Memoir-The+Hook

It's the rare writer who can open a story with the day someone was born, grab the reader's attention and, more importantly, keep it. Many successful memoirists choose instead to use fiction writing's flashback technique. They start in the middle of the story, then use flashbacks to fill in the gaps. Edward Ball, author of the award-winning //Slaves in the Family//, initially thought he'd write his family history memoir in chronological order, but his editor suggested he use a "flash back/flash forward structure—one chapter in the past, one chapter in the present," which worked very well to connect the story and the reader with both living and past generations. Consider opening your life story narrative with one of the happiest, most memorable, unusual or exciting events, or a turning point. Create an air of mystery so the reader will want more. This is how Rust begins her breast cancer memoir: I am afraid of chemo. I picture being strapped into an electric chair and hooked up to an assortment of machines that will do weird things to me. I'll be radioactive, glow in the dark. My hair will fall out instantly, my skin will turn gray. I'll look like the walking dead. Or maybe I'll be too weak to walk at all. The treatment will take days. It will hurt. My outwardly healthy-looking body will deflate like a balloon with each hit to my system, until I'm a shadow of my former self. My clothes will hang on skin and bones. There will be dark rings around my eyes, a shadowy pallor, a gaunt look about me. My kids won't recognize me. I won't recognize myself. I won't be able to concentrate. Life will become a blur, one medical moment after another. Rather than beginning with the day she was diagnosed, she plunges us into chemotherapy—the most terrifying part of the whole ordeal, perhaps even scarier than her own mortality or losing a breast. Everyone is afraid of chemo, and Rust becomes our voice for those unspeakable fears. Though the opening portrait is grim, we continue to read because we want to see—and believe—that it will be better than this, that there is hope.
 * The hook**

by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack http://www.writersdigest.com/articles/carmack_memoir_to_remember.asp