If authors want to write about certain important times in their lives, they write memoirs, which are books of memories written in first-person in story form. Watch a short video about memoirs.

Memoirs are about real people, but they’re different from other works of nonfiction in that they feel and sound more like works of fiction than nonfiction. They usually have a plot, characters, and a setting, while also using literary devices such as figurative language, imagery, simile, and metaphor.

In a memoir, you are apt to read vivid descriptions and detailed character sketches that make you feel like you are part of the author’s story. Authors of memoirs may include more long-term reflection. That is, they may tell us readers what they think and feel about what happened to them.

For this reason, memoirs are excellent to read to discover how people and places in authors’ childhoods influenced the adults they eventually became. Memoirs may be any length; some of them are book length, while others are shorter because the authors covered fewer parts of their lives.

Read these excerpts from the memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass. Click on each highlighted word in the text to see a think-aloud that might help you understand the elements that make up a memoir.

Frederick Douglass uses facts in the excerpts about his boyhood as a slave in Mr. Gore’s household, such as the information that he always carried bread with him and gave it to hungry children. However, it’s the imagery he uses in his description of Mr. Gore’s “stone-like coolness” that helps readers get a mental picture of Mr. Gore so that they can more fully understand what it was like for Frederick Douglass to live that part of his life as a slave.

Personal narrative is similar to memoir in that it is also written in first-person and uses literary language and literary devices. Where it differs from memoir is in the span of time it covers and perhaps the amount of detail the author uses to make his or her point. Because of that, personal narratives are usually shorter than memoirs.

Most personal narratives have a more narrow focus than memoirs. A memoir is apt to describe several stages of an author’s life, while a personal narrative describes one single experience. Memoirs also include more long-range reflection on the part of the author than personal narratives do. The author spends more time thinking and writing about how memories have affected his or her life in a memoir. Personal narratives still rely on things like character, setting, and figurative language to paint a vivid picture in your mind, but they’re shorter and include a little less reflection.

Here is an example of a personal narrative written by a student. Click on each highlighted word in the text to see a think-aloud.

Here’s one more example. This is an excerpt taken from a longer personal narrative that tells the story of one memorable incident from a young boy’s life. After you finish reading the excerpt, look below at a list of common elements found in personal narratives and decide whether or not each element is contained in this excerpt. After you decide, click on the box after each element to check your answers.

• Narrow in scope, usually tells about just one incident


Yes, this narrative tells about getting lost in the snow.


• Examples of figurative language in the narrative, so the reader can “see” what is happening through the writer’s eyes


There are several descriptions in the narrative, for example “tangled “knee-deep drifts of newly fallen snow” and “tangled with briars”. There is a simile when he describes the lights going out as if someone had flipped a switch.




• Setting


We know that the narrative is taking place in the winter in snow in a remote area away from town.


• Characterization


There is just a little characterization. We know that the characters are Boy Scouts, and we know that they are inexperienced hikers because they don’t follow the rules in an emergency.




• Self-reflection


Self-reflection is limited, but at the end, the last sentence “Little did I know just how dangerous” suggests a bit of self-reflection.

Now that you understand the difference between a memoir and a personal narrative, let’s see how they compare to an autobiography.