*knock knock*
Got something on amnesia? Love your blog btw!
Hi, thank you so much :)
How to write amnesia
types of amnesia:
two main types
Anterograde Amnesia: inability to create new memories, remembers the past before the injury; causes: injury to hippocampus, stroke, trauma, alcoholism, surgery
Retrograde Amnesia: inability to remember past memories, can form new memories after injury, recent past most affected, childhood memories often still there; causes: damage to different parts of the brain, stroke, drug abuse, head trauma
other forms (there are a lot more)
Dissociative Amnesia: (retrograde) lasts hours or days, can forget personal information or a traumatic experience for a short amount of time; causes: psychological trauma, emotional stress, brain trying to ‘save’ itself from harmful memories
Post-Traumatic Amnesia: can be antero- or retrograde, accompanied by other injuries to the brain; causes: trauma, injury to the head
What do they remember?
people will mostly still remember how to do things, because memories get stored in different parts of the brain and so depending on the injury/trauma different kinds of memories are affected
Procedural memory: remembering how to do things
Episodic memory: remembering events you’ve experienced
Semantic memory: remembering facts
How to write it?
Why do you need amnesia in your story? Make sure it makes sense and doesn’t come across as an easy way to move your story forward. Make sure you have more than amnesia as a plot point.
Who has amnesia and from what perspective is the reader seeing it? Is it the main character or a side character? How big is the impact of the amnesia for the story and for the reader?
Has the reader more information than the person with amnesia? Especially with anterograde amnesia the character would forget new memories again and the reader will still remember them. But even with retrograde amnesia you could give the reader information that the amnesiac character would try to remember, but can’t.
What kind of amnesia does the character have and how did they get it? In most media I’ve seen people have retrograde amnesia because of head injuries or traumatic experiences. Don’t make it too cliche and try to take this very real condition and give it your own unique spin to get the reader interested.
How does the character live without their memories? With anterograde amnesia they would depend a lot on routine and their friends/family to get through their daily life, because they would forget everything that recently happened. With retrograde amnesia they would probably live a normal life, but missing even a short amount of time from your memories can be very traumatic. This depends on the character, but it can lead to anxiety and some people would always feel insecure about the time they lost.
Does the character get their memories back? This only really works if the brain wasn’t too damaged. A second blow to the head isn’t always the way to go. Most memories just come back after some time, but some never do. Anterograde amnesia doesn’t ‘save’ new memories anymore and makes it impossible to get to them. If you want them to come back with retrograde amnesia, try to create a scenario that makes the character remember what they forgot, like a smell or sound or feeling, or let them get therapy that could unblock memories that the brain tried to hide if it was a psychological cause. Hypnosis also proves helpful for some patients.
Do your research. With every medical condition it’s important to do your research, especially when you’re writing in a realistic setting.
Hope this is what you had in mind and I wish you good luck with your writing!
- Jana
>> Two posts I came across while doing research which could be helpful as well: The Basics of Writing Amnesia and A Writer’s Guide to Amnesia
>> Amnesia Prompts + Amnesia Dialogue
