Telling the Truth

When I am helping someone write their memoir, I am often asked questions like, “How much of the truth should I tell? Should I leave some parts out? What if I hurt people’s feelings?”

These are good questions. No one can tell all the truth. If we did, our stories would be ten thousand pages long and bore others stiff. No one cares how many times you brush your teeth each day, after all – unless of course your memoir is about how you kept your own teeth perfect and never had a cavity. Otherwise, your teeth, important as they are, have little place in your memoir.

Then there’s the fact that there is no such thing as definitive truth. Others will view the events in your story differently than you do. Once I had twin sisters in one of my writing memoir classes. During the writing period of the class, they both chose to write about going to their first school dance. That they both chose to write about the dance was a confirmation of how twins may think alike, but the stories they told were very different. One twin swore they both wore green dresses, the other said they wore black. One twin said she danced cheek to cheek with Rodney the president of the junior class; the other said Rodney shunned them both and broke their infatuated hearts.

So when people ask me, “Should I tell the truth?” I like to answer with a quotation from Quaker author, Philip Gulley (Hometown Tales): “History is about facts; stories are about truth.”

Facts and truth are not the same. Truth is the meaning behind the facts. You can embroider the facts until they are almost invisible, but the story they tell can still be true. Other facts can be told plain and direct, with each and every detail and date exact – and yet the story can still tell a lie.  

When you write your memoir, you become a storyteller. Keep your facts straight, but don’t let them get in the way of truth.

Readers, this is post #1,500 since we started this blog, and that's the truth! Thank you for being a part of our team, Kim. Thank you, friends, for stopping by every day and sharing in the conversation. ~ Dani Greer, Chief Red Pencil

Kim Pearson is an author, ghostwriter, and owner of Primary Sources, a writing service that helps others become authors of professional and compelling books and articles. She has authored 6 books of her own, and ghostwritten more than 30 non-fiction books and memoirs. To learn more about her books or services, visit Primary-Sources.com.