How Write Choices by Sue Hertz Validated the Mission of PureTome

As the founder of an AI-assisted memoir platform, I see Sue Hertz’s brilliant guide not as a rulebook, but as a blueprint for the very features we’re building.

When you write a memoir, you’re pulled between two worlds: the vulnerable, emotional terrain of lived experience and the structural logic that turns those experiences into a story worth reading. I inhabit both daily. As the founder of PureTome and author of Traffic Engineer, I’m “User Zero” for the platform, as I test its tools against the real, messy work of telling the truth on the page.

So when I opened Sue Hertz’s Write Choices: Elements of Nonfiction Storytelling, it didn’t feel like discovering a new craft manual. It felt like finding someone who had already mapped the systemic challenges I keep trying to solve both in my writing and in PureTome’s design.

Hertz didn’t simply write about technique; she built a taxonomy of the writer’s struggle. For me, it became a product development blueprint.

Beyond “What Happened”: The Power of “So What?”

Many first-time memoirists start with a flood of chronology: This happened, then that happened. It’s the raw data feed of a life.

Hertz pushes writers further. She insists a memoir comes alive only when the reflective narrator steps in: the wiser “you” looking back with insight and emotional truth. That reflective layer isn’t an accessory; it’s the pulse of the book, transforming mere events into meaningful narrative.

The PureTome Connection

This principle sits at the heart of PureTome’s architecture. The platform doesn’t just record what happened; it gently asks why it mattered.

When you finish drafting a scene about your childhood home, for example, the tool might prompt the reflective narrator with:

• “What did that place teach you about belonging or its absence?”
• “How does this memory echo or contradict the foundational beliefs you hold now?”

The goal is to guide writers toward the deeper meaning behind memory: the very reflective process Hertz champions.

Making Choices: Memoir as Architecture

A memoir isn’t a diary. It’s a carefully built construction of scenes, insights, and perspective. It is, fundamentally, an architectural problem.

Hertz outlines the writer’s core decisions: Narrative vs. reflective voice, Point of view, and Structure (chronological, braided, thematic, circular, and more). These aren’t abstract choices; they are load-bearing decisions that determine if the story holds together.

The PureTome Connection

PureTome acts as the writer’s quiet architect’s assistant — helping shape frameworks and trace connections across a manuscript. We are building features that can map narrative threads, flag pacing issues, or suggest new placements: “This reflective passage might resonate more just after the scene in Chapter 3 to maximize the emotional payout.”

The aim isn’t automation but visibility because the goal is to turn abstract craft principles into tangible, leverage-rich creative tools.

From “Information Dump” to Elegant “Inlay”

Every memoirist hits the same invisible wall: you need to explain context without killing pace.

Hertz calls the solution the inlay: weaving crucial backstory into a scene so seamlessly that the reader absorbs background without ever leaving the present action. The opposite is the dreaded information dump: a paragraph, or worse, a whole page, where the narrator stops the story dead to recite a list of facts, names, or historical background.

This is a structural “bug” that PureTome is designed to debug.

The PureTome Connection: Uncovering the Systemic Flaw

As a writer, you know the feeling: you’re racing through a pivotal scene — say, a confrontation with a family member — and suddenly realize the reader doesn’t know why this person matters. You stop the scene, drop three paragraphs of history, and then try to restart the tension. The reader feels the gear-grind.

PureTome acts as your editor attuned to flow. Our systems look for paragraphs that meet the profile of an Information Dump (a high ratio of past-tense summary to present-tense action). When it identifies this systemic flaw, it offers two solutions:

1. The Inlay Prompt: “This paragraph introduces a complex history. Would you like to distribute these details as ‘inlays’ across the next two scenes of dialogue?”
2. The Scene Prompt: “This background summary may be better delivered as a new, short scene earlier in the book, giving it emotional weight before the current confrontation.”

The aim isn’t to remove the information; it’s to fix the architecture of delivery, turning an editorial flaw into an elegant piece of storytelling.

When a Craft Book Becomes a Feature List

While reading Write Choices, my notebook filled not only with insights about writing, but also with confirmed product concepts. Chapter by chapter, Hertz validated features our team had already envisioned:

• Scene vs. Summary → Narrative Pace Analyzer (upcoming)
• Finding Your Voice → Tone Consistency Check
• Ethical Storytelling → Guided prompts for writing responsibly when your truth involves others

Her thinking didn’t just inspire; it confirmed we were designing tools grounded in the craft theory serious writers truly need.

A Human-Centered Guide for an AI-Assisted Future

At its core, Write Choices is about the courage to take the chaotic facts of a life and shape them into narrative truth.

PureTome doesn’t seek to replace that courage or automate authenticity. It exists to support it. Hertz reminded me that AI’s purpose in memoir writing isn’t to manufacture meaning, but to help writers uncover it.