What is needed

We need to see the character change. We need to see the character have some inkling of understanding about how she is confronting her life, her situation, her decisions. If that doesn’t come to the character on the page then you never have a final shift in the protagonists journey and it ends up being a story that isn’t rewarding, the reader will put down unsatisfied. 

We live vicariously through characters in books. And we are hungry for the character to gain insight into her story.

It’s not enough for a reader (and the writer for that matter) to gain insight, what the reader wants is for the character to gain that insight. Watch the protagonist go through the pain, or else the end will not feel rewarding.

We want her to gain it as painfully as possible because that’s how good stories work.

(Like Insight into kindness and human nature.)

We want to see the character struggle and then we want to see her come to insight about the meaning of all of this.

Remember we write – we read and write memoirs for the meaning making.

And if our protagonist never makes meaning out of everything that happens to her then we failed the reader. 

Write this. (A note to self. Re-commiting.) As you write in the voice of the inexperienced young and maybe not so innocent protagonist, put words into her mouth but also put thoughts into her head. Thoughts and feelsing that didn’t come to you the author until several years later or for the first time now as you write your memoir.