Lessons From “Pain & Art: Write What You Honestly Know” By Ryan Gattis

Ryan Gattis in his Talk “Pain & Art: Write What You Honestly Know” tells us about the importance of authenticity and honesty in immersive writing. With a detailed story involving his personal experience, of which the talk largely constitutes of he tells us about how his way of writing changed as he learned about the importance of authenticity in writing. Authenticity in the speaker’s view has a virtue of its own that can be sensed by the reader, something that makes him connect with the writer.

The speaker shares with us his life experiences and the important lessons he learned through them. He tells us that initially he was living in a low-income household and was considerably stressed about his financial situations. His book got rejected by every publisher it was sent to, a friend of him who served in Iraq shared with him the stories of the events and situations he went through. Making him learn that stories are not limited to the task of connecting with people but instead also entail an opportunity to distance from the traumatic experiences of the past. The important parts of immersive story writing that should always be kept in mind are hooks (something that grab the reader’s attention), The unexpected (the art of surprising the audience), cause and effect (linked chain of events in the story), how it feels (emotional…