The importance of momentum
What John Irving told an interviewer at Boston University about the most important quality in novels surely applies to memoirs too. If you’re going to write novels, you need to establish momentum. The longer the novel, the more that momentum is essential. A novel must be more compelling, more urgent, to the reader on page 400 than it was on page 40. Two elements give you this necessary momentum. You must be able to develop characters; the characters must grow, …