Your unique style greatly matters in writing memoirs due to its power to infuse authenticity and emotional depth into your narrative. While grammar provides structure, your distinct voice, choice of words, and personal style breathe life into your memoir, capturing the essence of your experiences.
By prioritizing your individuality over rigid grammatical conventions, you invite readers into a personal, evocative journey that resonates profoundly. Embrace the artistry of memoir writing as your style becomes the brushstroke that paints vivid recollections, making your story compelling and unforgettable.
Join us as we dissect the intricate interplay between creativity and language, unveiling the gateway to compelling storytelling that reverberates within the depths of readers’ hearts.
The Grammar Rules That Matter
Grammar matters, but not in the way most people think.
The grammar rules that matter are those you aren’t even aware of, those that are burrowed so deep in your linguistic subconscious that they don’t even register as “rules.” It’s the difference between “a” and “the,” which you would never mess up as a native English speaker yet could almost certainly never adequately explain to a non-native speaker.
The subtle difference between “it” and “that” sounds inherently jarring when a non-native speaker gets it wrong, yet you can’t quite pinpoint why.
These rules—or, better, linguistic patterns—are the building blocks of a language. Without them, basic communication crumbles. These are the parts you need to get right. And for the most part, if you’re a native speaker, they’re the parts that wouldn’t even occur to you to get wrong.
The Grammar Rules That Don’t Matter
The grammar rules that don’t matter are the ones that most people think of as “grammar rules.” These are the things that your English teacher berated you for or that your parents lamented as the “downfall of the English language.” They’re the “rules” that have no bearing on comprehension unless interpreted in the most pedantic way imaginable.
The thing is, language is constantly evolving. It always has, and it always will. Around 5,000 years ago, English and Hindi were the same language. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian are all just different dialects of New Latin.
The “grammar rules” we’re taught in school are structures that have been artificially selected as “correct”—typically those seen as “sophisticated” or “elegant” or “upper class”—and that have refused to adapt to our ever-shifting language.
Well, I’m here to tell you to unapologetically split infinitives. To write sentence fragments. To embrace prepositions as a perfectly fine element to end sentences with. And don’t hesitate to begin a sentence with a conjunction. Because, after all, these so-called “rules” are just made up.
Of course, if you want to follow these conventions, you can. They constitute their form of communication, after all. These patterns bring their nuances, offering another avenue with which to frame your unique collections of thoughts and present yourself in the way you want.
Writing Style Over “Grammar Rules”
If you’re writing a first-person narrative, injecting personality into your writing is crucial. If you’re writing from the perspective of a fictional character, you have to understand them and get into their head, which can take time and practice. If you’re writing a memoir, it’s much easier, because it’s your personality.
“But why?” you may wonder. Surely standards are important, after all, and sometimes, it may be necessary to sacrifice the personalization of our language usage in favor of universal standards that support ease of comprehension. Well, yes, that’s right.
That’s why we all continue to follow inconsistent, long-outdated spelling conventions sometimes lightyears away from the modern pronunciation of the words they supposedly represent. But most of the “rules” you’re consciously aware of don’t genuinely affect understanding. If you’re a decent writer, to begin with, then just relying on your native-speaker intuition is generally enough.
The way you write something sometimes means even more than the content itself. Writing style permeates every aspect of a text, subtly coloring the message and the way people interpret it.
Even ChatGPT, a robot that consistently produces insufferably soulless, lackluster writing, has a distinct, easily identifiable writing style (assuming it wasn’t meticulously prompted to write differently). The patterns that some people push as “grammar rules” are not rules but a styles.
Write Like Yourself
Discovering Your Linguistic Signature
So, how do you use language? Within the necessary subconscious structures that govern the communicative property of language itself, how do you make it yours? What’s your signature? If you’re writing a memoir, you want your writing to feel like you.
This is your invitation to push the boundaries, to shed oppressive expectations, and to make your book yours.
Embracing Your Unique Voice
Maybe you want to follow the “rules”—that’s fine. And maybe you don’t want to. That’s also fine. What’s important is not how you write per se, but who you write like. No one will ever be better at being you than you, so own your style.
The Role of Ghostwriters
Of course, an important caveat here is that you understand how to write well, regardless of personal style. We all speak a language (if you’re reading this, probably English), but that doesn’t mean writing is easy.
If you want to write a memoir that sounds authentically like you, disposing with archaic ideas of “grammatical correctness” and highlighting your unique voice, but writing isn’t your forte, that’s fine.
That’s what ghostwriters are for. Ghostwriters are the secret weapon of the publishing industry, skillfully camouflaging their words to emulate the unique style of their clients. It’s the same skill fiction authors use to bring their various characters to life, except that ghostwriters are working with real people whose individual styles they can’t conveniently tweak.
Ghostwriters are masters of molding their writing to fit someone else’s style, which is crucial in conveying authentic stories. Asked about how personal style can transform a memoir, Alyssa from Memoir Ghostwriting said, “It’s like the difference between reading a riveting first-person recollection and a dry Wikipedia article.
Harnessing Linguistic Nuances
Even if the events you’re recalling are the same, the way you tell them matters—a lot. If you want to truly move people, you need writing with personality.” Alyssa draws on her expertise in linguistics to hone her keen sense of nuance in writing and recommends that authors dabble in linguistics and foreign language learning to enhance their understanding of their native language.
“To linguists, there are no grammar ‘rules.’ There are only grammar patterns,” she explains. “The more languages you know, the better you’ll understand language as a whole. You don’t even have to get fluent. Basic knowledge of a language, particularly if it’s from a new family, will already expand your linguistic understanding significantly.”
Writing Your Way
We all use the same words, but we use them in our way. Whether you’re dreaming up a fantasy universe of fictional characters, recounting your life as you write out your memoir, or collaborating with a professional ghostwriter to tell your unique story, this is your invitation to write it your way.
<p>The post Memoir Writing Your Way: Why Your Own Style Matters More Than Strict Grammar Rules first appeared on DAILY WRITING TIPS.</p>
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Author: Candace Osmond
