: Re: How to write a book about an amnesia patient properly? I am writing a book about an amnesia patient. I do not know much about amnesia, which is quite shameful, but I want to know how to

@Miguel976

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Totally depends.

What you're describing is called retrograde amnesia affecting autobiographical memory but not skills such as speech and movement patterns. Your character may react to her amnesia in several ways.

You should consider the personality of your protagonist. Is she stressed out easily? How would she score on a Big Five personality test? For instance, would she score high on neuroticism and conscientiousness? I can imagine if she is an agreeable person she is less likely to be suspicious of people. In a thriller that wouldn't be very interesting. Or, would it? How would she score on the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator? Is she the logical type that can objectively see the situation she is in, and respond calmly?

Every character reacts differently to amnesia. I think you want the character to be suspicious of people, because you are writing a thriller. If that's the case you could make her suspicious about many people in order to build tension for the reader. The other option would be to make her suspect only one person. Then midway it turns out someone else was the culprit. Maybe she was the culprit all along, or maybe she starts think she is.

Besides personality you could build your character by denoting her skills, and previous experience. For instance, she could be great at knife throwing (wasn't that a movie?). She could have been a surgeon before which could make her stand the sight of blood. Skills acquired in an occupation carry-over to other parts of a person's life, even when a character has amnesia the skills will determine how she can react and will likely react.

For the thriller genre you want to have intermittent dangers. But just because it's a thriller you don't have to create tension with dangers all the time. You can also regulate tension by more trivial events. Maybe the protagonist meets an old lover, but she cannot remember. This can help build story arc, and build the character while keeping the reader interested.

Everything will be a cliche when repeated enough. You could get creative and think up some crazy stuff. Perhaps a character can fool the protagonist into thinking they're friends, the protagonist starts to doubt her, then finds out they're probably not friends, and starts to fool the other that she believes they are indeed friends. In the end it turns out they were really friends, that they both suffer from amnesia, but meanwhile they started to doubt eachother and get into a conflict.

It would greatly help your writing if you can find out on which specific part you get stuck. And don't get stuck on the idea that your book is supposed to be a thriller; I've read plenty of thrillers which were less thrilling than non-thrillers.

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