![]() ![]() The goal is to make the message bigger than you. Much like the first principle, this one also helps you grapple with the personal pain you are writing about. The goal is to write just like William did by addressing universal themes of the human condition. While your trauma story may not be a tragedy in the classical sense, it is likely to contain tragic elements. The Bard is recognized as the world’s greatest writer of tragedies, but he used personal stories to illustrate universal themes that still resonate with us today. They’re as old as humanity itself - which is precisely why he wrote about them. These themes were not new to Shakespeare and the world he lived in. We can all relate to the challenge of having our lives controlled by others, or loving someone who is not approved of by those who matter most to us. Many of us have witnessed jealousies and grudges between two families. In fact, you could find those very same themes in a modern day trauma memoir. But the play succeeds because it touches on universal themes that are still relevant today. It’s an intimate account of a young couple destined for tragedy. Make the Personal Universal (What)Įveryone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed lovers caught in the fate of feuding families during the Italian Renaissance. ![]() Keep that person foremost in your thoughts as the words begin to flow. The book tells your story but it’s actually “about” the reader. Parents, teens, lawyers, law enforcement, or anyone in recovery might also be the target audience. Maybe therapists who counsel survivors like yourself would benefit from your book. It could be the victims of a similar type of trauma. Even though you might never explicitly mention the target audience in your writing, that demographic should be crystal clear in your head. Take some time to think deeply about who your book is going to be about. That’s a very powerful transformation that might even have lasting benefits. But when you make the book about your reader, it shifts your role in the narrative from survivor to writer. Those memories and experiences can be quite fresh and even painful. It can clarify and personalize your “voice.” But in the case of a trauma memoir, there’s an added bonus: when you write your book for your reader, it gives you some much needed distance from the material. ![]() It makes the work much easier and your writing more conversational. I’ve often extolled the benefits of writing a book – any book – with a particular kind of reader in mind. Make sure you make your book about them and what they need to take away from reading it. Readers vicariously experience what you went through and learn what you learned. While only one author reveals their personal history in the intimate confines of a single book, hundreds, thousands, and possibly millions of readers will pore over those pages. So the writing of the book is about the reader. You are writing the memoir to be read by someone else. My preferred system for organizing a trauma-based book involves 6 principles that offer a unique twist on the classic Who, What, When, Where and How of writing a book. The secret is to have a plan, a system, or a set of values that become guardrails on the winding mountain road that is creating your memoir. There are many other options for constructing a framework or establishing your rules of engagement. The principles evoked in this post are only one way of organizing your efforts and keeping on task. It’s very easy to get knocked off your game by revisiting the difficult times of your past. If you are a survivor who is thinking of writing a trauma memoir, these are my thoughts about the best way to approach this type of nonfiction. But I have worked with authors interested in writing a trauma memoir, and this post reflects what I have observed and learned from those who embarked on this journey. I’m not a trained therapist, counsellor, or psychiatrist, so I won’t attempt to explain the psychological barriers for survivors writing about their traumatic past. Anyone who is considering this intensely personal literary journey should approach the process very carefully. Trauma memoirs have become increasingly popular and now represent a recognized book genre, but they can be very difficult to write for many reasons. Having survived great hardship, they want to tell their story and lay bare their own lives in the hope that doing so can somehow make a difference. As a professional book coach, I receive inquiries from people who want to write a book that chronicles a difficult or even tragic period of their life. ![]()
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