Signs that You Are Ready to Tell the Story of Crisis
Make it stand out
When you have most of the elements below going for you, you’re likely ready to tell your story of overcoming crisis.
In my last blog post, I shared factors that show when you are likely not ready to write that book about a crisis that is personal, organizational, or a combination of the two. Some of the warning signs you are not ready: you want to settle scores, your premise is based on readily falsifiable claims, you can’t remember the details fully enough, or you are simply dealing with the crisis right now. That last aspect can also mean you don’t have the time or budget for bringing on an expert writer and/or editor to help tell your story.
Conversely, there are signs that you may be ready to tell the story of crisis. They include:
The crisis has, for the most part, passed. Therefore, you can write with some level of objectivity. Of course, readers don’t expect you to discuss the crisis dispassionately, nor with complete detachment. The goal is to not write as if you are a journalist. Instead, you need enough of a distance so that you can be a tour guide for the journey you are asking the reader to take. With this approach, you also avoid using your story of overcoming crisis to settle scores with other people and/or institutions.
You have sufficient details to help illustrate the story. Focus on showing, not telling. This may include journals, notes, news clippings, and video and audio recordings. You also need a clear enough recall to depict scenes, including dialogue. Readers don’t expect your construction of scenes will be completely accurate; they don’t envision that you had a GoPro camera on your head nor a digital audio recorder so that your scenes are perfectly re-created. They do expect that the essence of what happened in a scene is truthful. It is important, however, that your representation of the truth does not push a scene too far. One author’s book on OCD showed a key dinner scene with the author’s parents that had too much detail—the layout of the room, what each person was eating, what the different family members were wearing. It was an admirable attempt to show what happened. There was, however, one problem—the author said this dinner scene happened when she was eight years old. It stretches credulity that a child that age would recall all those details clearly. So, in the effort to provide sufficient detail, avoid unneeded author intrusion, where you are speaking too strongly from your current estimation of what happened in the past.
You have taken the time to process what you have learned from the crisis in such a way that you can impart it to others. More directly, can you clearly articulate, in one sentence, what is the theme and why it is of importance to the reader? This is vital because it is the scaffold for the book. Knowing where you want the reader to wind up at by the book’s end allows you to prioritize the details so that they support your intent.
Other people involved in the crisis, from both professional and personal aspects, have either shared their understandings of the crisis with you, or are willing to do so. Knowing what other key people thought and did related to their roles in your crisis scenario gives you more opportunities to weave in important characters, dialogue, action, and scenes. Not knowing means you risk going down the road of speculation and mind-reading. Crisis, of course, can lead to gaps in knowledge. It is best, however, to keep guesswork and imputing motives to others to a minimum because, if it becomes a thread line in the book, you risk the dreaded unneeded author intrusion.
Conversely, if others involved in the crisis do not want their understandings shared in the book, you still know enough about their roles and perspectives so that you can share them in a way that protects their anonymity. Again, this may come from the information mentioned in the second bullet point above. Caution: authors, even when changing the details of an anonymous individual, have been known to share too much information that a reader can look up online and then deduce who the person is.
If you see that most of these signs apply to you, then you may be ready to write that crisis story in book form. If so, I’m always open to an initial complimentary consult which you can book here.