I Tell Patients to Write Their Trauma 3 Times — Here's How Writers Can Steal It

Meet Fernando Alessandri

Fernando Alessandri is a Clinical Psychologist with prison and VA experience, who enjoys teaching brief approaches to trauma, psychosis, and PTSD. He had a prior background in film and television production, and recently completed a novel under a pseudonym about an iconic 84-year-old superspy forced into retirement.

Full Transcript.

I Tell Patients to Write Their Trauma 3 Times — Here's How Writers Can Steal It with Fernando Alessandri

Laura Williams: [00:00:00] We talk a lot on this show about the business of writing, but today I wanted to dive into the craft of writing, and the why behind the characters we create. My guest is Fernando Alessandri, who wears two hats — one as an author, and another as a clinical psychologist. He's here to help us understand the role humor plays in our lives, how it keeps us sane, how it hides our deepest hurts, and how we can use it to build characters that feel truly, achingly human. Fernando, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:00:30] Thank you, Laura. I appreciate this opportunity. I think it's going to be a fun conversation.

Laura Williams: [00:00:35] You've been on quite the journey — you started in film and television, then moved into clinical psychology. How do you use storytelling to help patients process trauma, and how does your work in psychology influence the humor you write in your own fiction?

Fernando Alessandri: [00:00:58] Yeah, that's [00:01:00] a lot to unpack. I was always involved in mentoring and helping people, informally — it just took me twenty or thirty years to go into it professionally. It was always a side thing, mentoring, being part of organizations, usually faith-based, doing more spiritual-type help.

Fernando Alessandri: But my real passion was making films and movies. I did it in middle school, high school, then went into advertising, then film school, then worked in the industry. In my last year in the industry, it all kind of came together — I was mentoring older men who kept talking about mental health and their families, and I wanted to know more. I was also trying to sell a reality show with a marriage counselor, and I fell in love with his work. So when the 2008 economy hit, I made the switch.

Fernando Alessandri: It's been great, and I've brought a lot of that creativity into psychology — that role of being a story developer, working with writers, seeing everything as [00:02:00] story, has definitely influenced how I do the work.

Fernando Alessandri: It breaks down in two ways. People live by story — they have a story about themselves, and it can be pathological or it can be healthy. A lot of times people get stuck with mental health issues because they believe a very depressing, hopeless story about themselves, and that just takes over, almost like computer code. I call myself a debugger — I'm there to help debug people.

Laura Williams: [00:02:33] I love that. And I understand how having that story behind you really affects how you present yourself and how you feel about the world.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:02:42] Yeah, it's a very sad thing — self-fulfilling prophecies. If we keep thinking, “I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna fail,” you're so distracted by that thought, you probably do fail.

Laura Williams: [00:02:52] Right.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:02:54] And that's a clue that what's on our mind is basically a game, and [00:03:00] there's so much cluttering it — the way a computer can have too many windows open, and it slows down the whole processing speed.

Fernando Alessandri: And then we wonder, “Why can't I focus?” It's because you haven't slowed down to close some of those windows. So when I do trauma work, it's about finding exercises that help finally put some of that stuff to rest. And then people get faculties back they never thought they'd have again.

Fernando Alessandri: They can focus more, sleep better, concentrate better — all of it improves. I know I can take this in a lot of directions, so feel free to steer me back if I get too distracted.

Laura Williams: [00:03:39] I think using storytelling in psychology to that extent — helping people understand their own story, and helping them rewrite it — is beautiful.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:03:53] Honestly, that's what I dove deep into — you're actually helping me organize my own thoughts here. I got really [00:04:00] interested in this at a crisis center, where I noticed they were essentially ignoring trauma. I remember thinking, are you kidding? These people are going to be back in two weeks if you don't address this.

Fernando Alessandri: We had people we called frequent flyers, and the facility was afraid to even delve into trauma — they had this perception it would take years. I said there's got to be a way. I came from advertising, where I had thirty or sixty seconds to change behavior, so I was up for the challenge.

Fernando Alessandri: I learned about a psychologist who'd done research built around the idea of having people write about the worst things they'd ever been through. I looked into the meta-analyses — where researchers pull together years of findings on a subject, in this case around forty studies. Those meta-analyses showed that people got tremendous benefit from writing just three essays about the worst thing they'd been through, about twenty minutes each, and not changing the topic between essays. They tried letting people write about a different trauma each time, and it wasn't nearly as effective as writing about the same trauma three times, letting it all spill out. [00:05:00]

Fernando Alessandri: So I fell in love with the idea that people already have that much built-in capacity for healing — that just telling their story can help them — and I started asking, what are the barriers? I developed a protocol to help address that. Something like, let's have you write these stories, and I'll help you fill in the parts you might be leaving out.

Fernando Alessandri: Some people don't know how to talk about emotions, or can't distinguish between them, or just have a limited emotional vocabulary. I learned that if you put a hundred emotion words on a page, people start circling like crazy — they're telling you their whole story just through which words they circle, and it gets everything flowing.

Fernando Alessandri: That protocol ironically became part of my dissertation research — something I share pretty openly, that helps people organize their story so it can finally come to rest. It gets old, basically, if you tell it enough times and you're not afraid of it.

Laura Williams: [00:05:57] Right.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:05:57] Trauma persists because people don't face [00:06:00] this stuff — it keeps nagging at them, but they won't open the door, and they don't realize they're stretching something out for thirty years that could've been resolved in three months.

Laura Williams: [00:06:10] I did a podcast yesterday about writing grief and trauma, and the guest said something similar — the first draft is for you, the second draft is for the reader. You don't need every brutal fact in the second draft, because readers are smart, they can fill in a lot of it themselves. So what you're describing sounds like a similar process. I'm curious — by the third time someone writes it, do you see them self-editing, cleaning up some of that pain on their own?

Fernando Alessandri: [00:06:52] Absolutely. One of the findings from that research involved software that counted the types of words people used, [00:07:00] and by the third essay,

Fernando Alessandri: people who started out using a ton of emotion words but moderated by the third essay tend to be the ones who improve. Same with people who started using very few emotion words but increased by the third essay. It's the people who never use any, and stay that way, who are a predictor of trouble — same with people who start hyper-emotional and never come down. That person needs something else; it isn't working for them yet.

Fernando Alessandri: There's also insight — people who showed increased insight over the three essays also tended to improve. Though that's tricky too, because sometimes people fake insight early on, maybe because of a strong faith background, and they minimize the event too soon — saying, [00:08:00] “Oh, but this was important for my life.” And I have to say, yes, but not yet — catch the water balloon first. I call it catching the egg — you have to cradle it before you can throw it back. Let yourself fully feel, even exaggerate the problem, before you try to rebuild.

Fernando Alessandri: But yes, by the third essay there should be some insight — some of what you called self-editing. “Maybe it wasn't exactly that. Maybe I wasn't betrayed, I was just a bit vulnerable.” That kind of modifying. It happens with the emotion-word list too — on the first essay, they'll circle over a hundred of the hundred and forty words on that researched list. By the last essay, if they're only circling around thirty, it's because a different kind of judgment has entered — they're making room for what happened. [00:09:00]

Fernando Alessandri: Something shifts, and it's pretty wild to see. That's why trauma became my favorite thing to work on — there's such a big return for the effort, compared to other conditions that take much longer, or where you're mostly just maintaining rather than improving.

Laura Williams: [00:09:15] I'd imagine one of the harder things as a psychologist is getting people to actually, honestly participate — they might brush off a trauma, or sometimes make it sound more dramatic than it was. But what you're describing — having them write the story — gives you both a path to changing the story, and a chance to build trust, so they understand you're not judging them, you're facilitating and trying to help. I'd think that [00:10:00] makes people more honest by the end of it.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:10:03] Yeah. You've got your gut-spillers and your reserved people, and even there you have to look for the underlying motivation. But what's actually refreshing for a lot of them is that I don't necessarily need to read those essays — they're for them. Something happens just in the act of writing it, or speaking it up in a group, like Al-Anon or AA.

Fernando Alessandri: I think putting it into words is what gives people so much of the benefit. Nodding, gentle empathy, and validation matter too, of course — honestly, half my work is just saying, “That's horrible,” to someone who was always told to just get over it.

Fernando Alessandri: People grow up in homes with parents who can be really invalidating — “You think that's suffering? You haven't seen suffering.” That's the wrong answer. Just saying, “Wow, that's horrible, [00:11:00] nobody should have to go through that,” helps someone start listening better to themselves, and repair that internal disconnect where they aren't even naming things correctly.

Laura Williams: [00:11:11] In today's society, we're kind of forced to shove down grief or trauma and move on. When something tragic happens — say someone very close to you passes away — you go through the funeral and everything around it, but within a week or so you're expected to be back at work, and you can't show up there showing grief. There's that whole masking thing.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:11:41] It's horrible, because even that first week, with the funeral and all the guests, you're still faking, still performing. The real grieving hasn't even started yet.

Fernando Alessandri: I actually had a brother who passed away — I was only two years old at the time, too young to remember. But I learned later that my mother's favorite guest [00:12:00] was an old Jewish man who came and just sat, saying nothing. He didn't try to make anything better. He just sat there all day. She said, “That guy was the best — he's the only one who really understood.”

Fernando Alessandri: That was such a lesson to me. We make noise, we talk, we try to say the right thing, and it's mostly nonsense. People just need to cry. It's strange — we know exactly what to do with a physical injury. If you break your arm, you put it in a cast, you protect it, you don't let people bump into it. But with trauma, we need space to crawl into our hole and just be alone for a while — maybe someone can be present, but without all the verbal nonsense.

Laura Williams: [00:12:50] I've personally had a lot of grief and trauma in my own life. My mother once told me — I think I was around thirty-five at the [00:13:00] time — “You're the strongest woman I've ever met.” And I just looked at her, thinking, no, I'm just really good at not showing what's going on. That has nothing to do with strength.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:13:17] I grew up that way too — you never let anyone see you sweat. People didn't even know when I'd finished my homework. You didn't show any of that; you were too cool. But something I noticed early on, at my first VA hospital, meeting Vietnam veterans and learning how much commanders had used drugs and alcohol to help people cope — I realized soldiers actually needed something different. Yes, you need to act brave while you're still in the field.

Fernando Alessandri: That's not the time to break down — your buddies are falling around you. But [00:14:00] that same night, the group has to come together, have the group hugs, the crying, the wailing, all of it — and then they'll sleep well and be better soldiers the next day, compared to the ones who fake it and numb out with substances.

Fernando Alessandri: Those guys are going to be exhausted, crappy soldiers in the morning.

Laura Williams: [00:14:22] Just thinking about the Vietnam War specifically, the drug use was absolutely staggering.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:14:28] Even strategically, it made no sense. It's so sad — your resources are already compromised, and now you compromise them even further, so more guys end up dying in battle.

Laura Williams: [00:14:42] Is that culture changing, where they're more open about it now? Or is it more after they leave service, once they're veterans, that they start opening up? I'd guess that's when they're more exposed to that kind of help. I'm just [00:15:00] curious.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:15:01] I didn't work as much with active military, but at the prison I saw it with corrections officers — they still carry that macho bravado. I think it's easier for veterans, because they're not in it anymore, and someone's convinced them to come to therapy — something's already shifting for them.

Fernando Alessandri: So it depends on readiness. Culturally, in theory, things are changing, but people throw the words around without really knowing what they mean. A guy can give a talk about becoming a “trauma-informed” facility — it was mostly a male environment at the prison — and then go yell at the next inmate he sees, banging on the bars, without realizing those behaviors are exactly what might be triggering. He doesn't actually understand the concepts yet.

Fernando Alessandri: So there's progress at the top, in terms of awareness that something needs to change, but it's still rough at the ground level. I tend to be a good therapist for men because I compare things to opening the hood of a car — someone who doesn't know cars gets freaked out by all those unfamiliar parts. [00:16:00]

Fernando Alessandri: But once you learn what something is, it's no big deal. Emotions are the same way. These words seem like they're “for women,” but they're really just ways of describing experience, and it's better to know the names of the tools instead of just saying, “Hey, pass me that thing.” In surgery, you can't just call everything “that thing” — you need the actual names, and it makes life better once you can discriminate between them.

Fernando Alessandri: It's that idea that vocabulary itself helps. In mental health, I dug into why therapists always ask, “How does that make you feel?” And it turns out there's real research behind it — helping people discriminate, giving them room to go beyond just “happy, mad, sad” and get much deeper.

Fernando Alessandri: They start circling words like, “I actually felt betrayed by this,” or “I felt cheated when this happened in my life.” The variety of words adds to the whole experience. My theory is that it's like driving a car — if you have a clunker but you know how to keep it running, you don't sweat the little issues. [00:17:00]

Fernando Alessandri: Whereas someone who knows nothing about cars sees a little smoke and panics, pulls over, and their whole day gets rewritten because they don't know what to do about it.

Laura Williams: [00:17:29] Isn't it beautiful how language so simply informs our humanity like that? I love that so much.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:17:37] It really does — and it can create panic, or it can create calm.

Laura Williams: [00:17:41] Let me ask you — when you're creating a character for one of your books, does the psychologist in you take over? Character development is so fascinating to me, I'd love your take.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:17:55] I'm sure you've heard the phrase imposter syndrome. [00:18:00] This is my first book, so it's not like I feel I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm pretty untraditional, because I went through film school, where they unfortunately teach you to turn a fun passion into factory work.

Fernando Alessandri: They analyze everything, break it down into formulas, and I naturally rebel against that — constantly, which is probably why I never had a successful career in that industry. But I think that same rebellious streak helped in psychology, and it helped with this book too. This book really came out of me having to force it down into being a hobby, because I had a little PTSD from all the scripts that had ended up in the trash or in a drawer.

Fernando Alessandri: Because you're writing a script meant to be sold. This book became something where it was just, “Whatever, I'm just doing this, and it's fun, and I love sitting with my characters.” I did consult with someone twice — [00:19:00] someone I used to work with in the film industry.

Fernando Alessandri: I thought, why not take it seriously? This one actually started as a script, but I had her walk me back down to the outline level, which I'm terrible at. I'm good at parody — good at taking other people's material and doing funny things with it — but originating structure from scratch is harder for me. It already had some bones, because a friend had started the story and I built it up from there. The factory-style approach just doesn't work for me. What worked was releasing myself from any pressure — I have my day job, this is just a hobby.

Fernando Alessandri: One thing that fed into it was my interest in stand-up comedy. I've gotten on stage, tried performing — I'm a terrible memorizer, I have ADHD, but I think I'm a good joke writer. I journal every morning, and I flip to the back of the notebook whenever a joke idea comes to me. It was amazing how many [00:20:00] of those jokes ended up fitting into this book.

Fernando Alessandri: I hate wasting a joke — you say it, people laugh, and then what? My first real transition, actually, was making T-shirts. I'd realize, wait, that's a T-shirt idea — two words, funny. I came up with “Last Responder” — I just want to be a last responder, don't call me first. That one's actually for codependent people — stop getting involved, let someone else handle it. I put a little La-Z-Boy chair graphic with the words “Last Responder” underneath.

Fernando Alessandri: Part of my journey has been figuring out what belongs in what medium — is this a movie, a stand-up bit, a coffee mug, a T-shirt, a book, a script, a play? In terms of character development, I had the basic characters, and there was some reflection where my protagonist ended up a lot like my dad, and I started mining that. [00:21:00]

Fernando Alessandri: Some of the humor comes from that — an older immigrant who says inappropriate things constantly. I saw the same thing with veterans — another therapist would get bent out of shape trying to get an eighty-year-old guy to stop calling women “girls.” Like, really? That's wasting his time, and it's more about your own discomfort than actually helping him.

Fernando Alessandri: So, learning to accept people as they are — stop trying to control and change everyone, just watch this guy go, watch him bump into HR. My character is kind of a James Bond, or the Saint, or Get Smart type — one of those old-school spy archetypes. I thought, what would it be like if he ran into the Me Too movement, HR, all of that? I wanted to deal with things movies never touch — [00:22:00] spoiler, the guy's probably got kids out there somewhere. It always felt too convenient in those old movies that every woman would just conveniently die.

Fernando Alessandri: So he's probably got kids. And then I thought it'd be funny to ask, who might still be chasing him? He assumes it's the big, important villains, but they've all got dementia now, they've all moved on. So instead, it's one of his own family members coming after him — I went full Princess Bride with it: “You killed my stepfather. Prepare to die.” It's a nostalgic piece — I reference a lot of old movies, like Casablanca, I love the song “As Time Goes By.”

Laura Williams: [00:22:48] Oh, me too.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:22:49] So for the blurb I wrote, “As Time Goes Bye-Bye.” These are older people — what are you going to do with the years you have left?

Laura Williams: [00:22:58] I actually saved your book to my to-be-read list on Amazon — I'll get to it. You know how it is, we all [00:23:00] have those TBR lists a mile long. But going through your bio, one thing that really caught my attention is that you've been compared to Hiaasen — he's one of my favorite authors, I love his work.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:23:25] What a hoot.

Laura Williams: [00:23:27] Right? He's just so much — over the top, in the best way. That's a great comparison.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:23:34] I was thrilled when someone put me in that category. Like, whoa, okay!

Laura Williams: [00:23:38] I'd be beside myself to be compared to somebody like that, because he's such a uniquely different writer. There are plenty of famous authors you could get compared to, but they're not necessarily as distinctly different as he is. Getting compared to someone that unique is a really big deal. [00:24:00]

Fernando Alessandri: [00:24:00] Yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:24:01] That's really —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:24:01] I'm thrilled by that, and by the other two comparisons too — it's exciting.

Laura Williams: [00:24:07] So in your books, is there a lot of trauma woven in, even though it's a humor book? Or do you keep it —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:24:19] Oh.

Laura Williams: [00:24:19] — more surface level?

Fernando Alessandri: [00:24:20] I wasn't doing it consciously, but yeah, there's a lot in there. My life has honestly been a rollercoaster. I understand why people aren't shown their future — we'd just keel over if we saw everything we were going to have to survive. It's gone from frying pan to fire, over and over, almost movie-like.

Fernando Alessandri: I remember thinking early on, since I'm a believer, “Whatever God's writing in my life is going to be better than anything I could ever write myself,” because it's had so many twists and turns. I joined a cult at a young age, and it took me a long time [00:25:00] to unwind my way out of that, because I didn't want to be seen as a quitter or a betrayer.

Fernando Alessandri: It's funny, because in film school I made a short film called Quitters, while I myself was trying not to quit — a whole ironic thing, still online somewhere. After that, I got married too quickly to someone who, it turned out, didn't actually want to be married. It was a nightmare, but I'm Catholic, so you don't just walk away from things like that.

Fernando Alessandri: That took another eight years before I even talked to a priest about it — I asked, “Is this normal?” I'd been conditioned to be a martyr, since I'd stuck out that other situation for twenty-two years, and I was ready to stick this one out too. But he said, “Oh gosh, you should've come to me the day after the wedding — we could've sorted this out. This was fraudulent, it's non-binding, you're not a bad person for leaving.”

Fernando Alessandri: Still, it's been years of difficult co-parenting — I've followed my son from state to state because I'm always going to be there for him. And then there's the more conscious trauma — [00:26:00] some of the employers I've had have just been awful, and I think that's so relatable. So many of us are living these quiet lives dealing with awful employers, and sometimes —

Laura Williams: [00:26:17] That gives you all of that material to work with.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:26:19] Yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:26:20] It gives you so much fuel for writing. You usually don't write exactly what happened verbatim, but you can flavor a scene with it, or send a character on the journey you wish you'd taken yourself. It's something to play with — it's a lot of fun, and it does help you work through things.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:26:41] Yeah, and it's an opportunity to slip in commentary, little jabs, to help wake people up a bit. It'll be very recognizable if it's ever made into a film — some of the HR stuff, I poke fun at a lot of the carelessness around it. Social workers, people I'm [00:27:00] around, aren't always careful with language. In some contexts we tell people to just be themselves, be you — but you don't put that sign up in a prison.

Laura Williams: [00:27:12] Yeah.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:27:14] Like —

Laura Williams: [00:27:15] No.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:27:15] this guy should not be told to just be himself. Something actually needs to change here.

Laura Williams: [00:27:21] Yes, that can definitely be taken several ways. I write fantasy fiction, and I use a lot of humor because that's just my nature — I've got a good sense of humor, and it's carried me through a lot. My daughter and I crack up all the time — something happens to us, and it might take a minute, but then we're laughing about it, like, can you believe that just happened? Whereas someone else might never get there.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:27:49] I actually have a pet theory that overlaps with all the mindfulness and breathing work. Why is there so much emphasis on breathing and the diaphragm? Well, a hard laugh works the diaphragm — the same stomach muscles. [00:28:00]

Fernando Alessandri: When we engage and tighten that area, it seems to trigger some kind of reset on our whole perspective.

Laura Williams: [00:28:14] After a good laugh, or a good cry, you feel better afterward. Isn't that interesting?

Fernando Alessandri: [00:28:23] Yeah — sit with that feeling for a while, it's a reset of some kind. The ancients already concluded laughter was the best medicine, so these ideas have been around a long time. We don't always know exactly why, but my theory ties it to that stomach and breathing connection.

Laura Williams: [00:28:39] I've read that people who laugh more tend to feel chronic pain less, and —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:28:46] Abs—

Laura Williams: [00:28:46] I find that interesting.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:28:47] No, absolutely. That's actually what got the essay researcher started — he noticed that when students wrote these essays, their immune systems improved, and he began measuring it. It wasn't originally about psychology at all — he was studying the physical effects first. [00:29:00] Later, researchers added depression and anxiety into the picture. But it started with health-center visits and other measures of immune function, and that eventually led to what we understand today — that so much physical ailment begins as stress, and stress releases hormones that, if they just sit there unused, cause harm.

Fernando Alessandri: If you have a panic attack, you should go walk it off, run it off, because you don't want that extra adrenaline just floating around unused in your body.

Laura Williams: [00:29:35] For many years I worked in very high-stress environments — and I don't just mean deadline pressure. I managed nightclubs, big clubs. Picture standing on the floor on a Saturday night with four or five hundred people —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:29:58] Yikes.

Laura Williams: [00:29:58] — all of them drinking, [00:30:00]

Fernando Alessandri: [00:30:01] Yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:30:02] watching for problems, trying to keep everyone safe and having a good time — it's incredibly stressful. People running out of things, fights breaking out, whatever it is. Every night you go in prepared for the worst thing to happen, even if the worst thing doesn't actually happen for months. When I finally got out of that business, I had no idea what to do with that stress response, that fight-or-flight state I'd been living in constantly. I had to sit with it for a while — it took time to adjust, because I was so used to —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:30:40] Catastrophizing, basically.

Laura Williams: [00:30:42] You wouldn't think that's what that environment does to the people working there, but yeah — I've talked to other friends who were bartenders and such, and they had the exact same experience getting out of it. It's like they could finally breathe again.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:30:56] It's funny, I hadn't thought about that specifically, but [00:31:00] when I was in film school, I remember thinking, putting a production together is like waging a small war — the logistics alone are staggering. For you to be doing that every single night, that's a prolonged, incredible stress that has to go somewhere.

Laura Williams: [00:31:17] Right, because there's no resting from it. Even on your days off, you're thinking, “I need to remember to schedule this person, order this, take care of that.”

Fernando Alessandri: [00:31:26] Right.

Laura Williams: [00:31:26] So it's never really restful. Until I got out of it, and suddenly it was like, who even are you? You're so different from that other person.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:31:38] Yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:31:38] I know there's a point where humor stops being a healthy way to cope and starts getting in the way of actually dealing with things. So when you're writing a book — humor or any other genre, let's stick with fiction — and a character's going through something in their life, how do you show the reader the moment they shift, either from humor into something serious, or from something serious back into humor? I'd guess that's more intuitive for you than for most people, since you see it play out so often.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:32:24] I'm a pretty skittish surgeon, honestly — I don't like causing people pain. But for their own good, sometimes you have to poke. We have to do it. I don't like it when people mask, or claim insight prematurely — like I mentioned earlier, if you pretend you've already got the insight, you're short-changing the process.

Fernando Alessandri: So it really bothers me when someone says something sarcastic and calls it, “Oh, I love that he did that.” I want to say, don't confuse things — don't use humor there. [00:33:00] Or in couples therapy — don't use humor about something that's actually deeply serious to you.

Laura Williams: [00:33:06] Or to someone else.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:33:09] Right — save humor for humor, and talk seriously when something's serious. Don't use humor as a tool to say something hurtful, or to pretend you don't care about something that actually matters to you.

Laura Williams: [00:33:24] Yeah.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:33:25] It avoids confusion. So I try to nip that in the bud when I see people using humor as a cover, or to minimize something. Genuine humor is so valuable — I don't want it ruined by being repurposed as a deflection. But I'm also reminded that, even though I don't like hurting people, sometimes things need to be said clearly.

Fernando Alessandri: I mentioned that film, Quitters — I remember feeling genuinely sick near the end, when I finally have a character say something very direct. The film is ninety-five, ninety-eight percent humor, [00:34:00] but there's one character who lands something like a knife to the gut. I'm poking fun at all these quitters throughout, and then one guy says, “I was raised differently — in my family, we thought keeping your word mattered. But I understand, Joe's just staying true to himself.” My stomach sinks every time, worrying I'm going to genuinely hurt somebody.

Fernando Alessandri: I have another short film where I worry, are people going to think I'm against this thing? I worry a lot — I'm a worrier, but also kind of an instigator. So even though I never fully resolve the tension, I still put it out there. It's a painful thing to do. In the book, there are some serious moments too. My protagonist has this whole unaddressed history of womanizing, one that Hollywood certainly never made him slow down and reflect on.

Fernando Alessandri: In the book, his own daughter challenges him to date [00:35:00] more appropriately, someone closer to his own age. But then he turns around and lectures a young woman about using her sexuality as if it's her most important asset. So he offers a kind of corrective, even while being flawed himself — he's not a total loser. Even if he's losing some things, a broken clock is still right twice a day. Don't dismiss older people, and don't dismiss people just because they're showing some vulnerability or weakness.

Laura Williams: [00:35:32] One of the fun things about film and books is how much of them center on redemption — the hero's journey. Characters start out in one set of circumstances, move through the story, learn about themselves and the people around them, and arrive somewhere different by the end.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:35:52] That's actually where I'll admit a potential weakness. I don't know if it fully gets achieved, or to what [00:36:00] degree, because it's tricky to keep it believable — like, wait, would he really change that fast?

Laura Williams: [00:36:07] Right.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:36:07] Someone might say, “Well, he's still kind of a jerk at the end,” and honestly, that's more true to life. As I think about eventually turning it into a movie, I hope once other creative voices get involved — actors really inhabiting the character, adding their own input, a director shaping the pacing — it's really hard for one lone writer to nail all of that alone. I'd love for it to become a movie someday, where those other elements come together. Some of this material would need to wait for a third installment, or become its own series.

Laura Williams: [00:36:46] Are you planning a series with this book, or is that still something you're thinking through?

Fernando Alessandri: [00:36:52] I'd love — oh, you mean not necessarily a TV series, but a sequel? Yeah, there's a hint at the end. [00:37:00] There's something funny there — I think it's funny, at least. I love language, and sometimes phrases just pop into my head, and I never know at first whether it's meant to be a website, a business, a T-shirt, or something else. I always struggle with what to do with those. But this book became the vehicle for it.

Fernando Alessandri: At the end, there's a hint that he's headed for another mission. He was supposed to be retired, and he gets out, but he's still resisting retirement. Sure enough, in the sequel he ends up being sent somewhere called the Sentimental Mental Center.

Laura Williams: [00:37:38] That's an interesting title.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:37:40] It's just ridiculous — it's just —

Laura Williams: [00:37:42] Oh.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:37:43] when things get too soft and mushy and over the top, I can't help but laugh. My field has so much absurdity built into it, and it just seemed like a ripe environment to explore. He'll have to go undercover — I hint that [00:38:00] he plays along as though he murdered someone. I worked at a forensic hospital, so it'll be something like that, where he takes the insanity plea as a way to get inside and find out what's really going on.

Laura Williams: [00:38:10] I can't wait to read your book.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:38:12] I'm excited to hear what you think. I think of it as a bit of a pastiche — honestly, I believe, and I hope I'm wrong about any weaknesses, but I think it works as something you can open randomly and find a joke or two in. I hope it also works in terms of plot and everything else a book's supposed to have.

Laura Williams: [00:38:34] Let me ask you — once you finished the book, did you work with an editor?

Fernando Alessandri: [00:38:41] I've been on quite a journey trying to figure out how to do all this. I actually first looked into ghostwriters — I had the script, but I wanted to turn it into a book to protect it, since Hollywood would change everything if they ever bought it, to the point I wouldn't even recognize it.

Fernando Alessandri: So I wanted it as a book, and these ghostwriters kept dropping their price, and I thought, okay, I guess I could do that. They were terrible, and they were using AI, and I kept saying, no — here's the script, just format this, please, just turn it into — and they wouldn't listen. It was such a frustrating experience. In the end, I credit them mostly with being a good secretary — they harassed me weekly, which created a schedule that kept me productive, just through that annoying back-and-forth. I don't think I used a single word they actually wrote.

Fernando Alessandri: Well, one — they suggested the word “manifest,” as in “manifest success.” I thought, oh, that's cute. But that's genuinely it. It was such a rough process. I stumble a bit here because I know I'm bumping up against more purist authors with different expectations, and honestly, I'm just a guy trying to tell his jokes, have fun, make some entertainment, and I'd love to see this turn into something [00:40:00] people can enjoy in nursing homes, you know?

Fernando Alessandri: I'm just trying to build community and fun. The downside of film is that it's factory work — I want to move toward live entertainment, where people laugh immediately, get the payoff right away. I used that script consultant — she built the outline, then read my first draft. Her feedback on the draft wasn't super deep, I think she didn't spend that much time on it, but it was still helpful, and it validated that I was mostly on the right track. That gave me a beginning, middle, and end — helped with structure.

Fernando Alessandri: One of my sisters, who's a writer — more of a technical writer, and also makes purses, very creative person — read an early draft and put smiley faces wherever she laughed, which was hugely helpful for knowing what was actually landing. And honestly, that was about it. [00:41:00] I'm very shy about asking people to take time out of their day for me — even though I'll happily do it for other people. I can go knock on doors and say, “Hey, my friend's making a movie, can I use your house?” I'm brave doing that for others, but not for myself. Another sister of mine wrote a book and kept talking about ARC readers and beta readers, and I had no idea what any of that meant — so this book got out into the world with a lot fewer eyes on it than most.

Laura Williams: [00:41:30] That's not unusual for a first book. A lot of times it's the second book where an author really starts thinking, okay, I got the first one out of my system, now I need to take further steps and figure out how to get this one out there properly. It's just part of the process, and sometimes people never get to the point of taking it fully seriously. That's actually one reason my show [00:42:00] exists — creative people often don't naturally have business sense. They don't know where to start, don't know how to plan out a publishing journey, what they need, any of it. We go through this every time we talk on the show.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:42:18] It's so hard and distracting. I haven't been able to write at all while trying to promote this. I jumped into the audiobook pretty quickly, and boy, did that cause a round of rewrites. It was an extremely humbling but genuinely helpful exercise —

Fernando Alessandri: reading it out loud.

Laura Williams: [00:42:39] For my dialogue, I actually talk it out loud to myself first. Once I finish a chapter, I usually sit down with my daughter and we read it out loud to each other.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:42:52] Oh yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:42:53] It helps make sure the dialogue actually works — which is something people tell me I'm [00:43:00] good at, probably because of that habit. Most books are dialogue-driven, so it's a big piece of the puzzle.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:43:10] For me, honestly, that's the reality — I love dialogue. I'm not great at describing what a tree looks like. I'm just not that kind of writer.

Laura Williams: [00:43:18] But even in those descriptive moments, reading it out loud helps you tell whether it's actually working — whether it visualizes.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:43:25] Absolutely.

Laura Williams: [00:43:26] If you read it aloud and you're not visualizing it, it's not working, and you have to go back and fix it.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:43:32] Right.

Laura Williams: [00:43:33] It also helps with pacing and the flow of the story. Think about how many genuinely good books you've read where you hit a section and just think, this is dragging so much I don't even want to keep reading?

Fernando Alessandri: [00:43:50] Oh, yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:43:52] Right. So reading it out loud —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:43:53] A lot.

Laura Williams: [00:43:53] — you feel that much more, because now you've read twelve pages [00:44:00] in a monotone and you don't want to keep going.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:44:04] Yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:44:04] And you realize, okay, this is actually an issue.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:44:08] Yeah, absolutely.

Laura Williams: [00:44:10] It's a fun little trick — I really enjoy doing it.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:44:13] In my very first screenwriting class — before I did full-on film school, I actually snuck into a class at NYU — the instructor said, take a tape recorder, record a real conversation without anyone knowing, and type it up. That was a great exercise in feeling how people actually talk, including all the pauses.

Fernando Alessandri: Tuning into that reality is essential.

Laura Williams: [00:44:41] It's really interesting, because that's genuinely not how we write — we don't write the way people actually talk. When I edit a podcast, no matter how well-spoken someone is, there's always some amount of —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:44:56] Sure.

Laura Williams: [00:44:56] filler. When I'm editing something like that, sometimes I'm surprised — okay, I did a [00:45:00] thirty-nine-minute conversation with this person and there were a hundred and seventeen filler words.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:06] Ha.

Laura Williams: [00:45:06] That's a lot — but that's just a normal conversation. You don't realize it's happening, because you're not really hearing it as it goes by.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:13] Yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:45:15] Right?

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:17] It very much —

Laura Williams: [00:45:17] Yeah. If we actually wrote dialogue like that, it would be a nightmare to read.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:21] Oh, right — no, you have to edit it out, but it still informs the writing a little.

Laura Williams: [00:45:26] Yeah.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:27] Because we also have to avoid the opposite extreme, where everyone always speaks so eloquently, so —

Laura Williams: [00:45:34] Right, right.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:36] Like —

Laura Williams: [00:45:36] if you're writing something set in the 1700s, you might lean a little more —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:40] Exactly.

Laura Williams: [00:45:41] toward that, if —

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:42] Exactly.

Laura Williams: [00:45:42] the character has a certain education level. But in today's society, we take a lot more shortcuts in how we actually talk than people did back then. I don't know, language and words are just endlessly fascinating to me. I wouldn't be doing this show if they weren't.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:45:59] Yeah. [00:46:00] Makes sense.

Laura Williams: [00:46:00] I've really, really enjoyed so much of this conversation — this has been genuinely fun. I love getting into how story informs your work in psychology, and how you carry that into your books as well.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:46:19] The other thing I've become comfortable with is realizing, at some point, that I've probably written a book that maybe ten people are really going to get — and that's okay. Those ten people are out there.

Laura Williams: [00:46:28] Right.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:46:29] I hope it's broader than that, but there's real satisfaction in knowing there's an audience, even a small one. I'm not going to chase what other people say the audience should be. I'm going to be me. I've definitely found my voice, the thing I want to share, and I hope people find it.

Laura Williams: [00:46:45] Think of some of the more avant-garde authors out there — they found their audience too, it just took being exposed to the right place at the right time.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:46:51] Mm-hmm.

Laura Williams: [00:46:52] So much of this business honestly comes down to being in the right place at the right [00:47:00] time, whether that's online or in person. It's about getting noticed — that's really what marketing is. It's not just about exposure, it's about getting yourself in front of the right people at the right moment.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:47:13] Absolutely.

Laura Williams: [00:47:14] So you mentioned struggling with that side of the business — do you handle your own marketing? I know how difficult that is.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:47:22] Yeah. I've been leaning on old connections, since I'm also pushing the script alongside it. I have short films from twenty-five years ago that, I'm proud to say, still hold up. Usually we're all mentally re-editing our own old work when we watch it again, but I actually think, no, this is fine.

Fernando Alessandri: I recently got some mileage out of a film festival — most festivals exclude you if your work isn't recent, but something made me search for festivals that day, and I found one with no age restriction on submissions. I got in, and it turned out to be the very next weekend — kind of bizarre. I [00:48:00] think it's mostly a money mill, honestly, just collecting entry fees. But it gave me an opportunity to post about my films, and about the book. I went, and I only promoted the book — had a poster made, some business cards. I'm also using LinkedIn and Instagram in different ways, and reaching out to media people and podcasters.

Laura Williams: [00:48:26] I wish you the best of success with all of it — it sounds like you've been through quite the journey to get here. I hope now that this book's out, you keep writing, whether it's screenwriting, more in this series, or a whole new project. Your creative mind is something we definitely need more of.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:48:47] Thank you so much, I really appreciate that, and I really enjoyed this conversation.

Laura Williams: [00:48:50] Tell my audience how they can find you and your book.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:48:56] Sure. I have a couple of websites — one for mental health called incapables.org, [00:49:00] because so often we think of ourselves as incapable, and I want to help people get out of that rut. That leads to me directly. Then there's Fern Factor, using my own name — fernfactor.com — where I post the T-shirts and the book. I'm working on consolidating it all into one place, but those two will get you started.

Fernando Alessandri: Fernfactor.com is probably the easier one to remember, or incapables.org.

Laura Williams: [00:49:29] Okay, I'll make sure that's all in the show notes. I really appreciate this, Fernando — thank you so much for joining me today.

Fernando Alessandri: [00:49:36] Thank you, Laura.

Laura Williams: [00:49:37] To learn more about the podcast, and to be the first to know when new episodes are up, visit thewritingbiz.com. Until next time, take what you've learned and put it to work in your own writing biz. Thanks.