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AI memoir writer

Your memories, shaped into a book.

The AI can't know your life. You bring the memories. PromptBook shapes them into chapters you can read, correct and keep. Answer five short questions and see the plan in a minute or two, free.

  • Five guided questions instead of a blank page
  • Private: nothing is published unless you choose
  • A print-ready PDF or Word file to give the family
Five questions about the life

Short answers are fine. Real names, places and years make a better book. Please leave out other people's health, money or other private details.

All five together: up to 2,500 characters.0/2500
Length
Add a working title (optional)

No account needed for the plan · takes a minute or two

370+ full-length books written with PromptBook · 10.9 million words

Free worksheet

Eighteen questions to get the memories flowing

Useful with or without PromptBook. Ask them over a cup of tea, record the answers on your phone, and you'll have more than enough for a book. Print this page if it helps.

Childhood

  1. What could you see from your bedroom window as a child?
  2. Which grown-up outside your family did you look up to, and why?
  3. What were you told off for most often?

Home

  1. Describe the kitchen of the house you grew up in. Who was in it?
  2. What did your family do on Sundays?
  3. What smell takes you straight back?

Work and making a living

  1. What was your first paid job, and what did you spend the money on?
  2. Which piece of work are you proudest of?
  3. When did you nearly give up?

Love and family

  1. How did you meet the people who became your family?
  2. What do you hope your children or grandchildren remember about you?
  3. Who do you wish you had thanked?

Turning points

  1. Name a decision that changed everything. What else could you have done?
  2. When were you most afraid?
  3. What news do you remember exactly where you were when you heard it?

Looking back

  1. What do you believe now that you didn't at twenty?
  2. What would you tell your younger self, in one sentence?
  3. What do you want this book to make people feel?

Care

Writing about real people

  • Ask first. If someone living plays a big part, tell them you're writing it, and offer to show them their chapters.
  • Change names where it helps. A memoir is your story, not a public record of everyone in it.
  • Keep other people's private details out of the brief. Health, money troubles, relationships: our consent box asks you not to send sensitive personal information about other people to the AI. Write those passages yourself in the editor, where they stay in your account.
  • Writing about someone who has died? Talk to the family who knew them. They'll remember things you don't, and they'll be reading it.

Honest limits

What the AI will get wrong

PromptBook only knows what you tell it. Where your answers leave a gap, it will fill it with something that sounds right: a plausible street, a likely job, a conversation that may never have happened. That's fine in a first draft and wrong in a finished memoir.

So treat the draft as a scaffold. Read each chapter with a pen, mark everything you can't vouch for, and either correct it or cut it. The more detail you give at the start (names, places, years, the exact words someone used), the less there is to fix.

Giving it

Turning it into a gift

A finished memoir exports as a print-ready PDF, an EPUB for e-readers and a Word file the family can add to. Most print shops and print-on-demand services can bind the PDF, which comes in standard paperback trims; a hardback for a significant birthday is a lovely thing to hand over.

Give yourself time: a draft takes about an hour to write, but the reading and correcting is where it becomes theirs. Start a few weeks before the date.

How a memoir comes together

  1. Answer five questions

    Whose life, where it starts, the turning points, the people, the tone.

  2. See the chapters

    A plan built around the moments you gave it. Change anything that's wrong.

  3. PromptBook drafts it

    Every chapter written from your memories, in the tone you asked for.

  4. Correct it and keep it

    Fix names and dates, add the stories it couldn't know, then print or share it.

Other kinds of book

Questions

Can I write someone else's life story, like a parent's or grandparent's?

Yes. Answer the questions about them instead of yourself, and say who the book is for. It helps to interview them first: the worksheet on this page is a good list to work from.

Is my memoir private?

Yes. Your book stays in your account. Nothing is shared unless you make a private reader link or choose to publish it in our gallery, which a person reviews first, and you can unpublish at any time.

Will the AI make things up?

Where you haven't given it a detail, it may invent something plausible. Read every chapter and correct anything you can't vouch for. The more names, places and years you give it, the less it has to guess.

How much do I need to write?

Five short answers are enough to plan a book, up to 2,500 characters in all. Longer, more specific answers make a better draft. You can add anything it missed later in the editor.

Can I write it in the first person?

Yes. In the app you can choose first person or third person before the chapters are written, and edit the wording of any chapter afterwards.

Is it free?

The chapter plan on this page is free and needs no account. Free accounts can start 1 new book a month and keep 1 saved book, with EPUB, PDF and Word export. Basic ($9.99/month) allows 5 new books a month and Pro ($29.99/month) allows 10 new books. Deleting a book does not give the month's allowance back.

The stories are already there. Start with five answers.

Show my free chapter plan