I would like to believe that if you were to write a personal memoir then it would be of a true story, something possibly life changing that actually happened to you. Memoirs are meant to be real story’s, if you wanted to write some made up story then you can call it fiction and be on your way. Yes, memoirs may have a little bit of exaggeration and extra details added in for the sake of the story, but the general plot line, characters, and actions should be 110% true ( Yes, they should really be that true). I believe as a writer, we are all given the artistic license that allows us to change things for the sake of the story. For instance, if you would like to change the details from you were at the grocery story shopping to instead you were at a clothing store or the mall or something then that would be fine (No harm in that right?). Though if you wanted to say that instead of just shopping and maybe bumping into an old friend of yours you were really involved in the murder of the store’s manager who you physically killed yourself that then is very much so NOT OKAY. Smudging details is one thing, but completely changing the story is quite another.
I believe in order to determine whether half-truth stories are okay you need to look into what genre they were intended for. Yes, it still might be a great story and good job for you if it is but if it’s labeled as a personal memoir then that is what I’m expecting to read. Why couldn’t the author just push in into another genre in order to have a successful TRUE story? Or one that at least is what it says? So once again, the publishers in this case should have looked into it and known that the book wasn’t what it said it was, so why not try to persuade the author to “re-label” their book in a sense. If you don’t wish to get killed by the media why don’t you just write a fiction story instead of a memoir that is less than half true?
One main example of a "half true" or "fake" memoir
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