Life Writing for Beginners: Telling Your Own Story

Discover the writing techniques to research, draft, and edit a narrative piece based on your memories and experiences that engages readers until the final sentence

• Introduction
• Triggers: Senses and Specifics
• Making History Personal
• Fleshing Out and Focusing In
• Doing More with Your Work
• Final project

Life writing is an exploratory process, which involves unlocking memories, both the cherished and the difficult, and translating them into a coherent, narrative structure. For author and editor Tom Bromley, it is like portraiture: trying to depict someone as they truly are—a complete picture, but with words rather than colors.

In this course, Tom takes you through the fundamentals of life writing, from the research, first draft, to the final edit. Discover the techniques to retell experiences in vivid detail and build a seamless narrative piece that captivates readers.

• About Me
• Influences
• What Is Life Writing?
• Using Senses to Bring Emotions to Life
• Employing Music as a Trigger
• Objects and Small Details
• Rewriting Historical Events from Your Own Perspective
• Bringing in and Bringing Out the Emotions Even When It Hurts
• Creating a First Draft
• Research
• Structuring and Shaping Your Narrative
• Line Editing
• How to Give and Receive Feedback
• Taking Further: Thoughts on Building Towards a Memoir
• Life Writing for Beginners: Telling Your Own Story