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A memoir is a story of your own experiences, based on a certain event or period of your life, or on a series of events or periods in your life. On the other hand, an autobiography is a story of your whole life.  Both types of stories are presented as a true account of those events.

I did a refresher course in fact-checking recently. It was run by IPEd on 24/7/26 and presented by fact-checker Freya Howarth. Thanks to Freya for allowing me to re-use some of the content presented in her seminar, below; particularly the final section about “hard” and “soft” facts.

Why fact-check?

Even though you might not tell the reader everything, readers will expect that whatever you choose to tell them about those events will be factually correct, according to your memory.

If you want your memoir or autobiography to be read as a true account of past events or experiences, as you remember them, then you will need to make sure that the facts in your story are correct. And the best way to do this is to “fact-check” your memoir or autobiography, to make sure it lines up.

You can do the “fact check” yourself or you can ask your editor to do it for you, before or during the editing process.

If your facts are correct, the reader will trust you as a writer. Whereas if a reader comes across a fact that is incorrect they will lose that trust. For example, maybe you have remembered that you were six when the Olympics were held in such-and-such country. But if a reader who knows when those Olympic Games happened does the maths and discovers you must have been ten at the time, not six, htey will lost their trust of you as a storyteller and writer. Then they’ll probably stop reading.

Other good reasons to do a fact-check

Don’t be embarrassed. It would be embarrassing to accidentally cite a year or date of something really important that you should know, and then it turns out your memory – or your typing – was wrong. What if you stated your sibling’s or mother’s date of birth as one date, and it was another – or you stated your grandfather fought in WWI but in fact it was WWII. Getting your memoir or autobiography fact-checked will save you from embarrassment.

Sources: if you have cited any sources – that is, based anything in your memoir on other people’s published information, or used a quote from any publication – you need to make 100% sure that what you have said those sources are, is correct. You also need to make sure that you have indeed cited the source of any quote or others’ factual information that you have used. Otherwise you are indicating that you came up with that information by yourself. Especially if you have used a quote without citing the source, you have probably breached copyright law. And usually, if you have used any longish quotes, you also need to ask the copyright owner’s permission to use it. Some readers who notice you haven’t referenced (cited the source of) your quotes will instantly lose their trust of you as a writer, disengage and stop reading.

Arguably one part of fact-checking is identifying any plagiarism, although the  plagiarism check may be done by someone other than the fact-checker. If some content in your book has been plagiarised and the book is published, and the plagiarism is discovered by a reader, this could be very embarrassing, not to mention legally risky – plagiarising someone else’s content is theft.

Hard and soft facts: focus on the hard ones

• Hard facts can be fact-checked pretty easily with the assistance of the internet (ensuring you use the most relevant sources, of course).
• Soft facts however are more about the author’s interpretation of something and most of them can’t be fact-checked.

When fact-checking it is important to separate the hard from soft facts, and focus on the hard facts. All the fact-checker can do with the soft facts is to make sure they make sense, and assume the author’s view is legimitate.

Image: courtesy of WOCinTechChat.