# Pitfall pack: memoir

*Type-specific traps for memoir drafting. Loaded after WRITING-RULES.md. STYLE-GUIDE.md wins where it conflicts.*

## Voice traps

- The retrospective narrator who knows everything. The remembered self does not yet know the lesson; let them not know.
- Therapy-speak imported into prose ("I was processing", "I held space for", "my inner child"). Use it only if the writer's voice in STYLE-GUIDE.md uses it.
- The wisdom voice every paragraph. Insight earned by scene beats insight stated.
- "Looking back now, I see that..." as connective tissue. Once is fine. Three times in a chapter is a tic.

## Telling not showing

- Naming the feeling instead of rendering the moment. "I was devastated": what did the body do, what did the eye land on, what did you fail to do.
- Summarizing relationships ("My father was a complicated man"). Show one scene that makes the complication visible.
- Time-collapsed reflection ("For years afterward, I would..."). Earn it with a specific later moment.

## Truth and embellishment

- Composite characters or invented dialogue without disclosure. Disclose in front matter or footnote per the writer's chosen convention.
- Memories described with novelistic certainty ("the rain hit the window in fat drops"). Acknowledge memory's edges where useful.
- Hindsight-loaded foreshadowing ("I had no idea this would be the last time"). Often hollow. Cut or earn.

## Self-presentation

- Self-flagellation as flex (excessive humility that draws attention to the writer's virtue). Watch for it.
- Heroizing the past self. The reader should see the flaw before the writer names it.
- Other-people-as-props (loved ones rendered only in service of the writer's arc). Give them their own gravity.

## Stock phrases

- "Little did I know"
- "Looking back, I realize"
- "It would be years before I understood"
- "I was just a kid" (when not interrogated)
- "And just like that"

## Structural pitfalls

- Strict chronology when associative structure serves better, or vice versa. Match form to subject.
- Resolving every thread. Memoir tolerates loose ends; life had them.
- The lesson chapter at the end. The lessons should already be in the scenes.

## Closing pitfalls

- The reflective coda explaining what we just read.
- "I am still that girl, in some ways" or its variants.
- Closing on a hopeful generality ("we go on", "love endures"). Stay specific.