Memoir or Narrative Non-Fiction?

Marina Snow · Mar 3, 2009

You will all have to excuse me for my ignorance but what is the difference between narrative non-fiction and a memoir? Are both of these sentences still memoir?: "I woke up this morning feeling morbidly detached from life." and "That morning I woke up feeling morbidly detached from life." Are these both considered memoir, or is the one written in the past tense now narrative non-fiction?

Thanks.

Wayne K · Mar 3, 2009

No idea. Good question though, I'm interested to see the answer.

Bubastes · Mar 3, 2009

My understanding is that narrative non-fiction is non-fiction that incorporates fiction storytelling techniques. A memoir is a subset of narrative non-fiction where the subject is yourself. Both of your sentences could be in a memoir.

qwerty · Mar 3, 2009

It's got nothing to do with tense. If you are writing a story about yourself, it's memoir - which is also narrative non-fiction.

Narrative non-fiction, as opposed to, say a text book, which is non-fiction, is a true story told on the lines of a novel.

melaniehoo · Mar 3, 2009

I agree with Bubastes and qwerty.

Marina Snow · Mar 3, 2009

qwerty said:
It's got nothing to do with tense. If you are writing a story about yourself, it's memoir - which is also narrative non-fiction.

Thank you Bubastes and qwerty. So could I place a memoir into the genre of narrative non-fiction if the manuscript contains a self-help section derived from the memoirs? I have a good reason for asking this, so I do appreciate any feedback.

melaniehoo · Mar 3, 2009

I would say it's a memoir with a self-help angle, or something like that. If the personal aspect is the main focus, I would use memoir, but if it's mostly self-help with personal anecdotes, I would use narrative non-fiction.

I hope that doesn't confuse you more. From what you've described here it sounds like memoir.

IceCreamEmpress · Mar 3, 2009

So could I place a memoir into the genre of narrative non-fiction if the manuscript contains a self-help section derived from the memoirs?

It's likely that the subgenres of either "memoir" or "self-help" would trump the broader genre of "narrative non-fiction" when publishers, booksellers, and libraries are classifying your book. And the author gets very little input in those classifications anyway, at least in my experience and that of my friends.

If you're using the classifications to select agents for querying, though, I think it would be quite reasonable to expand your search to agents who only mention "narrative non-fiction" in addition to those who explicitly mention "memoir" and "self-help".

Marina Snow · Mar 3, 2009

Thanks so much Melaniehoo and Ice Cream Empress. This helps me tremendously.

Memoir or Narrative Non-Fiction?

Marina Snow

Wayne K

Bubastes

bananaed

qwerty

exiled Brit

melaniehoo

And thus we begin the edits

Marina Snow

melaniehoo

And thus we begin the edits

IceCreamEmpress

Hapless Virago

Marina Snow