BY JESSICA SHEN
One of the best pieces of advice given to the beginning writer is write what you know. And, you should! Arguably one of the most difficult parts of writing is getting your reader fully immersed in your story. You are your own best resource, and drawing on your own experience gives you a leg up on doing that.
However, there’s a fine line between using personal experience as a muse and attempting to retell a story from your past. I recently edited a short story written by a friend of mine. He had just come out of a very difficult period in his life, and had written about an experience he had during that time.
Because I know him, it was a hard story for me to read, but as I finished it, one thing became very clear: there was no way anyone who didn’t know him would be able to understand what was going on, or be able to empathize with his main character.
He was too emotionally tied to the events, and spent more time trying in vain to explain to the reader the facts of what was going on, rather than trying to convey the truth of what had happened.
As writers, we often battle between telling the facts, and telling the truth. Here’s what I think: unless you’re writing nonfiction, always go for the truth. The reader doesn’t care if the chronology of events doesn’t exactly match what happened in your life—what he cares about is the experience, the feeling.
You will never be able to recreate exact recollections in your stories. Your reader will never know the story of your life, so there’s no use trying to pluck a moment in time out of it and try to get your reader to understand it.
Facts can explain the who, what, where, and how, and they are great for setting the scene, but what readers care about is the truth, the why. Without the why, the story will have no heart.
Think of your life as works of art in a museum. You will be much more successful in studying the exhibits and using them as inspiration rather than taking a single painting down from the wall and tracing over its lines in an attempt to duplicate it.
When she’s not at her day job at a local college, Jessica Shen keeps busy encouraging writers to find their own inner truths from her home in northern California.Her latest project, Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia by Pete Ford, was released in October, 2013.
Her next project, Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology, will be released October 31, 2013.