Six-Word Memoir Examples: Five Originals and What Makes Them True
Quick answer: Five original six-word memoirs with notes on the difference between a memoir and a slogan, plus how to expand one into a 100-word piece of personal writing.
A six-word memoir is a true statement about your own life, in six words, that implies more than it says. The form was popularised by SMITH Magazine in the mid-2000s and has since become a classroom staple. It differs from a six-word story in one respect: it is not invented. The five examples below are written in the first person and are the kind of thing a real person might say about a real life. After them, notes on what separates a memoir from a fridge magnet, and a demonstration of growing one into 100 words.
Five originals
Read them as if a stranger had said them to you at a bus stop.
Memoir versus slogan
A slogan tells you how to feel. A memoir tells you a fact and lets the feeling arrive. 'Learned English from cereal boxes' is a fact about a childhood, an income bracket and a kitchen table; 'Fluent' is the one-word ending that carries pride without announcing it. 'Youngest of seven. Still waiting turn.' works because 'still' implies the speaker is now an adult and the pattern has not changed.
The weakest six-word memoirs are the ones that would look good on a mug: be kind, dream big, live fully. The strongest are the ones that contain a specific noun (cereal, Sundays, tools, kitchen) and a specific position (youngest, nineteen, two countries). Specific nouns are proof that the life was lived. Notice also that none of the five is a boast and none is a complaint. They report.
Growing one into 100 words
Take the tools. The memoir names a pattern; the longer version shows one instance of it. Here it is at exactly 100 words.
My father's chisel set is in a canvas roll that smells of linseed oil and the inside of his shed. Six chisels, the half-inch missing since 1994. He would hold the handle with his thumb along the top and tell me to go with the grain, and I would go against it, because I was fourteen and wanted to see. Last Sunday I was fitting a shelf in my daughter's room and split the end of the board, going against the grain, with the quarter-inch. I heard him say it. I put my thumb along the top and started again.
The expansion adds a place (the shed), a specific loss (the missing half-inch), one remembered instruction, and a present-day scene that repeats the mistake. The six-word memoir was a summary. The 100-word version is an event.
What writers can take from this
- Report a fact; let the reader feel it.
- Include one concrete noun from your actual life.
- Use a position word: youngest, second, only, first.
- If it would fit on a mug, start again.
- To grow it, describe one afternoon when the pattern showed.
Try it yourself
Write five six-word memoirs, each containing one object you could go and touch right now. Choose one and expand it into exactly 100 words describing a single occasion, with no sentence beginning 'I felt'.
Questions
What is the difference between a six-word memoir and a six-word story?
A memoir is true and about the writer; a story is invented and about anyone. The craft is identical: a concrete noun, an implied before-and-after, no explaining. Only the contract with the reader changes.
Who invented the six-word memoir?
SMITH Magazine ran the first six-word memoir project in 2006 and published the results in a series of books beginning with Not Quite What I Was Planning in 2008. The form draws on the older six-word story tradition.
Can a six-word memoir be funny?
Yes, and many of the best are. Humour in six words usually comes from the last word undercutting the first five. Keep it true, though; a joke that did not happen is a story, not a memoir.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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