How to Organize a Life Story

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Laura and today I'm going to talk about how to organize a life story. Organizing a life story, whether it's yours or someone you you're writing about, seems like a daunting task because of course a life has many different experiences within it and lots of small things, and you want to include, you don't know whether to include them. You are first of course going to want try to write down everything you know about this person's life. If it's you it's going to be very easy. You're going to be writing and writing and writing and writing. When you're done of course writing down all of these things and maybe an outline format or just maybe a big brainstorming session with yourself. You know, good memories, bad memories. You know, what happened in my life. Big moments in my life. Go back through and weed out the things that you, well I wouldn't say don't want to talk about, because you want to try to be honest, but the things you don't want to be included in the life story. So, the weaker things. You know, for example, did you fall down and hurt your knee one day when you were four. Is that more interesting than your first date? Probably not. So, you're going to think about what things to include and what things to omit. Then you are probably going to want to try work in chronological order, but if that doesn't work out and it seems a little boring to you, if you seem to be getting stuck, feel like it's more of a chore to write in chronological order than it is fun. Then I would say mix it up a little bit. Try writing little pieces of your life or the person's life. Taking them and putting them in different spots. Like for example, if your fifth birthday had an impact on your first day of college, you can write the chapter about your fifth birthday right next to your first year of college. Or they can even be in the same chapter and blend into each other. You can sort of take liberties with it since it is your life. And you can take liberties with other people's lives too just as long as you stay true to them. Okay. So, life is not organized. This is the real stickler about this really broad topic is that organizing a life story is daunting because life is not organized. Things do not happen in the fashion that seems, at the time, to be pre-determined. But writers and artists make it organized. So whenever you can look back on something and you can create it into something new, you are making organization out of chaos. So that is actually what you are doing when you are writing your life story is you're taking the moments of your life and you're putting them together to make them make sense. So, when you're organizing it, do it however you feel is right and necessary. And that's how to organize your life story."