Writing about yourself can be tough, eh?
I’m with you.
As an intensely private person, sharing my own stories is hard.
I don’t feel like baring myself. I’m worried I sound needy. I don’t want to be self-indulgent.
But overcoming my doubts has been worth it.
Stories make us more human. The specifics of each story may be unique, but the underlying themes are universal. So, sharing a personal story can not only help us close a chapter and move on; it also helps us feel more connected to each other.
Let me show you 3 ways to shape your story so it becomes easier to engage and connect with your readers.
But first an example.
Okay?
The needle was huge …
I imagined a sadistic smirk behind the doctor’s face mask.
I was lying on my side, bare-breasted. I felt vulnerable. What are you doing?, I asked.
3 weeks earlier, I had found a lump in my breast.
It had been an uncertain and stressful time.
Fortunately, the lump was only a cyst, and the doctor drained 55 ml of fluids from my breast.
The procedure was almost painless. The lump was gone. The problem was solved. I should feel relieved.
But days later, the stress was still racing through my body. I slept badly. I couldn’t concentrate.
And I got a little frustrated with myself.
I told myself that thousands of women go through the same stress every single day. Many of them get worse news. Many are living in warzones.
I am so privileged. Why can’t I simply bounce back?
I felt ashamed that I still felt unsafe in my body.
Since a car crash years ago, my body has been hypersensitive to stress. Once my nervous system hits stress mode, inflammation flares up. Calming down can take weeks.
The lump in my breast might be gone but the stress is still there.
So, I remind myself that life isn’t a race.
I’ll heal at my own pace.
3 ways to shape your personal narrative
In today’s online world, readers are in a hurry.
There’s an endless number of social media updates and blog posts to read or just scan.
Who has time for a long story?
To engage readers, it’s often wise to keep our stories short. But we know too much. We remember every single detail of our experience. What happened. What we saw. What we heard. How we felt.
So, how do you choose what to include and what to leave out?
You can shape and shorten your story in 3 ways:
- Focus on one transformation
- Jump straight into the drama
- Choose details with care
Let me explain …
1. Focus on one transformation
I first thought that the story of the lump in my breast was a story about bad communication.
I felt upset by the lack of respect that one doctor showed me. He didn’t tell me what was happening. He didn’t tell me what he saw on the ultrasound scan. He never explained why he painted a big black cross on my breast. He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t even confirm that it was a cyst until I asked.
I wanted to explain this doctor’s imaginary transformation: How a more respectful manner would have reduced my stress and helped me stay connected with my body.
But I realized the real story was the story I was a little ashamed to tell. The story of my fragility. The story of struggling to heal, of healing at my own, slooooow pace.
Sometimes, when I write a story about myself, I know what transformation to focus on. More often, I freewrite a first draft to figure out the crux of the story.
Pinpointing the transformation helps shape your story. So, consider: How has an experience changed you? What problem was solved? Which question was answered? What lesson have you learned? What’s the point of telling this story?
In my case, I realized I had to write about healing—how healing may take longer than solving a physical problem, and how we can only heal at our own pace. That is a universal lesson.
2. Jump straight into the drama
To grab the attention of readers, dive right into the middle of the action.
I chose to start the story with the doctor readying the big needle. The point of maximum drama.
If you make a timeline of the story, then finding the lump in my breast happens 3 weeks before the opening scene. Moreover, the car accident that made me hypersensitive to stress happens years before that. But I don’t tell the story in chronological order. To make the story more interesting, I add the backstory later on.
Also, to avoid boring readers with the backstory, you can take shortcuts. For instance, my hypersensitivity didn’t start straight after the car crash. My nervous system only went into overdrive after 15 months of misguided physical therapy. But I don’t think this is relevant to the story, so I leave it out to keep the pace of the story high.
In summary, to grab readers’ attention, jump straight into the action. What is the most dramatic point of your story? Next, keep your backstory short. What’s essential for readers to know?
3. Choose the details
The first draft of a personal story often includes too many details.
For instance, my first draft included my nightmares—not about the big needle but about the doctor’s unseeing eyes, about feeling unprotected, diminished, and disrespected.
Those nightmares felt important at first, but I realized they were not essential to the story. So, when I edited the draft, I scrapped the nightmares to shorten the story.
There were many more details that were vivid in my mind and that seemed essential to my experience. Like the 5 people in the ultrasound room including the career woman from Siemens who assisted with the new equipment but felt completely out of place, dressed for business. Like the doctor who exclaimed “Amazing!,” when he started the scan (I asked but he never explained what was amazing). And long before that: The endless phone calls to get the hospital appointment. How my referral letter got lost. How my case was urgent, then wasn’t urgent, and then was urgent again.
All these details were relevant to my experience and they heightened my stress. But they’re not required to tell the key point of the story—that we can only heal at our own pace. So, I leave these details out to keep the story short.
I included the most vivid details in the opening scene: The big needle, the face-masked doctor, the imagined smirk behind his mask, and that I’m lying on my side bare-breasted. These details seem enough to help you picture the scene and invite you into the story.
Telling a good story in miniature requires a careful choice of details. Too many details slow readers down. Not enough details makes a story too abstract.
How to write a personal story
I prefer sharing a personal story when I’m (almost) ready to close a chapter, when there’s no neediness anymore.
Without my neediness, I can focus on telling the story, and I can try to tell it well.
I’m editing this final paragraph 16 days after I was at the hospital.
I’ve been feeling a little under the weather this week and I’ve lost my voice but I’m starting to feel safer in my body. My nervous system is beginning to calm down.
I have faith in my body.
I have faith in my body’s power to heal.
Recommended reading on how to write your personal narrative:
How to write about yourself
How to write a short professional bio
How to write a sparkling About page
Hi Henneke, thanks for the great teaching. First of all, I hope you are ok and I hope your healing is going well. How are you?
Secondly, the greatest skill of all when writing. Filtering and narrowing down – especially in a world of data abundance. Thanks for adding the other million details to your story to illustrate the point of how you chose what you chose. I feel Instagram is the visual part of exactly the technique you describe, it was very interesting to read.
I hope you are keeping well, Virginia ❤️
Yes, so true. Filtering and narrowing down is so important and also often the hardest task in writing.
I’m okay. Thanks so much for asking. It’s been a tough year for my health but things are looking up at the moment 🙂
Sending love to London ❤️
Henneke… I’m glad everything worked out okay. It sounded like a scary situation in the beginning. Thanks so much for sharing your personal story.
Thank you, Sheronda. I appreciate your stopping by to leave a comment.
Great post, thank you for sharing Henneke. I have been meaning to write more but I find it hard to come up with content to write about. I think that I just want to get into the habit of writing a little bit each day but because I don’t have what to write about, it discourages me. Perhaps pouring out my life story can work for me too just to get me started!
That sounds like a great plan! Writing about something that matters to you makes it easier to nurture a writing habit.
We are grateful for you, Henneke. This post teaches us so much about our writing process – our story telling.
Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom!
Terry Covey
Thank you for your kind words, Terry. Happy storytelling!
What a great article! Thanks for sharing. (And as a fellow big needle/just a cyst/still scary as hell sufferer, I’m glad that’s behind you!)
Thank you, Kim. And I an glad it-s behind you, too.
Hello Henneke, Your post resonated, as I’ve now been cancer-free for almost 7 years. I’m so happy to hear your story had a happy ending! 🙂
Writing a short story is extremely difficult. You constantly cut, cut out the bulk to find those gold nuggets.
My journey with cancer is one of the small personal stories in my now published book, Extraordinary Detour. Thank you for sharing yours with us.
I’m so happy to read that you’re now cancer-free for almost 7 years, Penelope.
And congratulations on publishing your book. That’s fab!
Thank you! 🙂
So much from your health journey is similar to my experience and I wonder, does the hypersensitivity to stress ever end?
I love how your advice on telling a story, tells another story of how medical treatment of women is so behind. Feeling unseen, not getting explanations, being dismissed and asked to bear with it, these are all things that contribute to making a medical experience so much more difficult and the brunt of it is mostly on female patients.
Thanks, Henneke, as usual. I haven’t been reading you as much as before but it’s always worth it in every way. So glad you’re ok physically.
Thank you for reading this story, Elfin. My experience with the medical profession is exactly like yours, and it has been like that all my life (with a few exceptions). I’m so grateful that I’ve now found a good physical/yoga therapist. Someone who listens!
Does the hypersensitivity to stress ever end? I don’t know. I think it can improve but I’ll have to see.
Sending hugs ❤️
Bedankt voor de les, Henneke! Ik ben sinds kort ontzettend fan van je blog en je nieuwsbrieven. Ook een e-book van je gekocht, want ik werk je teksten naar binnen als chocoladekoekjes 🙂
Ik ben blij dat het goed is afgelopen bij de dokter!
Hé, wat leuk, Marloes. Ik volg jou op Instagram (ben daar niet echt actief meer) en vind jouw tekeningen hardstikke leuk!
I’m so glad the lump was not something bad Henneke. Excellent advice again, I love how you go through your writing process. Take care!
Yes, I’m thankful it wasn’t anything more sinister!
Thank you for stopping by, Elena. Always good to hear from you.
Wow, such a succinct, but extraordinarily powerful lesson in writing. You provide so much value in such a quick read. Thank you.
Thank you, Samina. I’m glad you found it useful. Happy writing!
As usual, the tips that you have shared are amazing.
You can easily compile these tips and publish them in the form of a book.
I promise to be the first buyer of the book.
As for your ailment, I hope you are super fit and running now. Nothing is better than self-healing.
Best wishes,
P.S. Whenenver I write a copy and if there’s need of a story in it, I also start from the middle. It helps to build up the tempo and grab attention easily.
Thank you for your compliment on my writing, Subhankar. I appreciate it.
I wish I could run! It’s too challenging for my nervous system. For the last few years, I’ve been keeping fit with easy pedalling and leisurely walking so I can keep my heart rate in the moderate zone. Even that is a challenge at the moment but I’ll get back into it, and then one day I hope to be cycling uphill again and perhaps even run, and swim.
This was so helpful and a wonderful gift to share as much as you did to help us learn. So glad you are starting to calm down.
I wrote a newsletter today where I shared a mini personal story. I hadn’t read your piece at that point. I’ll be interested to see how I might improve it with your suggestions in mind.
I used to feel so awkward sharing personal stories. I was worried that people would judge me as self centered and “all about me.” But instead they judged me as abstract, conceptual and standoffish. It took a long time to feel comfortable writing anything in the first person, never mind writing about myself.
Henneke, have you ever thought about creating a course on writing a memoir? I’d be interested.
That’s such a good point, Deborah—how do we come across if we never share something about ourselves? Your observations seem spot on.
And wow, I appreciate your confidence in me teaching writing a memoir. I’m not sure I’m so confident. Maybe it’s time to write a memoir first? I’ve started playing with the idea but haven’t really made plans yet. Don’t know yet whether I can find the time and energy for it.
Thank you for this! It was truly helpful. Writing personal stories requires some detachment for me. I can’t help offering that for me, the word attachment [to a story] is what gets in the way. I can understand that it took as long as it took for you to be able to share and write about it. My point is, you are clearly not needy. Sensitivity is a strength in and of itself.
Yes, I’ve been learning that sensitivity can be a strength, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.
I’m with you on requiring detachment. I think that’s why I can’t write in the midst of an experience. I also find that writing down an experience can help bring that detachment, too. Perhaps because it makes me focus on the storytelling techniques? And then once the story is told, it can help bring closure, too.
Thanks so much for stopping by, Lora.
Thank you for this post, Henneke. Personal stories make the internet more human (much needed). I’m sorry you had to experience that, it sometimes seems one bad event brings another. I’m glad you’re starting to feel safer.
Yes, so true. It feels good when the internet seems more human. I feel lucky with readers like you!
Thank you for your openness and these incredibly helpful tips. You’re a HUGE factor in me slowly becoming a better writer and storyteller.
Thank you for your generous compliment, Jon. Happy writing!
Clever and enlightening as usual.
Thank you, David.
I can SO relate. I had throat cancer, squamous cell carcinoma caused by HPV-16 in 2019. Writing a book about the experience. After diagnosis, my oncologist warned me that this involved serious suffering. Only pancreatic cancer was worse on the suffering scale. (I’m number two!?) There were many great medical peeps I encountered, as well some that shouldn’t be in the profession at all. Survival was the goal, so obviously I did. But I am not the same person afterwards. I feel like a ghost in my own life, so different from the person I was. But I have to keep going regardless. As we all do…
I’m so sorry you’ve been going through such a traumatic experience.
Even though our experiences are of course completely different, I felt like a zombie after the car crash, too (or rather after the physical therapy). It’s taken a long time and my body is still injured but I am starting to feel more like myself. That zombie-like or ghost-like feeling doesn’t need to be permanent even if it feels endless.
I hope that writing about your experience will help you heal.
Great advice, I’m wrestling with similar feelings. Routine examine turned into four months of surgery, radiation, numerous appointments and mental exhaustion. I’m so very grateful but feel guilty for those who don’t have access to health insurance, a support team and an employer who allowed me time to take care of myself. Your article just reminds me how important it is to share when life throws you for a loop. Thanks for sharing!
I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through that terrible ordeal, Diana. Sending my best wishes for your healing. Take good care of yourself!
You share your personal stories with remarkable subtlety! When I read you, it’s like watching a movie.
Many doctors are cruel. Unfortunately, over the past seven years, I have come across hundreds of them and have begun to understand why they are like that. They do not love their job, do not strive to become better, but perform the routine for which they are paid.
I wish you good health and much luck in life.
I’m so sorry you’ve had so many bad experiences with doctors in recent years.
I try to stay away from doctors as much as I can and only visit when I absolutely have to.
Sending you my best wishes for your good health, too. Good to see you again, Michael!
Thanks for this Henneke. You have put it so succinctly.
I have always struggled to put personal stories on paper and now I realise it was because I was trying to put in too much in one story.
I am going to start rewriting at least some of them with these points in mind.
You always put forth your ideas in such a concise and clear way!
It is hard to write a personal story. I’m with you on that. It helps to get a rough draft down, and allow it to be as rough as it needs to be. Then leave it for a day or two, and then revisit with the points here raised in mind.
I can never rush telling a personal story. But if I take my time (it might take a few rounds of editing), then it’s almost as if the story presents itself naturally.
Henneke, first, I am so happy to hear you were not diagnosed with cancer. In November, I’ll walk in my 19th 3-Day, 60-Mile Walk for the Cure. My sister is a breast cancer survivor, so, yes, it is personal.
I am so glad you worked on quieting that inner critical voice of ours that sounds suspiciously like the voice of others. Who says there is an exact pattern to healing (physically or mentally)?
Finally, I hope you know what a gift you have. You always make me want to do better. Both in my writing and as a human being. I wish you a complete recovery and a return to your safe place. However long that takes. *Hugs*
I’m so sorry your sister got diagnosed with breast cancer but so glad she survived!
And what a commitment from you to walk the 60-mile Walk for the Cure for 19 times. That’s so impressive!
No matter how much I practice patience and self-compassion, that critical voice still pops up from time to time. It’s persistent, right? Fortunately, I’m not listening as much as I used to.
Thank you so much, Cathy, for your kind words. Sending hugs back to you across the big pond!
Thank you, Henneke. I hadn’t planned on walking beyond the first year but somehow I can’t walk away. 😉 And hugs warmly accepted. 🙂
Wonderful advice! I’d only add that those other transformations or “stories within the story” you discarded for this piece might be useful in another piece you’d write later. Sometimes we learn many things in an instant.
Wishing you a complete recovery–at your own pace.
Yes, that’s so true. Such a good point. Thank you for suggesting it, Jen. Maybe at another time, I can write more about one of the other stories in this story.
Vivid pivotal points. The impact of its spiraling aftermath interlaced with physical and emotional vulnerability. Hurray! Health celebration! Thank you for being you.
Thank you, Grace. I’m so grateful it wasn’t anything more sinister.
Sorry to hear about that episode in your life! I am happy that you are OK. And well, a story just about that doctor guy would have been interesting as well. What horrible bedside manners.
I was still able to sneakily share a little of that doctor’s story, eh? He gave the perfect masterclass on how NOT to treat your patients. I wonder sometimes how it can be that so many doctors don’t seem to be interested in human beings. Luckily, the consultant was kind and respectful. Such a contrast!
A lot of them are interested in the technical side of their job 😉
I took one of your courses a few years ago. It was such a unique journey. So glad I found you and made the decision to enroll. Whenever I feel the writer’s block either it’s coming up with social media captions or putting together a product page, I grab one of your emails from my Henneke folder and re-read it. Every piece you write is so refreshing. So inspiring. Always. Thank you for your teachings and amazing encouragement.
Awww, that’s so lovely to read. I’m glad my writing continues to inspire you. Thank you for stopping by, June, and for continuing to read my blog!
I’m sorry you had to go through that ordeal! Get well soon and yes, have faith.
Thank you so much, Joy. I’m grateful that you’re continuing to read my blog!
Powerful words, helping us write and telling your story. Thanks Henneke for your generous open heart and heal well.
Thank you so much, Jeanette. I’m feeling grateful that I can write (even now I’ve lost my voice and can only whisper).
Hi Henneke,
I always enjoy and benefit from your articles and am glad you are feeling a little better.
Get well, keep well and keep on writing!
Kindest,
Ian
Thank you, Ian. I much appreciate your well wishes. I just have to give it some time, and I’ll get better.
Wow, such a succinct, but extraordinarily powerful lesson in writing. You provide so much value in such a quick read. Thank you.
Thank you, Bert. That’s a lovely compliment.