Your epilogue tells readers what happened after your memoir’s conclusion

You completed a rough draft of your memoir’s chapters.

Next, you crafted a satisfying, memorable Grand Finale for your readers. (If you missed the last three posts on your memoir’s all-important ending, click on links below.)

Now it’s time to work on your epilogue.

The epilogue plays a different role than your story’s final chapters.  

Your final chapters should be your conclusion. An epilogue is not a conclusion. It serves as a follow-up, telling readers what happened after your memoir’s conclusion.

Readers have come to know you and your story’s main characters. They care about you and your causes and, as a result, they want to know more.

Write your epilogue as a message addressed to those readers.

Your epilogue can answer questions: “Where are they now? What are they doing now?” It can also invite them to get involved in a cause (such as a ministry or blog) by supplying information and links to get them started.

“An epilogue provides comments outside the main action

that give insight into what happened.

The main actions in the book

may take place in one period

and the reader will want to know

what happened afterward.

That kind of follow-up

could appear in an epilogue.”

(Writers and Editors)

That’s what my new memoir’s epilogue did. Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go ended when my husband and kids and I left South America and returned to the States, but within the main body of the memoir I had written about what would take place after we left: the kidnapping and murder of our coworker, Chet Bitterman, and the kidnapping of another coworker, Ray Rising. Those were significant events I wanted readers to know about, including long-term ramifications, so I included those specifics in my epilogue.

Epilogues can serve another purpose, too. They can explain to readers what your current view is of what happened in your story.

Since writing memoir requires retrospection, examination, and piecing together past events, writers usually stumble upon key insights they missed earlier in life. Through writing, they gain a perspective that evaded them in the past. They begin to make sense of an experience or relationship.  So, you can use your epilogue to share those insights and current views with your readers.

Sharon Lippincott writes about that function of an epilogue. In her excellent The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, she writes:

“Many stories, especially those about events when you were young, may be more valuable or meaningful to readers if you add a few thoughts at the end about how you see things now. The simplest way to handle this is to add an epilogue explaining the insight you’ve gained that has changed the way you view the situation.”

Sharon gives a couple of examples of wording to use: “I would be middle-aged before I fully comprehended that. . . .” and “Over twenty years later, he was diagnosed . . . and I finally understood . . . .”

Other useful phrases are:

• Looking back, it now occurs to me that . . . .
• I had no way to know back then that. . . .
• The way I see it now, years later. . . .
• Over the years, I’ve come to accept. . . .
• Twenty years later, I discovered. . . .
• It took me a decade to realize. . . .
• At the time, neither of us knew what was happening or why, but. . . .

Sharon Lippincott also writes about the value of sharing her current-day thoughts from an adult perspective.

She writes this about one of her vignettes, The Rocking Chair: “The main story took place when I was about sixteen. . . . Since the story recounts some typically teenage resentments of my mother, I wanted to temper the harshness of that judgment by pulling the story into the context of adult understanding. I did this in the epilogue rather than spoiling the authenticity of the memory by interjecting current thoughts into the story body.” (from The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing)

You can do what Sharon did: share your current-day thoughts in “the context of adult understanding.” Readers will appreciate that.

However you choose to write your epilogue,

create a rich experience for readers,

one that will make them glad they read your memoir.

Perhaps they’ll recommend it to others.

And maybe they’ll even write a review of your book (!!!)

on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Goodreads.

(See links below about how to submit book reviews.)

Links for how to submit book reviews:

HOW TO SUBMIT BOOK REVIEWS ON AMAZON. Be sure to check their Community Guidelines. Among other restrictions, if you haven’t spent $50 at Amazon in the past twelve months, you cannot leave a review.

HOW TO SUBMIT BOOK REVIEWS ON BARNES AND NOBLE. Click on links toward the bottom of that page.

HOW TO SUBMIT A BOOK REVIEW ON GOODREADS. 


Recent posts about your memoir's ending:

Back to basics: Your memoir's Grand Finale, Part 1
Back to basics: Your memoir's ending, Part 2
Inspiration for your memoir's all-important ending, Part 3