StoryForge Memoir Support

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Overview

StoryForge supports memoir as a second book category next to fiction. It is activated by book_category: memoir in the frontmatter of the book README. new-book sets it when you choose memoir at the category question.

Memoir shares a lot of craft with fiction: narrative arc, scene work, POV and voice. General non-fiction (how-to, reference, biography, journalism) and the complete autobiography are out of scope.

Memoir is not a trimmed-down fiction workflow. Dedicated skills, four structure types, a system for real people with consent and two memoir checks are tailored to the challenges of a true story.

Enabling Memoir

When creating with /storyforge:new-book you choose memoir as the category. The README frontmatter then carries:

---
title: "My Memoir Title"
book_type: "novel"
book_category: "memoir"
author: "your-author-slug"
status: "Idea"
---

Every skill reads book_category from the book data. If the value is missing, fiction applies. The scaffold depends on the category too: people/ instead of characters/, no world/, and plot/ with structure.md instead of acts.md and arcs.md.

You create authors with /storyforge:create-author and choose "memoir" or "both" in the path. The memoir path also asks for subject position, relationship to the material and off-limits topics (off_limits), and it names the writing modes Structured, Accumulative and Discovery. On save, update_author normalizes Structured to outliner and Accumulative to plantser; Discovery stays discovery.

Memoir Structure Types

The structure is independent of the chronology of what happened. You choose the form that serves the story, not the one that mirrors what actually happened. plot-architect-memoir persists the choice with set_memoir_structure_type in plot/structure.md.

Chronological (chronological)

Events in the order they happened.

• Works when the transformation is time-bound and causal, the period is bounded and short, and the reader needs the suspense of not yet knowing.
• Fails when you tell decades chronologically: every year wants equal weight, and the result is a résumé with feelings.
• Examples: The Year of Magical Thinking (Didion), When Breath Becomes Air (Kalanithi), Wild (Strayed)

Thematic (thematic)

Chapters by topic rather than time. The same phase of life can show up in several chapters from different angles.

• Works when the central question is conceptual and several decades contribute to it.
• Fails when the themes are too abstract to anchor scenes, or the chapters do not talk to each other and feel like a collection of essays.
• Examples: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou), The Argonauts (Nelson), H is for Hawk (Macdonald)

Braided (braided)

Two or more strands, usually then and now, woven scene by scene.

• Works when past and present comment on each other and both strands carry weight of their own.
• Fails when the braiding becomes a crutch for transitions or one strand does 80 percent of the emotional work.
• Examples: Negroland (Jefferson), The Liars' Club (Karr), Fun Home (Bechdel)

Vignette (vignette)

Short, self-contained scenes connected by theme or a through-line rather than tight causality.

• Works when the lived material is fragmented in memory and each scene carries weight on its own.
• Fails when the scenes are individually too weak and the whole collapses into a collection of anecdotes.
• Examples: Bluets (Nelson), The Chronology of Water (Yuknavitch), Brother, I'm Dying (Danticat)

Choosing a structure type

Hybrids are possible, but exactly one of the four values is stored in code. You record the hybrid nuance in your notes. If you cannot name your dominant structure in one word, you do not have a structure yet, you have a draft.

Real People

Memoir is about real human beings. StoryForge keeps them under people/ instead of characters/, with an explicit consent status. The person files are Markdown in the book project, and the consent check reads them from there.

my-memoir/
└── people/
    ├── INDEX.md
    ├── mother.md
    └── ex-partner.md

Fields of a person file

The file is created by character-creator-memoir through the tool create_person. It carries YAML frontmatter with, among others:

---
name: "Margarete"
relationship: "mother"
person_category: private-living-person
consent_status: confirmed-consent
anonymization: none        # none | partial | pseudonym | composite
real_name: ""              # only filled when anonymizing
status: "Concept"          # set by create_person
---

Sections such as memory anchors (## Memory anchors) and consent and ethics notes follow.

The character hook also checks person files, but only for the required fields name and status. role is not required for memoir person files, nor is it compared against the role list, and the recommended sections of fiction characters do not apply. create_person writes status but no role — a file created that way passes the check right away.

person_category

consent_status

A missing or unknown value is not a valid status and yields WARN. A WARN also results when person_category is missing or unknown.

refused blocks the export. The way forward is to remove the person, anonymize effectively or reframe the portrayal. The skill settles this with you in the "Consent and ethics notes" section.

Memoir Skills

Seven skills exist only for memoir. Their fiction counterparts refuse to work on memoir books and point to the memoir variant (the chapter writer and chapter reviewer directly invoke the memoir variant).

plot-architect-memoir

Runs after book-conceptualizer and before character-creator-memoir. Confirms the through-line, lets you choose one of the four structure types, maps the narrative arc per type, names the typical failure modes of the structure and builds the chapter spine. There is no antagonist phase and no foreshadowing table, because lived events are not "planted". Afterwards the skill creates the timeline with the real start date and the tonal document and sets the book status to Plot Outlined.

character-creator-memoir

Guides you in six steps through identification, person category, consent decision, anonymization, memory anchors and writing the file. Fiction tools such as fatal flaw, GMC or want-vs-need are declined, because they would fictionalize real people. For your own minor child it points to the special care required.

chapter-writer-memoir

Writes chapters with the same Mode A/B mechanics as chapter-writer, with memoir craft (scene vs summary, emotional truth, memoir anti-AI patterns) and a consent gate: before every scene it reads the consent warnings from the brief. On refused it stops and points to character-creator-memoir so you cut, anonymize or reframe. Missing or open statuses need an explicit decision from you.

chapter-reviewer-memoir

Checks 39 numbered points and seven sub-points. Points 1 to 33 follow the categories of the fiction review in memoir-appropriate form, points 34 to 39 are memoir anti-AI points. Differences from the fiction reviewer:

• There is neither the dialogue punctuation check 9b nor the phrase micro-echo 14b. Questions ending in a period are only caught here by the manuscript checker.
• Point 18 checks real-world plausibility instead of the travel matrix.
• 20a checks the honesty of reconstructed dialogue instead of the POV knowledge boundary.
• 20e (world rules) is dropped.
• The sub-points are 10b (simile discipline), 20a, 20b to 20d and 20f.

The six extra points appear as their own section in the report:

manuscript-checker-memoir

Runs all base checks of the manuscript checker plus five memoir categories: anonymization_leak (real name despite anonymization, pre-publication blocker), tidy_lesson_ending, reflective_platitude, timeline_ambiguity and real_people_consistency. It runs at the end of the revision. Details: Quality System.

emotional-truth-prompt

Runs after the chapter draft and before chapter-reviewer-memoir. The skill finds places where the text drifts into smooth abstraction and asks questions only you can answer from experience. It never rewrites prose. Seven dimensions:

Verdicts: PASS (continue to the reviewer), DEEPEN (work the flagged dimensions) and REWRITE (structural revision).

memoir-ethics-checker

Two passes: first the consent of every person (tool check_memoir_consent), then a scan of the drafts for four defamation patterns:

Verdict: EXPORT CLEAR, RESOLVE BEFORE EXPORT (WARN or D1 to D3) or EXPORT BLOCKED (refused consent or D4). The skill is the recommended step before export. For memoir, export-engineer itself calls check_memoir_consent: on FAIL it stops, on WARN it asks. Only memoir-ethics-checker runs the defamation scan.

Skills with a Memoir Branch

These skills work for both categories and branch internally on book_category:

book_type for Memoirs

book_type is independent of book_category. The values are short-story, novelette, novella, novel and epic. novel is the usual value for a complete memoir. In new-book the suggested target for novel is 80,000 words.

Memoir Workflow

1. /storyforge:create-author
   → author profile (memoir or both path)

2. /storyforge:new-book
   → category memoir, genres as thematic tags

3. /storyforge:book-conceptualizer my-memoir
   → premise, theme, scope, structure, pitch

4. /storyforge:plot-architect-memoir my-memoir
   → structure type, chapter spine, timeline, tonal document

5. /storyforge:character-creator-memoir my-memoir
   → one profile per significant person, with consent status

6. /storyforge:chapter-writer-memoir my-memoir 1
   → consent gate before scenes with real people

7. /storyforge:emotional-truth-prompt my-memoir 01-chapter
   → before the reviewer, not after

8. /storyforge:chapter-reviewer-memoir my-memoir 01-chapter
   → 39 points including the memoir anti-AI points

   Repeat 6 to 8 for each chapter, fix findings with /storyforge:chapter-fixer,
   then chapter-humanizer and chapter-proofreader.

9. /storyforge:continuity-checker my-memoir

10. /storyforge:manuscript-checker-memoir my-memoir

11. /storyforge:memoir-ethics-checker my-memoir
    → consent and defamation risk

12. optionally /storyforge:voice-checker my-memoir

13. /storyforge:export-engineer my-memoir epub
    → checks the consents first

Discovery memoir (less planning):

create-author → new-book (memoir) → book-conceptualizer →
character-creator-memoir (core people) →
[rolling-planner → chapter-writer-memoir → emotional-truth-prompt → chapter-reviewer-memoir] (repeat) →
continuity-checker → manuscript-checker-memoir → memoir-ethics-checker → export-engineer

Craft References

Under book_categories/memoir/craft/ there are six memoir documents:

The memoir skills load them automatically. You can also read them directly.

Out of Scope

• Biography: the life story of another person
• Autobiography: a complete life chronicle rather than a thematic slice
• How-to and self-help
• Reference, history, journalism

See also: Back to StoryForge Main Page · Skills Reference · Quality System