Humans can remember past autobiographical events through extended narratives. How these narrated memories typically unfold, however, remains largely unexplored. We evaluated how event memory details typically come together in a sample of 235 healthy young, middle-aged, and older adults. We found that details providing background knowledge followed a u-shape, such that they were most prevalent in the initial moments of remembering before falling and then rising near the conclusion of the

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... retelling. Details about the scene of the memory declined over time, whereas other event-specific, unique details about the main features of the event followed an inverted u-shape, peaking around the midpoint of a remembered event's narration. While these temporal arcs were largely unaffected by older age, a few subtle differences emerged. These findings suggest that behind the ability to narrate the remembered past is a normative waxing and waning of the details that make autobiographical memories.