Crafting Memoir: How to Outline Your Own Hero's Journey

How do you write a successful, complete story arc about a life you're still living?

In this 30-minute class, award-winning author and writing coach Tammy Letherer shows you how to apply the stages of the Hero's Journey to the events in your life, giving you the tools you need to build a powerful outline for your memoir. 

No matter how compelling your personal story is, it won't hook the reader unless you know how to structure it with a beginning, middle, and end. You must share how you faced a specific challenge and how that challenge transformed you and shaped a new belief. It’s a tall order! 

Fortunately, humans are hard-wired to respond to the Hero’s Journey, a story form based on Joseph Campbell's monomyth The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Tammy shares how she used this template to become the hero of her own story and how you can do the same.

In this course:

• You’ll learn the most common mistakes memoir writers make and how to avoid them. 
• You’ll see why and how you are the hero of your story (and how to own that on the page!)
• You’ll understand each stage of the Hero’s Journey and, through discovery questions, know which life events belong in your memoir.

Your class project will be to write a rough draft of the beginning chapter of your memoir, or your Ordinary World, ending with your Call to Adventure. Once you clear this first hurdle, you’ll have the knowledge and momentum to keep writing, step by step. 

This class is for anyone who wants to write memoir, whether you are just beginning or have a complete first draft. 

If you find this class helpful and want more support developing your outline, please visit my Map Your Memoir program.

• Introduction
• Why You Qualify as a Hero
• The Most Common Mistakes Memoir Writers Make
• The Ordinary World
• Call to Adventure
• Refusing the Call
• Meeting the Mentor
• Crossing the First Threshold
• Tests, Allies, and Enemies
• Approach to the Inmost Cave
• The Ordeal
• Seizing the Sword
• The Road Back
• Resurrection
• Return with the Elixir