Taking Off the Mask

“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”
– Amelia Earhart

In Jerry Stahl’s memoir, Permanent Midnight, he shares his story of being a successful television writer by day and going into the bowels of Los Angeles at night to score heroin. It is a common trope in addiction memoirs — the double life. But if you scratch the surface of many memoirs, you will discover that on some level the protagonist is frequently wearing a mask.

Masks come in different shapes and styles. There is often a disconnect or a dissonance between the protagonist’s external and internal world.

Do you see where this experience lives in your story? Do you see where you are keeping secrets, from others, and even from yourself? What are you not admitting to yourself? Where in the story are you allowing yourself to be taken advantage of? Or perhaps are you the one taking advantage? Notice where you might be unwilling to speak your truth, to stand up for yourself, or to let go of some form of vice. Nobody is all good or all bad. By exploring the truth of your experience you are making your work universally relatable.

The journey of memoir often involves the integration of our public and private selves by relinquishing our mask. Do you see where your protagonist’s impulse to pretense is a survival strategy? Do you see their dilemma — namely that while this pretense is protecting them in the short run, it is also ironically keeping them disconnected from both others and themselves?

Remember that the purpose of story is to reveal a transformation. Ultimately, in one way or another, every story dramatizes the journey to self-love. Even in tragedy. In tragedy, the transformation is for the reader as they witness the cost for the protagonist of not choosing self-love. By exploring creative ways to dramatize your protagonist’s mask in the beginning, you provide context for their difficult choice (their emotional catharsis) at the end.

Learn more about marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of structure in The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, or The 90-Day Screenplay workshops.