How to write personal essays and respect people's privacy

You can write intimately and powerfully about people in your life while still drawing ethical boundaries

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

In my essay writing classes, a question that often comes up is: “How can I write about my life while respecting the privacy of people in it?” In other words, how can I write in a completely honest, open way, expressing my deepest thoughts and feelings, without negatively impacting anyone else’s life?

I’m sorry to say that I don’t have a hard and fast answer, a simple rule or algorithm where you can plug in the specifics of your story and get an answer as to whether it’s “okay” to write about it. There’s no formula for calculating it, such as one-night stand, go for it, your children, verboten.

The messier, more complex answer is that how to write about people in your life is a deeply personal question every essayist and memoirist has to answer for themselves (and sometimes a legal team will weigh in). Some authors get around this by using a pseudonym, although not all publications allow writers to use pseudonyms. Some writers obscure either the specific facts of a situation or some of the key players involved. This is easier to do when writing about a person once, especially if you don’t have an ongoing personal relationship with them.

Below is how I approach writing about people in my life, which I’ve done in numerous essays for national publications and in my Thought Catalog book, Sex and Cupcakes: A Juicy Collection of Essays.

When it comes to writing about our families, friends, lovers, coworkers, neighbors, fellow congregants or club members or anyone who knows us in our day-to-day lives and who we interact with on an ongoing basis, there’s more potential for fallout. Feelings can easily get hurt, and the truth is, it doesn’t always matter how these people are portrayed. You may think you’re writing something utterly neutral, possibly even praiseworthy, but if you were to show it to the person beforehand, they very well might say, “I don’t care to be written about that way.” Or they may not want to be written about at all.

Does that mean you shouldn’t write about anyone else? No. Think about how devoid of insights the world would be without anyone writing about anything beyond their own thoughts and solo actions. We are social creatures, even us introverts, and our lives inevitably intersect with the lives of others to varying degrees.

My top three essay writing tips on how to write about others ethically are:

1. Think about why you’re writing about a person or event