by Writing Workshops Staff
A week ago
Can We Talk About Autofiction? (Part Two)
It's been three years since I published the essay, "Can We Talk About Autofiction?" From what I've witnessed during this period, both as an author bringing out her own work of autofiction (Orchid Child) and as a teacher specializing in this hybrid genre, the world at large still doesn't know what to make of it.
This despite the recent release of several high-profile works of autofiction. Among these: Ocean Vuong's continuing life story, this installment titled The Emperor of Gladness; Bad Bad Girl, a multigenerational account set in China and America from Gish Jen; and Patricia Lockwood's personal pandemic story, Will There Ever Be Another You.
Of course, it doesn't help that these books are labeled "novels." Or that their hybrid nature is largely ignored by reviewers.
Even in this cultural void, an increasing number of writers are embracing autofiction as the best genre for their life-inspired stories. Still, I find a good deal of confusion remains, even among writers who take the leap and sign up for the workshop I've now taught six times for WritingWorkshops.com called When Memoir Becomes Autofiction. Without exception, by the end of our first class meeting, at least one writer in the group will raise a hand and shyly ask… but, what are the rules? By which they mean: If I don't remember what happened to me, or I never knew and no one will tell me, can I make stuff up? To which I answer, the only rule for writing your life story is to trust yourself.
When a writer considers key life incidents to be lost to them, particularly if those incidents are trauma related, I point out that their memories are most likely within reach—if they have the clear intention and support to find them.
When writers are stumped about how to go beyond a single real-life incident; that is, to find a plot for their story, I encourage them to give themselves permission to ask the all-important question: what if?
- What if I write a story with a different response to the trauma that blew up my childhood? What if I imagine confronting the perpetrator of the violence that wounded me? In one of my recent workshops, a memoirist in his eighties wrote such a scene, elaborating on a childhood memory of wishing he could do just that.
- What if I permit myself to deeply mourn the loss of my parent, sibling, or child (either born or unborn)? Another writer I work with gave her aborted child an omniscient point of view on her life, and that of her family, past and present.
- What if I go back two or three generations and recreate, even change, the nature of the tragedy that made my ancestors who they were? What if I allow for the strengths they developed, like the will to survive, as well as the physical and mental illnesses they may have epigenetically passed on to me and my children? One student of mine, a descendant of a family lineage devastated by the Armenian genocide, entered the consciousness of a grandmother she never knew to write the story of how this woman's grief and survivor's guilt drove her to desert her young daughters and spend the rest of her life in a mental institution. That account gave her a portal through which to reimagine her own emotional challenges.
- Beyond parsing the permutations of fact and fiction which are required to write a work of autofiction, the rest of the curriculum I employ isn't that different from any novel writing class. Simply put, craft is king. Characterization, point of view, structure, scene, dialogue, and theme are the topics of the mini-lectures I offer in each of six classes.
The rest of our time together is devoted to the traditional process of workshopping their works-in-process. With one variation from the norm. If a writer in one of my workshops feels the need to go into detail about a traumatic, real-life experience, I do not interrupt them with the admonition, "this is a writing class, not therapy." My approach is to help writers go further into the experience—using various group process approaches, including therapeutic modalities—in order to find a deeper truth. My hope is to encourage them to embrace the messiness of writing and find the healing story within what happened to them.
My next offering of When Memoir Becomes Autofiction begins Jan 29, 2026. Get more info and register.
About the Author
Victoria Costello is an Emmy Award-winning writer, teacher, and the author of six published non-fiction books, including her memoir, A Lethal Inheritance. Her debut novel of autobiographical fiction, Orchid Child (June 2023), won first place in the 2023 Best Book Awards in Cross Genre and General Fiction, and the 2024 Silver Ippy prize for Visionary Fiction. Read more about Victoria's approach to writing trauma-informed autofiction at her website, Stories That Heal.
