4 Rules for Writing About Yourself
You’re not an expert, you’re a character — and you need to tell us the story
When you write about yourself, you aren’t really writing about yourself. You are writing about an idea, through the lens of the Character You.
I remembered this recently when editing a friend’s essay that didn’t feel right. This is a difficult problem. When a piece doesn’t look right, you add a line break. When it doesn’t read right, you remove commas. When it doesn’t feel right, you stare at the words until an answer reveals itself.
Or, in my case, you go to lunch.
Clarity struck somewhere between bites 64 and 72 of my ramen. I dropped my fork and hustled back to Slack. This is the message my friend received:
“Your Sam character is inconsistent. In your first paragraph he is clueless, but then by section three he magically knows the answer. He needs to be crushed more before he can really learn the lesson. What gets him to that point? What crushes him?”
A few minutes passed. Then, the knock-knock-knock of Slack’s notification sounded. Sam replied:
“Sam character… Wait — do you mean me?”
This biggest disconnect between the stories a writer lives and the ones they tells is this: life does not make narrative sense. Were you to try and tell any part of life exactly as you lived it, from start to finish, nobody could follow it.
Also — and I mean this with no disrespect to you —your story will be boring.
That isn’t to say my life is more interesting. Many of life’s events are meaningless out of context. The story of How Todd Stared Into the Fridge for 10 Minutes, Hoping a New Snack would Appear is not particularly compelling.
If you want to write about yourself without sounding like a narcissist, it’s your job to mold the story of your own life into something we can digest as readers. The best way I know to do this is to imagine yourself as a character when you write.
The good news for you is it’s much easier to write a character than it is to write a human being. Writers have been penning characters regularly for over a century now. We know what works. We know what doesn’t. This is true even if the character is you. Character You is a different person than actual you.
We’re teetering on the edge of a metaphysical cliff now. Let’s stop with the theoretical and move into the practical, lest we start spiraling downward. My existential crisis is not scheduled until next Tuesday, and I don’t want to go there too early.
Here are four rules for writing about yourself as a character. At the end of each rule is a question to ask yourself while writing.
Rule #1: Characters Teach People Ideas
Let’s pretend you run into your first crush at a Walmart.
In real life, what happened is that you saw her coming out of the cereal aisle and made eye contact. You saw her again at the checkout counter and she walked up to you. The two of you talked. Then she left.
The end.
BORING, right? Of course it is. That’s because you didn’t teach us anything in this encounter. A moment ripe with potential falls flat.
When you write about an event in your life, lead us to a specific idea. What did you gain from this encounter with this first crush? Did you remember the agony of early love? Did you become more grateful for your current partner? Did you recognize your own growth as a person?
In other words: what makes this story worth our time to read?
A question to ask yourself when you write: What is the main idea behind my story?
Rule #2: Characters Go Through Conflict
I learned this lesson from my 10th grade English teacher when we studied Silas Marner. It is burned in my brain. Almost every time I sit down to write, I think about this moment:
“Let me ask you all this question. If Todd here listens to me drone on for the next 45 minutes and falls asleep, is that a story?”
Like a typical 16-year olds, we all stared and said nothing. There was a cough. He sighed, undoubtedly exasperated by our lack of insight.
“It is not a story.
The story begins when I notice the drool pooling around his cheek, sneak behind his desk and I turn his chair over. The story begins when I send him tumbling to the floor.
That’s the conflict. Without a conflict, there is no story.”
Back to the example of the first crush, how can we add conflict? Maybe your first crush’s spouse is staring at you from the corner of the store. Maybe the person you once loved says something that goes completely against what you believe in now. Maybe the fire alarm goes off in Walmart and the sprinklers soak you both.
Give us conflict — or else the resolution will be meaningless.
A question to ask yourself when you write: How can I ramp up conflict in my story?
Rule #3: Characters Are Clearly Detailed
I’m currently reading An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green. Fiction books aren’t very popular right now, but they serve as excellent writing instructors. Read this paragraph on the first page:
“I dragged my tired ass down 23rd Street at 2:45 a.m. after working a sixteen-hour day at a start-up that (thanks to a crappy contract) will remain nameless”
Do you see how concrete the picture is here?
23rd Street. 2:45 a.m. A sixteen-hour day.
Our empathy muscles kick in and we can immediately picture this exhausted woman trudging down the road in the middle of the night. The character is made real by virtue of the details provided.
What exactly is a detail? Usually, they are adjectives. Remove the adjectives, and that sentence is immediately less interesting.
“I dragged my ass down the street at 2:45 a.m. after working at a start-up that (thanks to my contract) will remain nameless.”
Since Green is a true pro, he’s written a strong character with a compelling voice who uses phrases like “dragged my ass.” He also knows that scenery itself is a good detail, which is why it’s 3 in the morning for this character.
He highlights the interesting bits. Most people don’t.
Most people write a sentence like this:
“I walked home after a long day at work for my company.”
Ugh. Snooze.
Without going too far down this rabbit hole, I have to mention that details are most effective within a narrative. This is opposed to a list of facts.
The facts way: “She always had pink fingernails. We took biology together. We had been friends forever. I started to like her more than friends.”
The narrative way: “I fell in love while we dissected a frog in Mr. Clark’s class. Little did I know that months later, the pink fingernails she used to pull back amphibian flesh would be be ripping my heart apart as well.”
A question to ask yourself when you write: What details can I add to make my story feel more concrete?
Rule #4: Characters Grow
The Harry Potter of Sorcerer’s Stone is not the same Harry Potter in Deathly Hallows. In the course of a few years, our wizard hero goes from a goofy young kid who just wants ice cream at the zoo to the conqueror of the evilest force in his world.
Not bad for seven years of work.
Every character has an arc — the path she takes to becoming a different version of herself. When you write about yourself, you cannot be the same person at the end of the story as you were in the beginning.
It doesn’t matter how drastic that growth is. It matters that we see it clearly. Maybe you went from a shy person to one who can start a conversation with anyone. Maybe you went from someone who despised staying at home to realizing quarantine has been a huge win for you. Maybe you started your story as a drain on your parents but then discovered financial independence is much more rewarding.
Personally, I have a lot more trouble remembering the “before” of my own life than the “after.” My first drafts never show my progression enough because I simply forgot how it felt to be so stupid. It usually takes at least three drafts to clearly communicate how much I’ve grown.
Growth is the tight bow we as readers like to see wrapped around our characters by the story’s end.
A question to ask yourself when you write: How did this story change me? Who was I before, and who am I now?
Recap
Even once you make the shift to thinking about yourself as a character, it can still be difficult to translate that into your personal writing. Once more, here are the four rules to keep in mind:
- Write about an idea, not an event
- Highlight the conflict in your stories
- Provide detail to make your world real
- Show how you’ve grown as a person
With a little objectivity, recounting your trip to the supermarket might teach someone an idea that changes their lives forever. That’s what real writers do, after all. We don’t write to self-gratify.
We write to change lives.