Help with Revising a Memoir

PhantomMedic

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My father-in-law was a NYPD detective back in the 70's and 80's. Back when NY was gritty and nasty. Anyway, he has written is memoirs about his patrolman days. He's written them in separate short stories. Basically, each encounter is a chapter. So he has roughly 170 stories, all between 3 and 15 pages each.

He has asked me to edit and revise his book which is an enormous undertaking, but one I am happy and excited to be a part of.

Here's the dilemma. He doesn't quite have the writing chops to convey a story appropriately. They seem to read more like police reports. The stories are great and show a part of life people don't see, but they are disjointed. They do not have a good flow to them. He seems to have too much detail where it's not needed and little or no detail where it would go a long way.

Reading the stories, I have great ideas of what I would change to make them better, but I'm not sure if that's appropriate for a memoir. They are his stories and are meant to be as he remembers them, not what I can create to make them sound better.

I feel like I'm rambling a bit here. Basically, I would like advice on:

Should I condense the book? I think with all that he's written, he's got enough for at least two books if not three. Otherwise it would be one giant book.

How should I go about making these stories read like stories and not reports without removing the authenticity?

A lot of the stories have police jargon in them, which is fine, but he will explain some of it within the story which I think brings the action to a halt. Should there be a chapter based on explaining these type of things or perhaps a glossary/appendix dedicated to this?

I feel a little overwhelmed with this project. I have read a lot of the stories and have attempted a revision of some of them, but I am still not happy with the changes I have made. They read better, but still feels choppy. The whole project seems like a 5000 piece puzzle dumped on a table. It's a mess now, but has the potential to make something beautiful with a lot of work.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Ask your FIL for all the pertinent missing details and feel free to include them. You'll need to change certain identifying details, and you won't be able to use people's names, except for friendly police, etc. Yes, you should condense details that bog down the story. Give a short explanation of police terms at the place of reference, but don't go overboard. A glossary at the end would be okay, probably. If he's got material for several books, go ahead and make it several books.

Can't help you with the flow without seeing it. Unless you've signed on as a ghostwriter, it's his material. He could sign on to AW. Get his 50 posts, then post a couple of short chapters (one at a time) in the memoir section of SYW (password is vista). Alternately, you could mosey down there yourself and simply read passages and get an idea of what works and what doesn't. I believe sonyablue (I think that's her name) did something similar with her husband's police stories. You could hunt for it.

Hope that helps.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

stormie

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What Siri said and...

...right now you seem overwhelmed. Since you say that the stories individually are from 3-15 pp., maybe choose fifteen of the most unique and/or interesting. Work on each one individually. Then see if there is something that would work where you can tie them all together.

And SYW is a great place to get feedback when your FIL is ready (and you reach 50 posts).
 

PhantomMedic

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Thanks for the advice. I have another question. Would it be acceptable to keep each story/chapter as its own standalone piece?

He wrote it to read like a "war stories" book. So the stories do not have to intertwine with each other if that makes sense. I think the feel he wants is that you are sitting down with him and he's telling you about his most memorable moments in police work.

Is that an acceptable way to present a memoir book?

In any case, the advice about picking the best stories is good and kind of what I had planned on doing. Some of the shorter ones are more like interesting tidbits rather than events.

I am going to have to do a lot of communicating back and forth with my father in law to get the stories into acceptable shape. What he has written is a good outline for the story, it just needs a lot of polish.
 

PhantomMedic

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Ask your FIL for all the pertinent missing details and feel free to include them. You'll need to change certain identifying details, and you won't be able to use people's names, except for friendly police, etc. Yes, you should condense details that bog down the story. Give a short explanation of police terms at the place of reference, but don't go overboard. A glossary at the end would be okay, probably. If he's got material for several books, go ahead and make it several books.

Can't help you with the flow without seeing it. Unless you've signed on as a ghostwriter, it's his material. He could sign on to AW. Get his 50 posts, then post a couple of short chapters (one at a time) in the memoir section of SYW (password is vista). Alternately, you could mosey down there yourself and simply read passages and get an idea of what works and what doesn't. I believe sonyablue (I think that's her name) did something similar with her husband's police stories. You could hunt for it.

Hope that helps.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal


Thanks for pointing me towards "sonyablue's" work. The way she wrote it is exactly what I'm wanting to do with his stories. (Oddly enough, I could picture my father in law telling me that story, kind of chilling.) Damn, the language is so similar to what my father in law wrote. They worked in the department in the same time period, maybe they knew each other.
 

cornflake

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Thanks for the advice. I have another question. Would it be acceptable to keep each story/chapter as its own standalone piece?

He wrote it to read like a "war stories" book. So the stories do not have to intertwine with each other if that makes sense. I think the feel he wants is that you are sitting down with him and he's telling you about his most memorable moments in police work.

Is that an acceptable way to present a memoir book?

In any case, the advice about picking the best stories is good and kind of what I had planned on doing. Some of the shorter ones are more like interesting tidbits rather than events.

I am going to have to do a lot of communicating back and forth with my father in law to get the stories into acceptable shape. What he has written is a good outline for the story, it just needs a lot of polish.

They still need to connect, just perhaps not in the way you're thinking.

Think about the overarching themes - if they're his most memorable stories, are they all of the same type (just for example, chasing someone)? That wouldn't likely work. Are they from different periods in his career? Then they should flow and connect in a linear way, or if not early to late, in some other way that makes sense, with the last first and then connecting it to the first and then going chronologically until you come full circle, or whatever, it's just an example.

Do the stories involve other cops? Those cops shouldn't jump around. If he's got one partner in three stories, another in five, another in the rest, you don't want them moving in and out at random; that'd likely be confusing.

Do the stories involve different current events? Those can relate to each other and connect and if they're out of sequence or aren't presented in a connected way, it'd be weird.

All of these may or may not apply specifically to the stories you have, obviously, I haven't seen them. I'm just suggesting ways they will likely interrelate and that you can weave them together to form a book. They don't have to be connected in a specific 'and then this happened' way, but they do likely have or should have connections. Just random stories jumping around in time, place, subject, involving people who go back and forth, etc., is boring because there's not an overarching narrative or point.

There should also be an overarching point. It's stories but it's also whatever - what he learned, what he saw the city evolve through or to, what he learned about himself, how he evolved as a cop along with the city or not, etc., etc. that should come through, through the stories. Again, this doesn't need to be explicit, but it should somehow be there, visible in the different stories as they go.

Like David Sedaris' stuff - it's certainly not the same thing but his essay collections may seem fairly random bunches of stories but the books have different themes, address different periods in his life, etc.
 

PhantomMedic

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They still need to connect, just perhaps not in the way you're thinking.

Think about the overarching themes - if they're his most memorable stories, are they all of the same type (just for example, chasing someone)? That wouldn't likely work. Are they from different periods in his career? Then they should flow and connect in a linear way, or if not early to late, in some other way that makes sense, with the last first and then connecting it to the first and then going chronologically until you come full circle, or whatever, it's just an example.

Do the stories involve other cops? Those cops shouldn't jump around. If he's got one partner in three stories, another in five, another in the rest, you don't want them moving in and out at random; that'd likely be confusing.

Do the stories involve different current events? Those can relate to each other and connect and if they're out of sequence or aren't presented in a connected way, it'd be weird.

All of these may or may not apply specifically to the stories you have, obviously, I haven't seen them. I'm just suggesting ways they will likely interrelate and that you can weave them together to form a book. They don't have to be connected in a specific 'and then this happened' way, but they do likely have or should have connections. Just random stories jumping around in time, place, subject, involving people who go back and forth, etc., is boring because there's not an overarching narrative or point.

There should also be an overarching point. It's stories but it's also whatever - what he learned, what he saw the city evolve through or to, what he learned about himself, how he evolved as a cop along with the city or not, etc., etc. that should come through, through the stories. Again, this doesn't need to be explicit, but it should somehow be there, visible in the different stories as they go.

Like David Sedaris' stuff - it's certainly not the same thing but his essay collections may seem fairly random bunches of stories but the books have different themes, address different periods in his life, etc.


Thank you for the input. They are ordered roughly in line with his career from his time in the academy up until his promotion to detective. He had several partners, but there were a few he had for long periods of time.

I see what you are saying about having an overarching narrative. I think I can swing that since he was hired a few years before there were massive layoffs due to a budget crisis. Things got so bad that they finally hired many cops back for specific task forces in high crime areas. Apparently that program was successful, so I think that can be an overtone throughout the stories.
 

Siri Kirpal

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The episodes themselves can stand alone. But in a book, like cornflake said, there needs to be some sort of over-arcing theme. Doesn't have to be super obvious though.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Rachel Udin

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I would mark it up like an editor does. Mark where he falls short, mark where the narrative tapers off, etc. Unless you are getting paid or willing to ghost write, it's not really your decision one way or the other how the narrative will turn out.

There is a difference between edit this for me and rewrite this for me. Mark the problems and let him revise it. He may not be good at a narrative form, but I don't think that means he can't learn.

Trust him to handle it.

If it's important, he can sign up himself.
 

PhantomMedic

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It is probably going to end up more of a rewrite than a revision, but it's okay. It's for my father in law and I would like to do a good job for him. He is pretty much computer illiterate and technology illiterate for that matter. It took him over ten years to get to the point he's at now. He is not going to learn to write well enough to do what needs to be done to it.

He is very passionate about his work and it would be awesome if I could help him get it to its full potential. Plus, it has to be valuable experience for me when it comes to editing and rewriting my own work. I'm no expert by any means, so it is a good project for me to take on even if it does seem overwhelming from the beginning. I think once I get an idea about where I need to take it and get a flow established, it will proceed a lot more smoothly.
 

cornflake

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Having those overarching plots and narrative connections will help you choose which stories to include - you can pick from among similar ones the ones which best connect in a way that highlight what you want.
 

khobar

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He is not going to learn to write well enough to do what needs to be done to it.

He is very passionate about his work and it would be awesome if I could help him get it to its full potential. Plus, it has to be valuable experience for me when it comes to editing and rewriting my own work.

1) He doesn't have to learn to write well enough - he only has to communicate. ;)

As for the connecting arc - why did your father select these 170 stories? What makes them stand out in his mind? What makes them stand out in your mind as you read them? Does he have favorites? Are they all bad guys did bad things, etc? If they are does he have any funny stories that stand out? Which leads me to:

2) You say he is passionate about his work - that is excellent. I would strongly suggest you and he talk - really talk, and record it. What's missing from the pages will come out in his voice. You'll hear when he gets excited about something, or sad, or start laughing. That's going to take those drab police reports and make them really pop.

Hope this helps.
 

frimble3

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I think Khobar's got a point about getting him talking. If he's not much for writing, they may read like reports because that's what he's used to writing. It might also be that he's being a little formal because he's thinking of the written word as 'special', that if he's writing a book it should be different from his casual, conversational voice.
If you get him talking about the stories he's passionate about, let him tell the story rather than fuss with getting the words, grammar , and spelling down, it would give you material to fill in the spaces and let you get a feel for what it should sound like, transcribed.
 

PhantomMedic

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I think that is going to be my plan of action. It's just going to be hard because we live so far apart. He's coming down to visit in October, so I should be able to get a lot of work done then. I know he's excited about this project and I don't want to disappoint.
 

Literateparakeet

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You've already received great advice, so I don't have a lot to add--but I did want to say, as long as he is okay with you ghost writing it (i.e. rewriting as opposed to just editing), I see nothing wrong with that. In your first post, you seemed concerned that would take away from the authenticity of it, but I don't think so. There is nothing wrong with a memoir that is ghost written. It may be your writing, but they will still be his stories.

I think it sounds like a wonderful idea for a book.
 

PrincessFiona

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You have gotten great advice so far. I just want to chime in and say how great I think it is that you are offering to help your fil this way!