story. Annesi says other characters, settings and events can be fabricated to support what the story is about.
What is autofiction?
A form of fictionalised autobiography. The writer may share a name with the protagonist, and readers are left to wonder what is real.
Where Musael fits
A writer who turns life into fiction becomes the person who can look at their own past as material, not as a verdict. In Musael the world and characters codex holds an entry for each person in the book, so a composite character can sit beside the notes about who it combines. Continuity checks flag a renamed person who slips back to the real name, and the plan board lets you move a turning point and see what follows.
Sources
- Adele Annesi, "The How, When, and Why of Writing Autofiction", Jane Friedman: janefriedman.com
- Joan Jackson, "Based on a True Story: 4 Advantages to Fictionalizing the Truth", Writer's Digest: writersdigest.com
- Jenna Blum, "The Differences in Writing a Memoir vs. a Novel", Writer's Digest: writersdigest.com
- Wikipedia, "Autofiction": en.wikipedia.org
- Chuck Sambuchino, "Word Count for Novels and Children's Books: The Definitive Post", Writer's Digest: writersdigest.com
- Tom Bromley, "How to Write a Novel in 8 Steps", Reedsy: blog.reedsy.com
