Really? I would have thought you would have written just about every kind of short story there is. It kind of sounds like you only write stories that really happened in some form, but that can't be true, can it? I'm curious as to why you write fiction so close to your own life. There is so much freedom in fiction. Why wouldn't you want to take advantage of that?
I think we may be talking at cross purposes, and I know I explained myself poorly.
Writing fiction that comes out of your own life is the way to write fiction that sells. I've never known a good, successful writer who doesn't do this, including Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and you name the writer. Ray Bradbury was extremely famous for doing just this.
I find the freedom in fiction is largely an illusion. It's all in whatever mask we decide to cover the real story with. The freedom is no more than a Halloween mask. Some writers have a closet full of vampire masks, some a closet full of ghost masks, some a closet full of gangster masks, etc., but they're all just masks.
There is no such thing as a vampire story, a ghost story, a gangster story, or a bank heist story. These things are just masks we use to cover the real story. Every good story is about a person, or people, and it's about truth. The mask we put on the story is not fact, but the story behind the mask must be true in every sense of the word.
This, I think, is where new writers so often go wrong, especially with short stories. There's nothing at all wrong with deciding that today you'll pull a bank robber mask out of the closet and use it, as long as you have a real, living, breathing person, one with an absolutely true story to tell, to put that mask on.
This is why life experience is so invaluable, and why writers need to use someone else's life experience, if they can't use their own. New writers often just don't understand that a bank heist story is not about a bank heist, a vampire story is not about vampires, and a ghost story is not about ghosts.
This is why Ray Bradbury moved his hometown, and most of the people who lived there, to Mars, and why pretty much all his stories did the same thing, moving real experience, real people, real
truth, into the world of fantasy. It's also why many psychologists believe Stephen King often retells the childhood trauma of having a young friend killed by a train while King was with him.
I
do only write stories that really happened in some form, and I
do only use characters who really exist, or existed, in some form. The mask I put on a story often changes because this is where the freedom lies, but no writer has the freedom to be untruthful about what lies behind the mask.
What works best for me, and for a great many other writers I’ve read about, is first having something to say, having a truth to tell. These things come from experience of how this or that affects real people. It comes from knowing what people are like, understanding how trauma affects them, how setting affects them, what story actually is. Then I decide which mask I want to put on a story.
Very often, there is no need for a mask at all, or, at most, a transparent mask. Many of my stories are not only true, they’re ninety percent factual. A few even more so. Like Ray Bradbury, I can put some pretty fantastic masks on stories, but the mask is never the story. If you haven’t read Bradbury’s
Zen in the Art of Writing, do so. Pay close attention to what thoughts generated his stories. Listen to some of his longer interviews on YouTube. He explains it well.
Anyway, I may one day put a bank heist mask on a story, but a mask is all it will be. It’s what lies behind the mask that matters, the real experience, the real truth, the real people, and the real places.