When planning and writing your story, start thinking early on about your life story audience. Who are you writing for and who will read your story?
We suggest thinking about this early because it will provide guidance about what you write. Knowing your life story audience will help you decide what stories and anecdotes to include. It will help you decide how you write your memories and how formal you wish to be with your story.
In some cases, this will be very clear-cut, for example, if your life story audience is only your immediate family. In this case, you might want to make your writing very personal and refer to members of the family as ‘Aunt Jenny’, or ‘Uncle Joe’. You could also be more informal in how you word sentences. You could include quite personal thoughts and ideas that you might not be happy for people outside the family to read.
Another aspect you may like to consider is including details such as explanations of relationships that may not be as straightforward as cousin or sister. For example, you may have family friends that have become 'adopted relatives'. These are people you consider a part of your family, even they are not officially so. It would be a lovely gesture – and important – to include them in your life story. In fact, we have even provided specific LifeQuestions about these people.
If your life story audience is a variety of people both in your family and outside, then you may decide to provide more detail about the relationships you mention, the detail of the memories you include, or which anecdotes you include. Some may not work outside the family context or may be too personal to share outside the family. You might also be less inclined to include some very personal memories that you would only share with close family members.
So if you decide who will be your life story audience early in the process, it will make planning your writing easier.
Read more and join our discussion on Facebook or Instagram for more inspiration about your life story audience.
