Summary of the Personal Experience Book.

What do writers write about? Many focus on the difficulties they face.  Maybe they were in an accident that required months to recover from, had a pregnancy that the doctor said was life-threatening, or suffered a job loss that threatened the marriage. 

In short the struggles, many of us go through in life.

Now, let's look at some current titles that have been published lately.

Overcoming panic attacks.

Learning sickness: a year with Crohn's disease.

A Christian approach to overcoming disability.

Overcoming the inheritance taboo.

After the death of a child.

I wasn't ready to say goodbye: surviving coping in healing after the death of a loved one.

Getting to the other side of grief.

Each one of these books tackles an overwhelming problem.  Your book needs to do the same thing.

How do you fill in the details? Sometimes they seem to have disappeared completely from your memory. Generally, however, it's not a real problem.  John Steinbeck recommended that you start by trying to remember the details about a particular experience so clearly that you can see colors or remember how warm or cold it was.  When you start to concentrate you will begin to  remember detail you thought were lost forever At this point, you don't care how good the writing is, you just want to get it down on paper.

Where do you begin the personal experience book? In most cases, you began the day something different happened, not at the beginning of your life.  For instance, the baby is about to be born, but she's having heart problems, -- you find a child dead of a prescription overdose -- your brother, sister or parent is about to die.

Remember the lady who lost her son in a cult suicide.  She started her book the day he ran away and joined the cult.  You have to decide what works for you. 

Writing scenes. Personal experience books are written more like a novel.  Each chapter consists of three to seven scenes with each scene being a unit of conflict.  These scenes are often a little story in themselves. 

In part 3 of writing a person experience I used a scene that James Herriot wrote.  If you still have that model go back and look at it.

Motivation reaction.  Every scene has within it, motivation reaction.  Somebody says or does something, somebody reacts to it   You say good morning John.  "He says you bet it's a great morning," Or he may say "what do you mean good morning.  What's good about it?"  That's motivation reaction and it takes place as the characters react within the scene.  Generally, in a personal experience book.  Most things happen to you and you respond. 

Laying out a plan.  Generally you know the problem that is going to occupy your book because you've lived it. The next thing is to get something on paper.  I generally jot all the chapters down as a table of contents keeping in mind that all the chapters must reflect the title of the book.  If you want to, you can write a paragraph or two about the chapter underneath each title.  This helps you expand to a full chapter. 

Now let's look at the table of contents of a published personal experience book.  Once you get this far, the rest is pretty easy.  This title is: I Wasn't Ready To Say Goodbye

Here are the books chapters.

1.  It cannot be cured

2.  Sister death.

3.  Three levels of reality.

4.  My spouse suffers too.

5.  It's good to cry.

6.  My body crumbles.

7.  The body of Jesus.

8.  Harboring high hope.

9.  Taking care of business.

10.  You know, our pain.

11.  I am tired.

12.  When the back breaks.

13.  A simple prayer.

14.  A less good day.

15.  Worry is useless

Once you get this far you can start filling the story in. 

Show, don’t tell. Most people writing a personal experience book tell the story but don't show what's happening.  You can't do that and expect to sell your book.  You need a lot of detail, and you need to make your readers see and feel what you're saying

This is typical of what I often get:  A pipe burst and the kitchen flooded.

We need more detail, and we need to bring it alive something like this: 

I was coming down the stairs when I heard this terrible gushing in the kitchen.  First there was a pop and a splash.  I raced for the kitchen.  I couldn't believe what an absolute mess it was.  I stood there a minute not knowing what to do.  Should I try to fix it myself?  I'm an admitted plumbing dummy at making repairs.  But I headed for the garage and brought in the toolbox.  That was a mistake.  The water kept pouring out all over the place but I didn't know how to turn off.  I gave up and called the plumber.  

You can see the action, sympathize, hear the water gushing over the floor and, with further description, see the reaction of the plumber.

Once you get this far you are ready to put together a personal experience book that will sell.  Again remember to construct in scenes, and show don't tell.