Schrand writes that memoirs “read with a kind of forward momentum and tend to be conventional in form and execution with rising action, conflict, and some semblance of.resolution…”Įlements of fiction, such as character or plot development and scene building are so important in memoir. In a craft conversation between writers Brandon Schrand and Joe Wilkins on Brevity magazine’s craft blog, the writers discuss the ways in which content shapes form in nonfiction. It’s about finding the form that best reveals our specific truth. At the heart of both is our allegiance to telling honest stories. While memoir, more obviously, stems from the French word for memory. The word essay comes from the word assay, which means, to try. The names themselves are a simple reminder. On the other hand, knowing how content shapes form in nonfiction is a way to challenge ourselves to write in different forms, to enhance our strengths and creativity as writers.

For example, if a literary magazine seems to publish mostly personal essays, your memoir essays might be better suited for another venue. They were both short in length, and both personal in content, so why did it matter? On a practical level, this understanding would help us when we finally started to submit work. At first, I was skeptical the forms seemed so similar. In my first personal essay workshop, our instructor wanted us to know what differentiated personal essay from other forms of nonfiction-specifically memoir, even if we choose to eventually throw the “rules” out the nearest window.

Personal memoir