Article: . Now that you know what content you want to include in your autobiography, think about how you want to structure your book. Like any great book, your autobiography needs a great plot. Work with the material you have to craft an interesting story that builds toward a climax and ultimately resolves. Create a narrative arc by organizing and filling out your written memories and anecdotes so that they flow together logically. What's your central conflict? What's the biggest obstacle life presented that took years to overcome or come to terms with? Maybe it's an illness you were diagnosed with at an early age, a relationship wrought with turmoil, a series of career setbacks, a goal you worked for decades to achieve, or any other number of things. Look to your favorite books and movies for more examples of conflicts. Build tension and suspense. Structure the narrative so that you have a series of stories leading up to the climax of the conflict. If your central conflict is trying to reach the goal of competing in the Olympics for skiing, lead up to it with stories of small successes and plenty of failures. You want your readers to ask, will she make it? Can he do it? What's going to happen next? Have a climax. You'll get to the point in your story when it's time for the conflict to come to a head. The day of the big competition has arrived, a showdown happens with your worst enemy, your gambling habit gets the better of you and you lose all your money - you get the picture. End with a resolution. Most autobiographies have happy endings because the person writing the story lived to tell the tale - and hopefully get it published. Even if your ending isn't cheerful, it should be deeply satisfying. You somehow accomplished your goal or won the day. Even if you lost, you came to terms with it and gained wisdom. You could do a straightforward chronology of your life, beginning with your birth and ending in the present, but mixing up the chronology can make the story more interesting. You could frame the entire autobiography with reflections from the present, telling your story through a series of flashbacks. You could begin the story with a poignant moment from your childhood, go backward to tell the story of your heritage, move forward to your college years, and launch into the story of your career, with anecdotes from your childhood sprinkled in for comic relief. Use the major themes of your life as a way to tie stories together, connecting your past and your present. Aside from the central conflict, what themes have followed you throughout your life? A fondness for certain holidays, your fascination with a certain place that you visited over and over, a certain type of guy you've always fallen for, a rich spiritual life you fall back on again and again. Bring up the themes every so often to help form a cohesive picture of your life. You're chronicling your life lessons, but what have you learned from them? Relay your intentions, desires, feelings of loss, feelings of joy, the wisdom you've gained, and other inner thoughts from time to time throughout the book. Taking a step back from the action of the story to reflect on what it all means is a good way to add depth to your autobiography. Chapters are useful because they allow you to move on from discussing certain life periods or events. There's a reason we have the expression that we've "closed a chapter" or "opened a new chapter" in life, and it's even more applicable when discussing an autobiography. Chapter breaks allow you to skip forward 10 years, go back in time, or start describing a new theme without jarring the reader too much. Consider ending chapters on a poignant or suspenseful note, so people can't wait to start the next one. The beginnings of chapters are a good place to take a bird's eye view of your past, describe the setting of a place, and set the tone for what's to come.

What is a summary?
Create an overarching plot Decide where the story is going to start. Weave in themes. Take a step back to reflect. Use chapter divisions to give the book structure.