Today’s post is written by Claudia Cruttwell.
“How much of myself should I put into my writing?”
If I’m writing for my own personal consumption, nothing else matters. I can put as much of myself as I like into my story, then sit back, read it, and think how wonderful/happy/stupid/suicidal am I.
If I’m writing to impress people who know me, I’d better go easy on those unsavoury confessions, lest I end up unloved and friendless.
If I’m writing for those who know nothing about me at all, I must remember that they don’t care what’s fact and what’s fiction, so long as it makes for a good story.
I used to pour quite a lot of myself into my fiction. I was once greatly encouraged by an interview with Beryl Bainbridge, who said that she drew on personal experiences in much of her work because she didn’t have an imagination.
“Thank God,” I thought; neither do I.
However, the more I wrote from an autobiographical perspective, the more problems I encountered.
Be Careful When Fictionalizing Real Events
- Being close to your material can cloud your judgement as to its dramatic mileage. An incident, experience or situation that seems hysterically funny, terrifying, tragic or profound to you may seem quite nondescript to anyone else. Often, the old adage ‘you had to be there’ applies. To create more dramatic impact you may find yourself stretching the truth, embellishing, exaggerating—in short, lying. Nothing wrong with that in fiction. But when mixing fact with fiction, the two don’t always marry easily.
- Credibility is key. Character and action must match up, so if you want to mess around with autobiographical events, you need also to mess around with the character who experiences, or instigates, those events. This isn’t always so easy to achieve with an off-the-shelf character, who comes fully formed from your own life. It can be hard to bend them to your dramatic needs, especially if that character happens to be your own lovely fictional self.
- Problems can arise when you include material for the sake of its dearness to you, rather than its aptness to the story or character. In fiction, things generally need to add up in a more satisfying manner than they do in life. There needs to be a reason for something happening. Random deviations into the realms of anecdote for anecdote’s sake are generally boring and frustrating.
Tips for Drawing on Autobiographical Material
Here are a handful of things to think about when drawing on autobiographical material:
- Make some changes. If you want to include yourself as a character, try changing some essential element, such as gender, to help distance yourself and unleash narrative possibilities.
- Check that your story has legs. When writing a novel, make sure the material has enough depth to sustain interest from beginning to end.
- Your protagonist must be credible. If you want to dramatize what actually happened by adding some fictional spice, don’t lose sight of your protagonist’s credibility.
- Maintain narrative structure. Try to think about the narrative structure from the outset, rather than clocking up a string of memories and then imposing an artificial structure over the top.
- There are no hard-and-fast rules. As with all writing rules, consider throwing the whole lot out of the window—just so long as you know that’s what you’re doing.
The whole issue is rather akin to the choice between extending a house and building a new one. The former might seem the easier option, but actually it can be much more straightforward to start from scratch, with a completely blank sheet.
Of course, there will always be elements of yourself, or people you know, in any character, but the more they spring from your imagination, the more fully realised they will prove as individuals in their own right, speaking and thinking for themselves.
(And, by the by, the more interesting they will be to write about).
Many writers have successfully drawn on themselves in their fiction. Beryl Bainbridge is one, although she also wrote books like Every Man For Himself, about a group of fictitious passengers on the Titanic, which had no basis in her own life.
Turns out she had an imagination after all!
Have you ever fictionalized real-life events in your writing? How did you maintain a safe distance from those events to make your story credible and readable?
Claudia Cruttwell is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Brunel University and writing a psychological thriller. She blogs at http://www.claudiacruttwell.com.
Unfortunately I wish much of my past was mere fiction. On the other hand such astonishing things have occurred that they seem fictional as they would not occur in the real world. I know a number of people that can make themselves believe their fictional manifestations did actually occur.
Hi Carl. Many weird things in my life too which I wouldn’t even begin to try to fictionalise. Some also just too personal.
Great post! I think it takes real talent to artfully weave life into fiction. Gabriel Garcia Marquez masterfully blends life with magical realism. I was reading his autobiography and was surprised to learn how much of “Love in the time of Cholera” is the story of his own parents. Here is my favorite quote from Virginia Woolf which sums it up for me:
‘Fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.’
Thanks Shona. Interesting about Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I guess he can do what he likes as he’s such a genius. Love the Woolf quote.
A story? As a kid, I couldn’t compete with my oldest sister, who could read anything she wanted at 2 years old, (Mom thought I was retarded because I was 4 before I could read!) Rhonda was a musical prodigy, running off to Europe on international choir tours when she was 15. Whereas I only had a talent for writing and storytelling, which were decidedly not valued in my family.
I decided to use this concept of what makes a person valuable in my story. Liz also has a talent for writing. Like me, she’s also completely incompetent in most jobs she’s tried, which makes her useless in a family which prides itself on working their ways to the top.
Her gift is in finding and bringing out the best in people, which, as her brother points out, can’t be sold; you can’t make a living off of making people happy. But in the right environment and with the right people, her gift is invaluable.
You are absolutely right, Claudia, I did have to be real careful that I didn’t try to simply fold Liz into the character I needed in order to get my point across. Fortunately for me, she folded herself into it. (grin)
By the way, I love the picture on your website, and love your content. Nice practical stuff!
Thanks Marly. Glad you like the website and best of luck with your story.
I find I’m always writing about myself, no matter who or what the character is. I loved your tips!
Thank you!
Good post. There’s a real art to doing that. In my first novel (sitting in my desk drawer) I wrote about something personal. As Claudia mentions here, i was too close and it clouded my judgement. I was too busy working out the demons to get the story to where it needed to go. Now that I have some distance, i may just pull it out of the drawer and give it another stab.
Thanks Diana. I have two such novels lying in a drawer. Not sure I will ever get them back out again! Good luck with yours.
hi i have been doon videos and wtiting dor 2 years.. i knew knoththing and still i am drawn to put my life on video and paper… i play a role in uncovering oddities no one does..although i quite often to to remember work it seems i wont give up and so let those comment so i can correct my thoughts if needed
Thanks Ronald and good luck with your writing/videoing.
I once thought of doing this. I had an incident in my life particularly painful to me, but in the end, couldn’t figure out why the story didn’t work. You hit the nail on the head with the “you had to be there” comment. Unless someone had walked in my shoes, they wouldn’t understand. I appreciate this article.
I wrote a short story a few years ago, based very closely on my experience of dealing with my younger brother’s death. Although some of the events in the story happened in my own life–my brother’s death, visiting Yellowstone, deflecting/dealing with comments from others–I created these fictional characters who took on a life of their own. They allowed me to write the story as it should be, not as it happened to me. I had to realize that the truth of the story was more important than what “actually” happened.
If even I find some aspects of my life in my writing, I try to think I wrote it about someone else, not about myself. I had a bad experience with myself as main character (or my personality as character’s ones). Onetime I wrote a novel, and say that I (main character) got down by a truck, and next day a car knocked me down. Several time later, I wrote my girlfriend left me, next day she did it in the real world. Since I never compare me and main character, even I write from the first person. Sometime writing is very mysterious.
Nonetheless, I don’t say to be afraid to transfer real life to fiction, I’m just do it carefully.
Denis T.,
Russia