Writing About Family in a Memoir: How to Tell the Truth About People Who Are Still Alive
When a writer first tells me what her memoir is about, there’s often a pause, and then the question comes: “But what about my mother?” Sometimes it’s an ex-husband or a sister instead. Writing about family in a memoir is one of the biggest worries I hear, and for many women it’s the reason they never start their book. If that’s where you are, please know there’s nothing wrong with you for worrying. It simply means you care about the people in your story.
I understand this one personally. My own story includes a divorce and a long season of estrangement from people I love, and if I write it…well, they are all still alive. Will they ever read it? Who knows, but it’s worth considering how I can best tell my story. So let’s talk about what’s actually risky and how to tell the truth with compassion.
Can You Write About Your Family in a Memoir?
Yes, you can. Your life is yours to write about, and the people in it are part of your life. Anne Lamott makes this point memorably in Bird by Bird: you own everything that happened to you, and if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they could have behaved better. (I love her for that one.)
Owning your story does come with a little responsibility, though. You’re telling your part honestly, and the people who share those memories with you deserve some care along the way.
Is It Legal to Write About Real People in a Memoir?
I’m not an attorney, and if your book includes anything that makes you nervous, it’s worth contacting a publishing lawyer. It helps to understand the two concerns that come up most often, though.
The first is defamation. Publishing attorney Amy Cook explains in Writer’s Digest that defamation involves a false statement, presented as fact, that damages someone’s reputation. The key word there is false. Truth is a defense, and so is an honest opinion that’s grounded in what actually happened.
The second is invasion of privacy, which covers sharing private facts about someone when the public has no real reason to know them. A sibling’s medical diagnosis or a friend’s affair that has nothing to do with your story would fall into this territory.
One more thing: Only living people can bring these claims. Their heirs cannot. That’s exactly why writing about people who are still alive deserves a little extra thought.
Do You Need Permission to Write About Someone in Your Memoir?
In most cases, no. You don’t need anyone’s permission to write about your own experiences, even when other people were part of them. (I’ll go deeper on this in an upcoming post, because it’s such a big question for so many writers.)
Where it gets dicey is the space between your story and theirs. Your brother’s addiction or your daughter’s divorce belongs to them, even if you had a front-row seat. Here’s a question I ask my writers: Does the reader need this detail to understand what happened to you? If the answer is yes, include it with care. If it’s no, you can let it go without losing the plot.
Should You Change Names in Your Memoir?
Changing names is a kind gesture, and many memoirists do it, especially for people who never chose to be part of a public story. Just know that a new name won’t fully protect anyone. As Cook points out, if the other details still make a person easy to recognize, changing the name doesn’t hide them.
If you do change names or details, say so in a short author’s note at the front of your book. Readers appreciate the honesty, and it sets a trustworthy tone for everything that follows.
How to Write About Difficult Family Members With Compassion
In my experience, the memoirs that move readers are the ones where the writer has done some of the healing work first. Readers can feel it when the author is still angry or resentful because that vibe comes across on the page, and the reader tends to pull back.
A few things help.
Write about what happened to you. Keep the focus on your experience and your choices. You can describe what someone did (as factually as possible), and trust your reader to draw her own conclusions.
Give people their complexity. Even the person who hurt you most was more than that one moment. A small detail that shows their tenderness or their own struggle makes your story more believable, and shows the reader you’re being fair.
Let time do some of the work. If a wound is still fresh, you may need to write about it privately for a while before it’s ready for a reader. I call that “rage writing,” and it can feel so cathartic! Grab some copy paper and start writing whatever pent-up thoughts you need to release. Let all of your emotions out. Then shred it. Trust me, it will help when you write the story for your book. Let me know if you try it.
Should You Show Your Memoir to the People in It?
There’s no single right answer here, and writers I admire land on both sides. Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club and The Art of Memoir, sends her manuscripts to the people she writes about before publishing, mostly because she doesn’t fully trust her own memory. She told NPR that across three books, she has only ever changed one minor anecdote.
Other writers decide that sharing early would keep them from writing honestly, so they wait until they finish the book. Whatever you choose, my suggestion is this: Don’t show anyone your first draft. That draft is for you. You can decide about sharing later, once you know what the book has become.
Start Writing About Family in Your Memoir: Write the First Draft for Yourself
Here’s what I tell every writer who freezes at “But what will they think?” Write your first draft as if no one will ever read it. Get the truth on the page first. Later, with some distance, you can decide what stays and what you’d like to soften.
If you’d like an easy place to start, I created The First Chapter Challenge for exactly this. Over 14 days, you’ll get a mini lesson plus one short prompt a day, about 10 to 15 minutes of writing, that walks you from a single memory to one finished opening chapter. It’s self-paced, and you can use the prompts again and again. And the best part? Nobody else has to see your first chapter until you’re ready.
