How to Handle Personal Stories in Your Book

Are you working on a nonfiction book and wondering how to incorporate your personal stories, maybe without naming names, or at least in a way that minimizes the fallout from sharing your story? If you're wondering that, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers and done right, will help you grow your brand, build your business, and make you money. The best part? You keep all rights and royalties. Sharing your personal story in your nonfiction book is what makes your book absolutely something only you could write. It's hugely valuable. It creates a connection with your reader, it provides context for what you share, and it also makes you more memorable. But it can also be incredibly difficult. How do you talk about other people in the book without making them feel really bad, or without saying something that could be considered defamation? There are several options to do this. Option number one is is my least favorite, but it's useful in some situations. Just change the names and blur the facts so that it's not clear who specifically in your life was in that story. You'll see me use this method in videos when I speak about authors where I haven't sought their permission to tell their story. I'll tell you the details you need so that you can get the point, but not enough so any confidential information is shared, and certainly not enough so that you could ever identify that person. Somebody, Somebody, somebody hit somebody. Sometimes it's if it's somebody that I think is likely to read or see the content, I even may take an extra step of changing their gender or generalizing some other piece of the story that doesn't change the point. The danger of doing this too much or doing it with an important story is that you can lose credibility because you're not being totally honest or clear. General is never as good as specific, but sometimes it's good enough. Option two is to change the name of the person or give them a fake name. Isn't that the same thing? If you change the name, you'd be giving them a fake name. Of course, changing names won't work if you're talking about your family, because unless you're from an enormous family, it's going to be pretty easy to figure out who you're talking about. But it can work wonders for some books. Take Molly's game, for example. If you're a regular YouTube bestie like Alan West. Free Falling From Grace, Poetry from the heart Ben Preston Kevin 2.0 thank you. Big hugs to all of you for your comments, likes and shares. Those folks know I love Texas Hold' Em so it shouldn't be a surprise that I read Molly's Game and watched the movie as soon as it came out. But my point is that her based on a true story book named celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio a rod, Ben Affleck and others. But the main player in her book was called Player X. For the most part, she was quite nice about what she said about the people in her book and she was really only naming names that were already public record when she was arrested by the FBI for taking a rake in her poker games. But Player X was not a good guy in the story, so likely she didn't want to say all those bad things she said about him and associate a real name with that person who behaved like that. Player X the bad guy was unnamed. He was called Player X in her book. Not naming Player X actually builds mystery and was the subject of a ton of press around the book. But her book is a celebrity based book. So unless you can create a lot of mystery or speculation around whether Tobey Maguire is more like a mean Peter Parker or the sweet Spider man you know and love in real life, this strategy is really only for you if the name change won't matter to anyone but you and the person whose identity you protected. So this leaves me with the method that I recommend for the majority of personal stories. Stick to the facts of what happened and how you felt. So this is option 3. Try to avoid layering in judgment and finger pointing. Don't speculate why someone did what they did or try to even make it right by justifying it. Focus on you and your experience. Keep it simple and to the point to share the story. You might want to enact revenge and say all kinds of mean things about someone who you feel wronged you, but your book is for your reader, not for revenge. Stick to what your reader really needs to know and that is what happened to you and how it made you feel. Nobody can dispute that because it's all about you, not about anyone else. I know you're going to have a bunch of other questions about when is it okay to include someone's name or not. I'm not an attorney and in fact I am Canadian. We are not nearly as litigious as some American folks, so I'm not as cautionary as some other folks in the business that I've encountered. So my advice is just for me, a Canadian so self publishing author okay, Generally speaking, what we tell our clients is if you want to cover your assets, you should have a waiver signed when you share stories of other people. So if you're a podcaster and you want to include the interviews from your show, it's best to have a waiver sign saying they release you to use that interview for other purposes. I think a waiver is a good idea if you're saying anything that makes you pause and wonder if someone's going to be okay with you sharing that story. But if you're telling the story of the funny night in a Las Vegas hotel penthouse suite that found you eating in the bathroom with your friend Deb like I did in my book the New Brand, you'd you can probably feel pretty comfortable that it's a safe share. She pretended to be horrified when she found out she was in my book, but she tells everyone about that story, so I think she was okay with it. How do you handle naming names or sharing personal stories in your book? Let's chat about it in the comments below and when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbooks swag like this noboringbooks mug, we have new videos every Tuesday and Friday. Make sure you catch every one by subscribing to the channel and turning those notifications on on. You're really fun. Do you want to keep hanging out? This video right here is all about writing a book that stands the test of time. When you're writing stories, this is a great thing to consider, and if you aren't wondering about that, then this video on what is a Book Coach? Is a great one because a book coach can guide you through writing these great stories in the best way possible. Either way, these videos are guaranteed good time or your money back. So go ahead and click on the one that you want to watch and I'll put the coffee on and I'll see you there.