Discover your writing style to unlock your bestselling memoir formula

Ever wondered what sort of memoir you should write? Take the quiz below to find your best genre!

You’ve just made a new friend – what story from your life do you share?

1. No story, you wind up giving them a pep talk, cause you love to motivate people.
2. That time you hiked the Himalayas / rented a Villa in the South of France / threw away all your possessions to live somewhere far from home
3. Things your psychotherapist taught you
4. What it’s like to have a blog post or an article go viral on the internet

What’s your psychological superpower?

1: You find the positive in every situation
2: You’re plucky and you know it
3: You explore deep, difficult topics sans flinching
4: You ferret out details and info like the FBI

Cast your mind back to school day you. What did you do on camp?

1: Round up your friends and organise the concert performance (often a dance or a song)
2: Get in trouble for going out of bounds. Once you even hitched a ride back to camp!
3: Started a séance or broke into the boys dorm
4: Interviewed the boy who found a marijuana crop to write about it for the school newsletter

What’s your level of writing experience?

1. Low-to-no, but you’ve taught yourself far more difficult things. You’ve got to start somewhere!
2. Not much, but you’ve got a pile of travel journals you can’t bring yourself to throw away.
3. Medium: You keep a semi-regular journal / have done a couple workshops and had a personal essay published in a magazine
4. Pro: You make your living as a journalist, copywriter or blogger

What was the last book you pre-ordered?

1. Marie Forleo’s upcoming Everything is Figureoutable
2. Under the Tuscan Sun special anniversary edition
3. High Achiever by Tiffany Jenkins
4. The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah KrasnosteinYOUR BESTSELLING MEMOIR FORMULA

   If you got mostly 1’s…..
   You should write a self-help-type memoir! Think simple steps and using your own story to teach people how to do something better. These are KILLER in the market-place right now, and by deep-diving into your own story to make it deeper and richer, you give the reader a rollicking and inspirational journey.
   Want to know how to go from idea to pitch-ready manuscript in 40 days? Check out my 40 Day Memoir Academy course here.

   If you got mostly 2’s…..
   You should write a travel memoir. You’d have some amazing stories from your journals (if you don’t, learn how to keep a journal for memoir here) and travel memoir sells SO WELL at airports because we all love to vicariously adventure through the page. Bonus points if you took some video footage – that would make for a killer book trailer!
   Confused about where to start? I have a step-by-step start to finish course that takes you from manuscript to pitch-ready in 40 days here.

   If you got mostly 3’s…..
   You should write a literary memoir. Memoirs like Kay Redfeld-Jamieson’a An Unquiet Mind and Augusten Burroughs’ DRY are so satisfying because they deeply explore a section of the author’s life with reflection, intensity and psychological insight.
   If you’ve started and stopped and started again (because you love writing, but don’t know the strategy to get published) you’ll love my 40 day Memoir Academy course.

   If you got mostly 4’s…
   Well, you’re all over ‘platform’ if you’ve already had some non-fiction published! You could try a memoir-reportage hybrid which sell really well because they cross real-life (everyone wants to know about personal experiences) mixed with modern trends, reasons and data.
   Want to take your idea from a chunky messy draft to a complete, pitch-worthy manuscript? Memoir Academy is open for a limited time!