Congratulations! You’ve made the big decision to write your memoir.
Now, all you have to do is pull together years of memories while making sure you don’t leave out a single person who played a role in your life.
Then comes the inevitable question: “How can I write an authentic portrayal of my life, in my own voice that people will actually want to read?”
Writing your memoir is a massive task. Which is why, given the times we live in, the next logical question to ask might be, “What if I enlist AI to help?”
Understandably that question comes with concerns regarding authenticity and preserving your voice.
Just as the story you’re telling begins and ends with you, so does the use of AI for memoir writing. As we dig into this topic, you’ll learn what that means, and why enlisting AI’s help is easier than you might think.
Human and AI Storytelling
A memoir is a deeply, uniquely personal depiction of your lived experiences on this earth. The ups, downs, celebrations, struggles, and victories exactly as they happened.
On its own, AI is capable of generating a compelling story like that; one that comes across as polished prose with a sense of emotion. Yet a quick read between the lines can reveal a generic, lifeless, predictable narrative that could be about anybody.
This is often referred to as oversmoothing. It occurs because AI tends to favor text based on statistical probability over the ways real people tell their real stories.
That’s why you should never use AI to do the writing. Even after it knows your real story, AI can’t ever tell it like you lived it and adopt your true voice.
AI can, however, be of great help in structuring your memoir, and improving how you write it. Here are some examples:
Helps with writer’s block: The blank page is often one of a writer’s worst obstacles. As long as you provide your specific info, AI can get you past this phase to jump-start your writing.
Analyzes and organizes your memories: You can paste rough timelines, journal entries, notes, snippets, and drafted paragraphs, and ask for analysis. AI can help identify recurring themes and patterns which can help you see how to construct your narrative.
Assists with outlining: Every great story needs an outline. By identifying themes from your prompts, AI can create an outline that shows how your story unfolds without replacing your voice.
Serves as your editor: AI suggests grammar improvements, and recommends how to re-organize thoughts and sentence restructure sentences to keep your narrative flowing.
At the very least, AI is a great sounding board and second set of eyes. You don’t have to automatically accept its suggestions, nor should you. Remember, this is a nonfiction writing process. Therefore, adopting a question everything approach is necessary to keep AI more grounded in the true realities of your life.
AI Memoir Writing Tips
1. Write it before you prompt it. Starting with the intro, draft each part of your memoir as you envision it. Don’t worry about whether it’s well-written or grammatically correct. AI doesn’t judge, and gives suggestions on how to make it better.
2. Stay specific. AI doesn’t know a thing about the joys and pains you went through. The more heartfelt, contextual insight you feed AI, the more realistic its suggestions will be.
3. Apply human guardrails like your life depends on it. In a way, it does. This is where you fact-check and verify AI output through your eyes to keep it accountable, accurate, and ethical. Human guardrails are crucial anytime you use AI, and even more so when writing about your life.
4. Be patient and embrace the revision process. Fact-checking AI can take several exchanges, and what AI puts out will give you plenty of further ideas to explore. However extensive the process, it’s well worth the time and effort, considering the subject’s importance.
5. AI isn’t your ghost writer. AI’s purpose is to give you direction, so that you, the author, can write a noteworthy memoir as only you can tell it.
Prompting to Preserve Your Voice With AI
You have AI open, and there it is in the space where you type: Ask anything. Think of that as ask anything about your life when prompting for your memoir. Here are two types of prompt examples to illustrate why details are so essential to writing your memoir with AI’s help:
| 1. Subject: Important Job Relocation | |
| Vague Prompt | Specific Prompt |
| Write about the time I relocated to San Francisco for a new job, and the types of emotions that came with it. | Draft a 300-word paragraph for my memoir about the time I moved my wife and two daughters from our hometown of New Orleans to San Francisco. This was in 2005 and we moved for me to take a new job with IBM. Help me capture the emotional highs and lows of such a life-changing decision. Such as the excitement of starting a new chapter that could benefit my family; the concerns that I was making the right decision in their best interests; and worries about how my children would be impacted by changing schools and leaving their friends. |
| Assessment: In the Vague Prompt, AI only knows that you relocated to San Francisco to take a job and there was an emotional component to it. The Specific Prompt gives AI a much truer viewpoint. Even if AI results still aren’t quite right, you can fill in the blanks, modify for accuracy, and use your own words. | |
| 2. Subject: Your Favorite Pet | |
| Vague Prompt | Specific Prompt |
| Write a chapter for my memoir about Bonnie, my favorite dog when I was growing up. | Write me a short chapter about my favorite dog Bonnie for my memoir. Bonnie was a miniature Schnauzer I got when I was nine who died of old age while I was off at college. Bonnie followed me everywhere. She was obsessed with tennis balls, and barked a lot. Bonnie was my best friend, and I was especially devastated when she died because I couldn’t be with her to say goodbye, but I will always be grateful for having her in my life. |
| Assessment: Obviously more is needed in the Vague Prompt example. Otherwise, AI only knows you owned a dog named Bonnie, and a general timeframe. In the Specific Prompt AI has the beginnings of an actual story based on the nuts and bolts you’ve laid out. It can then generate a first draft narrative that fits your life with Bonnie into memoir. That allows you to add and correct as needed to build the story just as it happened. | |
Memoir Prompting Reminders
• It’s not how you prompt, but what you prompt. Whether you paste a pre-written narrative of your memoir, or simply list the facts around an event, details matter most.
• Prompts lead to results, which inspire additional prompts that lead to better results. AI is trained to expound and elaborate on what it generates. This can produce ideas you haven’t considered or reveal memories you’ve forgotten. Anticipate that will happen, because it very often does.
• Make the prompting process all about you, not AI. Despite its awesome power, you’re the boss of AI, not the other way around.
Summary Thoughts
Memoir writing is one of the most emotionally driven endeavors you’ll ever undertake. It requires self-reflection, reliving moments, and generally baring your soul to yourself and others.
Effectively using AI to help you write starts with recognizing its strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, AI can suggest better wording, help you organize your memories, and perhaps even discover themes you hadn’t noticed.
On the other hand, AI doesn’t know what your father sounded like, who your best friend was, or how a seemingly ordinary day changed your life. Those memories belong to you.
AI can only flatten your voice to the extent you allow it to. Keep that in mind, stay true to yourself, and AI will follow your lead.
