Tips for Writing Amnesia!
As someone who's researched neurological conditions extensively and interviewed people with memory disorders, I'm begging fiction writers to please, PLEASE stop with the "bonk on the head = total life erasure" trope. That's not how any of this works.
⊹ Retrograde amnesia (forgetting the past) is rare and almost NEVER involves forgetting your entire identity while maintaining perfect memory formation going forward. Know what's way more common? Anterograde amnesia: you can't form NEW memories. Like the guy from Memento, except usually less tattoo-based organizational systems and more confused repetition.
⊹ Head injuries causing amnesia? Sure, happens. But it's usually the minutes/hours around the trauma that vanish, not your entire childhood, first kiss, and ability to recognize your spouse. The brain doesn't store memories in one convenient "delete this folder" location. You might forget the car accident but remember your kids' names.
⊹ What's weird about real amnesia: skills often remain. You might not remember learning piano, but your fingers still know the keys. Procedural memory (how to do things) lives in different brain areas than episodic memory (life events). Your amnesiac character might not remember their name but could still speak three languages, drive stick shift, or execute complex martial arts.
⊹ Another thing: amnesia from psychological trauma (dissociative amnesia) is controversial and functions differently than neurological amnesia. It's selective, blocking specific traumatic events while leaving other memories intact. And it doesn't typically include identity confusion unless we're talking dissociative fugue states, which are incredibly rare.
⊹ Recovery is unpredictable and often incomplete. Memories might return in fragments, dreams, or triggered by specific sensory cues, but they're often unreliable, contaminated by suggestion or false memories your brain constructs to fill gaps.
⊹ If you want the drama of starting over, just... let your character fake it. Witness protection, running from the past, choosing to disappear, its way more plausible than convenient brain erasure.
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