Source: The Writer, Jan 1997 v110 n1 p9(4).

Title: Turning your experiences into fiction.

Author: Edward Hower

Abstract: Writing fiction based on their own lives allows writers to examine their pasts and even make improvements on their experiences. Tips on choosing a memory that makes good material for fiction are presented. Suggestions on character, plot and theme development are included.

Subjects: Fiction - Authorship

Authorship - Methods

Magazine Collection: 87B0460

Electronic Collection: A18963062

RN: A18963062

Full Text COPYRIGHT 1997 Kalmbach Publishing Company

That would make a good story--you ought to write it!"

How many times have you heard people say this, after you've told them about some interesting experience?

But if you're like me, you may not want to write directly about yourself, except perhaps in your private journal. This doesn't mean, however, that your own life can't be used as material for fiction. Using your own experiences as starting places for stories or novels gives your work an authenticity that made-up adventures may lack. A great many fiction writers have mined their own pasts--some of them over and over throughout their careers.

Advantages of starting with yourself

Writing stories that are similar to real-life occurrences allows you to relive and to re-examine your life. In fiction, you can explore all the might-have-beens of your past. You can experience the loves that didn't quite happen but that might have proved blissful or (more interestingly) disastrous in tragic or amusing ways. You can delve into your worst fears, describing what might have happened if you hadn't been so careful about trusting strangers or about avoiding life's dark alleys.

And by creating characters similar to yourself and to people you've known, you can get a perspective on your past that couldn't come from direct, analytic examination. One of the most gratifying experiences I had in writing my last novel was getting to know my family all over again in ways I'd never previously considered. Some angel resurfaced, but so did a lot of compassion. And I finally got a kind of closure on my sometimes painful childhood that had eluded me before.

I've emphasized writing about the past here rather than about the present. This is because I think it's a lot more productive to deal with material from which you have psychic distance.

Selective memory can produce interesting, emotionally charged material for fiction. Recent events, however, are hard to deal with creatively. Immediate reality intrudes, and issues unresolved in life resist resolution in fiction.

Searching your life

Here's an exercise I used while I was writing my recent semi-autobiographical novel, Night Train Blues. I've frequently given the exercise to students in my creative writing workshops, too. It's designed to help retrieve buried memories and then transform them into usable images, characters, and episodes for stories or longer fiction.

First, decide on a period in your life you'd like to write about. A year in your past in which emotionally intense experiences happened is often the best one. This doesn't mean that the events need to be melodramatic. Small traumas and triumphs often make the best material for fiction, especially if they involve people you've had strong feelings about. Events that caused you to change your attitude toward yourself and other people are especially good. For this reason, many writers choose a period from childhood or adolescence-the times of many emotional changes.

Start the exercise in a quiet place, alone. Get comfortable, close your eyes, and take slow deep breaths. Now imagine yourself going home during the time period you've chosen. Picture yourself approaching the place where you lived. Imagine entering it. What do you see . . . hear . . . smell? Go into the next room. What's there? Now go into the room in which you kept your personal possessions. Stand in the middle of the floor and look around. What do you see . . . hear . . . smell? Now go to some object that was especially precious to you. Hold it. Feel it. Turn it around. Get to know it again with as many senses as possible. Then ask yourself: Why did I choose this object?

As soon as you're ready, open your eyes and start writing as fast as you can. First describe the object in great detail. If you want to discuss people and events associated with it, that's fine, too. Finally, write about the object's importance to you. You might give yourself ten to fifteen minutes for the entire exercise. Don't edit what you write. Don't even pause to look back over it--fill as much paper as you can. If you write fast, you'll fill at least a page, probably more.

When I did this exercise, the object I found was an old wooden radio with a cloth dial and an orange light that glowed behind it. I mentally ran my fingers over its smooth, rounded surfaces. I put my nose up to it and smelled the dusty cloth warmed by the pale bulb behind it. I twisted the dial, and listened to my favorite childhood stations.

Thinking about the radio's meaning for me, I remembered the warm relationship I'd had with the person who gave it to me. The radio also reacquainted me with country songs I later came to associate with an important character in my novel, my young hero's wandering older brother. So I gave my fictional narrator a radio similar to the one I'd had, and I let him find solace in its music, too.

My students have also come up with radios, given to them by important people in their lives. Dolls and stuffed animals, sports equipment, pictures, china figurines, tools, articles of clothing--all have been highly evocative objects that eventually radiated emotions not only for the writers but for their fictional characters as well. Cars, records, and clothes were important items for people returning to adolescence. Each freshly-recalled object resonated with feelings about rebellion, first love, and newfound freedoms.

Transforming truth into fiction

Now it's time to turn this object into the central image of a story or novel chapter. Write "If this were fiction. . ." at the top of a page. Give yourself a different name. You are now a fictional character, one who resembles yourself but who will gradually develop his or her own personality as you continue working.

Then jot down some answers to these questions:

Character development

1. What does the choice of this object tell about the character (A--"you") who chose it?

* Who is A? Describe this person quickly.

2. Imagine that another character (B) gave A the object.

* Who is B? Describe B quickly.

* What is B's relationship to A?

3. Imagine that yet another character (C) wants the object.

* Who is C? Describe C quickly.

* What is C's relationship to B and A?

When trying to imagine B and C, you might choose people from your own life or people like them who might have given you the object or might have coveted it. Characters often come from composites of several people you knew--the physical attributes of one person, the voice of another, the sense of humor or the mannerisms of another.

One way to get to know characters not modeled after yourself is to start the visualization exercise again, this time treating someone you knew as you did the object in the previous exercise. Follow the person around in your visualization, observing and listening closely. Then write a fast page or two about what you discovered.

Another good way to understand a character is to make lists of his or her attributes and preferences. Jot down his or her favorite clothes, food, TV show, brand of car, breed of dog, film hero, period in history, childhood memory, and so forth. Say what religious, political, and ethical beliefs the character has. Expand the list until you feel you know as much about this fictional person as you do about your best friend. You may not use much of this material in the actual story, but it gives you the background of the character that you need in order to write with authority.

Plot development

The treasured object can give you some ideas about what storyline to follow. Try answering these questions:

1. A and the object

* Why does A treasure it? What will A do with it?

* What problems might result from his having it?

2. B and the object

* Where did B get the object? Why did B give it to A?

* What problems might result from B giving it to A?

3. C and the object

* Why does C want the object?

* What problems might result from C trying to get it?

All plots involve conflicts--thus the emphasis on problems. Once you've listed some conflicts, choose one that interests you and try answering some more questions:

1. What events might foreshadow this conflict?

2. What dramatic action might result from this conflict?

3. How might the conflict be resolved?

By this time, you've probably discovered that although the story has ostensibly been about an object, it's really about people. One is a central character who probably resembles you in some ways, and one or more other characters are based--closely or loosely, it doesn't matter--on people you've known.

Deciding on a setting

To become familiar with your fictional locale, try closing your eyes and visualizing the place where you found the object in the original exercise. Observe the details of the room, the sounds you hear from the other rooms, and the view from the windows. Then, as if you were a bird, fly out a window to observe the neighborhood, the town or city, the county or region. Pay attention to details--the clothes people are wearing, the kinds of cars in the streets, the signs in shop windows. Smell the smells. Listen to the sounds of life. Feel the energy given off by ball parks, bars, beaches, playgrounds, political rallies. After you've flown around for a while, return to your region . . . neighborhood . . . dwelling . . . and room--for a last look-around.

Then start writing as fast as you can about things you've discovered on your journey. You might want to draw a quick map with concentric circles radiating out from your own small world. You don't need to include everything you found--this isn't a memory test. But do go into detail about discoveries that stand out sharply. Be aware that the best details of a setting give off strong emotions, providing atmosphere for your characters to move around in. The way they respond to their environment will help define who they are and what they do.

Development of a theme

To get a grip on the story's meaning, it will be helpful to go back to the treasured object at least one more time and answer these questions:

1. How does the object resemble

* Yourself

* character A

* character B and/or C

2. What effect does the object have on the relationship

* between A and B

* between B and C

* between A and C

Again, you'll probably discover that whatever your story means, it has to do with people developing relationships with each other, entering into conflicts, and trying to find resolutions to them. The treasured object may fade in importance by the time you've finished the story's last draft. But it will have served its purpose.

Truth and invention

What if the characters and plot of your fiction closely resemble real people and/or events that have actually occurred? Does it matter?

I don't think it does. If you use the techniques of fiction-writing--characterization, plot, conflict, dialogue, description, and so on--then what you'll have at the end will be fiction, regardless of its source.

But you may still find that similarities between your life and your fiction inhibit your creative writing. You might also worry that readers who know you could be disturbed by what you write. In this case, you can do what a great many authors have done throughout history (sometimes on the advice of their attorneys)--make alterations in their fiction to avoid resemblances to actual people, places, and events.

* With characters, change one or more of these attributes: size, shape, hair color, accent, nationality, clothes

* Change the story's setting to a different region

* Move the story backward or forward in time

Having made these changes, you'll probably have to change other details of the fictional work in order to fit in the new material. This in itself can become part of the creative process, helping you to imagine more and remember less. At the end, even those who know you best may not be clear about what you've recalled and what you've made up. And you may not be sure, yourself.

If this happens, you may be certain you've moved from autobiography to fiction--one of the most interesting and satisfying ways in which your writing can develop.

Edward Hower's third novel, Night Train Blues, was published last June, and his next one, Queen of the Silver Dollar, is scheduled for publication in September 1997. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian Magazine, Epoch, The New York Times, and elsewhere. A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, he has taught creative writing at Ithaca College and Cornell University, and has given workshops in England, Greece, and India.

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