In my graphic novel, one of my main characters has retrograde amnesia (all of his existing memories are gone/buried) and I need some help making that part of his personality a bit more realistic. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!
First of all, I love him. That whole 'awkwardly well dressed for the apocalypse' thing, i'm digging that aesthetic. But yeah you've got the idea down, usually retrograde amnesia will effect a few years prior to the event but people usually don't forget a whole lifetime but it's happened, to be frank though, maybe don't get caught up in all the little details of the science of it. Amnesia is a really common narrative device and it's almost never is it done 100% faithful to science, so I'm pretty sure your readers will forgive you if you don't give them a university level course in head trauma. speaking of head trauma realistically your guy who probably have lots of other problems with motor functions etc from an injury that sever (which is all the more reason you might not want to be faithful to real life, because after all it is your story and you make the rules) But anyway yeah as a concept you've already got it down. If you need help with any specif questions you know where to find me.
but for real I can just picture that 'him waking up on the train scene' and it's great- great job
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He looks really good except for one major thing about his amnesia. Retrograde amnesia is not caused by head trauma most of the time. Head trauma, when it does cause amnesia, typically causes anterograde amnesia and affects the ability to form new memories. For example, if your character played the piano before their accident, they'll still remember how after the fact, but they won't be able to memorize any new pieces.
Retrograde amnesia, on the other hand, is usually resulting from psychiatric disorder, due to emotional/mental trauma as opposed to physical. That said, you could still use the train crash for the reason why he lost memories, but it most likely won't be brain injury that caused it (also brain injury is super serious, and might not be the way to go…)
I'd say look into it a little more. If you find that the story works as it is, great, but it's worth making sure you have your facts completely straight. (Disclaimer: I am no expert. This is just from things that I learned in psychology.)
Well though other things can cause it, like yes a mental disorder, strokes and other diseases like altimeters or chronic seizures it can in fact be caused by a brain injury, and that seems like it will be the most viable for the story you are trying to tell (or at least more viable then he got botched neurosurgery the day of the Apocalypse) but if you want to pick a different reason becin is right it is possible for mental trauma to be so terrible the brain literally 'forgets itself' to try and cope- it'll put a very dark twist on your story but something like watching a loved one die or being raped could be enough to cause amnesia. But becin also has a good point about episodic and semantic memories v procedural, episodic would be memories of personal life events and semantic is kinda general knowledge of the world, but you need to keep procedural memory for your story because that's all the physical walking taking etc type stuff. So you're doing alright as is,
Yup. You don't have to change anything necessarily. It was just a suggestion/warning. As long as you do your research, you should do fine.