On a clear night in the middle of a desert, say you’re met with a sky full of stars. If these stars are your memories — everything that makes you you — then taking it all in might seem chaotic and overwhelming, albeit beautiful.

But connect these stars with invisible lines, and you’ll start to see recognisable shapes. That invisible line is your theme, turning random stars into a meaningful pattern — a constellation, if you will.

These are the stories you want to tell.

The stories of resilience, where you rose even as everything around you fell apart; of identity, discovering who you are beneath the many roles you’ve played; and of adventure, where you stepped into the unknown and found yourself changed.

Trace those invisible lines and connect your brightest memories into a single, meaningful constellation by writing a memoir with themes that hold it all together.

Gather Your Stars

Before any invisible line can be drawn between your memories, you first need to find out which stars shine the brightest. Which of your memories were turning points? Were any of them particularly emotionally charged? Did you ever find yourself with an obsession you couldn’t let go of?

Author Ronit Plank says that when she wrote her memoir, she began by making a list of eight to twelve events she wanted to include in the memoir, detailing why these events were important to her. She advises including reflective moments, or where you felt torn.

Like plotting coordinates on a star map, this first step isn’t about order. It’s about noticing the memories that refuse to fade.

Here is your starting point:

Freewrite the moments that seem to glow more strongly than others. Gather the raw material that could end up being the makeup of your memoir. You can never have too many moments at this stage, so include that argument that changed how you saw someone you love, or that unexpected kindness of a stranger that has stayed with you to this day.

Maybe you once made a seemingly harmless decision — but it ended up changing your life. Include it.

Once you’ve finished, you’re ready to find your theme.

Find the Shape of Your Constellation

This is the stage where you’ll start looking for patterns, so take a step back. Which of your brightest memories seems to form a shape?

You might find traces of resilience, shown in the times you kept moving when life fell apart. Or identity, revealed in moments when you questioned who you were or where you belonged. Maybe your thread is adventure, the way you’ve always reached for the next horizon, or belonging, found in your search for connection.

Others might find their stories orbit around loss, courage, forgiveness, or freedom.

The goal isn’t to name your theme right away, but to start noticing what your memories are already saying.

Begin with these memoir writing tips:

• Look for emotional repetition. Which feelings resurface again and again? Maybe frustration, joy, shame, or hope appear in different guises throughout your memories. These recurring emotions may be the heartbeat of your theme.
• Identify recurring characters and relationships. Who keeps showing up in your stories, and why? The people who return again and again, whether they supported or challenged you, often represent the forces shaping your growth.
• Discover objects, settings, or ideas that reappear in your memories. It might be a kitchen table, a long drive, a childhood house, or a journal. These tangible details serve as anchors for larger ideas: safety, change, independence, and home.
• Search for patterns in your reactions. Notice how you respond across different moments. Do you run, rebuild, confront, withdraw, seek connection, or hide? The ways you respond to conflict or joy can reveal the theme of your evolution.

As you start noticing these patterns, your memories will begin to arrange themselves into something more than moments — they’ll start forming meaning. To see how this works in practice, look at how one bestselling memoir uses its theme as the invisible thread that holds every scene together.

On the surface, Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, seems to follow a chronological arc. A girl grows up off the grid, enters school for the first time, and earns her PhD.

But what binds those events isn’t time — it’s the theme of education as liberation. Every “star” in her memoir, from the violence of her home to her first day in a classroom, shines because it’s connected by that single line of meaning.

Without it, her story would be a series of remarkable events, but with it, her story becomes a constellation.

Edit with Intention

Despite how brightly your chosen memories shine, not every star belongs in your constellation. An important part of the process is finding out which memories serve your theme best — and which don’t.

As you refine your list of memories, ask yourself: Does it snag? Has it left an emotional imprint that still tugs at you? Does this moment move my theme forward? Does it reveal change, conflict, or clarity?

These questions sit at the heart of thematic memoir writing, where every chosen moment contributes to a cohesive narrative of meaning rather than a chronological recounting of life.

Here are a few ways to decide what stays and what goes:

• Follow the “snag.” Keep the scenes that still stir emotion or leave you unsettled. Those are often the ones that hold real meaning.
• Cut for cohesion. If a memory doesn’t connect to your central theme, set it aside. It might belong in another story.
• Keep movement in mind. Each scene should either deepen the reader’s understanding of your struggle or show progress toward resolution. If it stalls the emotional arc, tighten or remove it.
• Test for resonance. Read your chosen scenes aloud or summarise them in a sentence. If you can’t explain how the moment ties to your theme, it likely doesn’t belong.

Editing with intention means shaping your lived experience into a story that feels both true and purposeful. Like an astronomer ignoring countless stars to trace a single constellation, your goal isn’t to include everything — it’s to reveal the pattern that makes your memoir shine.

Name Your Constellation

Just like constellations have names, so should your theme.

Once you see the shape of your memories, think about what it can be called. This is your memoir’s identity, not its title, but the guiding light you’ll refer to as you work on memoir structure and write every draft.

Try it: think of a phrase that suits your chosen memories, articulating the central theme with a single phrase.

Here are some examples to get you thinking:

• Learning to belong
• Finding freedom in my own voice
• Turning pain into purpose
• Finding light after loss
• Living on my own terms

See it in action with our earlier example of Tara Westover’s Educated. You might name her theme something like ‘the power of learning to free yourself, where every event she chose to include in the memoir orbits that idea.

Articulate your theme, and you’ll see more clearly how every scene in your memoir either supports that theme or distracts from it.

Your Personal Sky

Every memoir is its own constellation — unique, recognisable, and shining against the vast sky of human experience. The stars you’ve chosen, the memories you’ve traced, and the theme that connects them form a pattern no one else but you could create.

But although your story is singular, it’s also universal — linked to every other story of becoming, belonging, and transformation. By finding the thematic lines that connect your brightest moments, you bring coherence to what otherwise might have looked like fragmented memories.

Writing a memoir with themes is not about recording every event. It’s about mapping the light that guides you, then offering that map to others who might be searching for their own way through the dark.

In the end, your constellation may not look like anyone else’s — but that’s exactly the point. It’s yours.

So take a breath, pick up a pen (or keyboard), and start tracing it onto the page.