Crafting a Memoir With Grit: How to Make Your Personal Story Resonate With Readers

When I hear the word grit, I think of the sand that gets in between my toes at the beach rubbing my skin raw, or that thick dust that can blow into your eyes in the desert, making each blink painful. Grit is defined as small particles, wearing things down, making things uncomfortable. But in the stories of our lives, grit means resilience. It means when you are wearing down, getting sore, feeling pain, you keep going, you follow through, you don’t give up. That defines perseverance, when you get up after a set-back and try again.

(Writing Against the Clock.)

Facing hardship with strength and winning could make for a memoir that might be seen as a little too self-congratulatory. See how strong I was, how I succeeded in the end. Your reader sees a flat character, perhaps with an interesting story, but little depth. To truly engage your audience, you must show the fear, the vulnerability, the exhaustion behind the courage.

Even if you have an urge to write yourself as a hero, your reader will keep turning the page if they can’t understand the emotional toll it takes to have grit. If all the reader sees is bravery, “He strode up to the rattlesnake, and pinned its head to the ground with a shovel, likely saving the life of the small girl,” they may be happy with the outcome, but bored with the protagonist.

What if, instead, we read, “He grabbed the shovel, his heart pounding, and hesitated. That snake might strike in a flash of venomous poison. He looked down at his feet in sandals and shuddered. But the snake was alarmingly close to that small girl. Frozen, he took a deep breath. He knew what he had to do.” Now we want to turn the page.

Crafting a scene where you overcome some obstacle, if honest, likely shows both fear and grit.

Describing the physicality of overcoming fear brings your character to life.

Let the reader in on a little secret—you were scared silly. You need to be vulnerable on the page.

The reader’s interest is drawn in because we all know that feeling. We want to be brave and resolute, but we all have doubts, shame, fear.

There’s another type of grit—showing up again and again, even in tough circumstances, or bad weather, or at a challenging job, or for your kids, whether or not you are exhausted. Yes, you may appear like a hero, but what’s behind it? Show your reader your exhaustion, how you give yourself a pep talk, how you wanted to give up and walk away. Show your reader the toll it takes. That’s grit.

There needs to be stakes. What if your character doesn’t manage to try again? In my memoir, I tell the story of being a newly graduated veterinarian, looking for a large animal job in upstate New York. In 1978, there were very few women veterinarians, and even fewer that wanted to work with dairy cows. I had over a dozen interviews, and was told that women couldn’t do the work, that clients wouldn’t accept a woman, and that even their wives would be jealous.

In one scene, I describe a job interview where the vet asked me to put a ring in a bull’s nose, and the bull got loose and smashed my leg into a fence—I barely escaped and lay panting in the mud. At this point in the story, I was in tears, feeling that it was impossible to get a job. Worse, my first student debt payment was coming due. I wanted my readers to know that not only did I have an enormous bruise on my thigh, but I was very close to giving up. Remembering those feelings was tough, but necessary. I knew how the story turned out, but in my writing, I needed to feel that hopelessness and find a way to get it on the page.

What keeps your readers engaged is thinking maybe this time it is just too much, and the hero of the story is too exhausted. She might not want to subject herself to another try and another possible failure. Creating this tension between giving up and getting up again moves the story powerfully. But you don’t want your reader to feel hopeless. You can consider leaving some clues about why you are able to keep going. For me, this included wonderful supportive parents, a good friend in Utah who helped me find my first job, and a couple of women professors who were my role models and gave me courage.

Grit doesn’t come out of nowhere. Each of us has some aspect of our story that involves having grit—in fact, just writing a memoir takes enormous courage. When you write your story, get those moments down on paper that show your grit. Your readers will be happy you did.

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