I’ve always been a fan of memoirs and I’m currently reading Ketanji Brown Jackson’s. She has these very detailed scenes and talks about the dialogue that was shared between her and her husband 30 years ago. I always wonder when I read these books how this is done. I doubt every person who wrote a memoir kept the detailed journal. Did they make stuff up understanding that they’re getting the general gist or is my memory that bad? Has anyone else ever thought of this? Lol
by theKman24
2 Comments
I’m in an amateur memoir writing group. It’s acknowledged that conversations “remembered” are likely not verbatim, but the general exchanges are accurate.
They are not writing word for word conversations. That’s impossible to do. Even if there were audio recordings of it, writing down a spoken conversation typically does not lead to good reading.
A lot of memoirs, if not most, will have a disclaimer at the beginning of the book essentially saying they are taking liberties and writing dialogue in a way that makes it feel like they did during the conversation.