Skeletons in your Writing

I don't think I've ever used the exact experiences but I have used how they made me feel and given those feelings to characters.

Extremely common. Using such experiences is what writing is all about. If it's inside, getting it outside and in print is always a good thing.

Not yet. Not consciously.

I consciously try to avoid obvious parallels to my own life. Just keeps things simpler all round. But I'm sure there are skeletons there, hiding underneath the skin and muscle where nobody can see them. I'm almost afraid of my next book, because it will bring those bones pretty close to the surface and it promises to be difficult.

Judg said:

I consciously try to avoid obvious parallels to my own life.

Click to expand...

Me too. Nobody in right mind would ever want to read anything that boring.

caw

I couldn't do the awful ones justice. I want to write about them, but there is no way I could capture what I wanted to say. Others are good at that; don't get me wrong.

Otherwise, I use real life in my stories all the time.

While purposely stay away from using my religious and political views within my writing, my previous editor said she could tell that I was a former catholic, went to catholic school, and I still have strong catholic beliefs. I told her she hit the nail right on the head, except I do not deal with religion in my work, at all. I deal with beliefs, but because my fantasy world has multiple gods, there is no one belief. She told me that to a former catholic, who went to catholic schools and college...it shows.

Not sure if this is the type of skeletons we are talking about, but she has made me question my writing and even change a few things up so MY beliefs are not showing and it is the Characters beliefs the story deals with.

I think no matter how hard we try, there is something of us in our work.

thothguard51 said:

I think no matter how hard we try, there is something of us in our work.

Click to expand...

Something of the writer should be present in the work. But keep it at 'something' and not more than that.

I always fit my own childhood into my stories.

I don't think you can avoid it. It's a human being writing the story, and the human being has been shaped by a life up until the point of writing the story. Should one include explicit events that actually happened? Probably not, because it doesn't belong in the story.

I've had two close friends die, and I know I've used the reactions of the family in my writings. I've used the dead friends' fear of death. Not explicitly, but I've drawn from the well, and felt like a vampire of some kind. But it is okay to do it.

The Kidd said:

How common is it for a writer to use morbid experiences in their work? I'm not asking for you to share experiences that are uncomfortable, instead you can state if you have or have not used them in your work.

Click to expand...

I use my experiences in my work as well, more often than not unconsciously rather than deliberately. I don't think it's something we can avoid, so just go with the flow.

Judg said:

I consciously try to avoid obvious parallels to my own life.

Click to expand...

I was this way ... until my WIP, in which I'm digging into the deepest, darkest recesses of my own experiences. Feels like my strongest, ickiest writing yet. Heck, feels like therepy! And I might add, that because of the alien (sci fi) context in which I am writing these experiences, not even my closest family would likely realize they are mine. Plus many of the experiences are simply too intimate, you know, thoughts and feelings I have shared with no one.

Ah, but then the parallels are not obvious. You're probably not just taking your own life experience and changing a few superficial details, because then they would recognize it.

What I don't do is take something that happened to me, and try to "fictionalize" it. But the experiences I've had and the feelings that go along with that will work their way into how my characters react to their own life experiences.

For instance, I wrote a young couple falling in love recently. They are not me and my husband in disguise, and the circumstances of their getting together bear no resemblance to any relationship I've ever had. On the other hand, it had a bit of a similar dynamic to my own experience, with an unacknowledged growing attraction that suddenly turned a corner into a very giddy, intense, committed relationship. I didn't deliberately do it that way, but I see now how my own experience informed the way I wrote that. But all the superficial details are different, and I rather doubt that anyone will be asking me if it's autobiographical.

I toyed with the idea of taking another experience I'd had, making it take a different turn than in real life, and turning that into a story. But I don't think I will. I would be too recognizable and then persuading people that it didn't really happen that way... Nope, not going there. However, if I'm ever working on something and it fits the characters that are living their own lives their own way, then I might use it. Or pieces of it.

I don't understand the question.
You mean have we noticed the real world influencing our stories?

I tend to write poetry based on my life experiences. I like it that way because I don't have to "tear" myself away from my work. I can be candid as I want to be. This is why I had such difficult time writing fiction even shorts. I ended up writing about myself in some form. The main characters were different versions of myself.

they tell you to write what you know. My stories often go into those periods of my life when I was a lot more passonate and reckless than now. I also have depicted various horrible things I have witnessed, as well as examined horrible people, horrible object lessons on life and so on. Don't get me wrong, but I think a lot of writers are superficial because they are unwilling to look deeply into the world's ugliness. People seem preoccupied with being "polite" to the point where what they say really has no meaning (to them or anyone else). They think they need permission to examine sex, death, blood, gore, anger, mental derangement, or other ickky stuff, when really it's when you lay these things on the table, that your writing is strongest.

There was a suicide in my first book, which was written at a time when I had more than one friend make attempts in very close intervals. That was incredibly personal for me, and incredibly difficult to write, but I think also part of why I was able to do it. It also helped me get some of my thoughts down, I think.

In general, though, I'd say it depends. It might be that you're ready to work on it, in which case it's a good thing and might be a very powerful addition to the story.

Judg said:

What I don't do is take something that happened to me, and try to "fictionalize" it. But the experiences I've had and the feelings that go along with that will work their way into how my characters react to their own life experiences.

.

Click to expand...

I suspect this is an individual writer decision. Many of the events I've used in fiction were taken directly from my own life and experience. Some of my best stories, or at least my best-selling stories, have been "fictionalized" only by changing the names to protect the guilty.

I suppose it also depends on the kind of life you've lived, and the experiences you've had.

I agree. It's not a question of right or wrong, but how much I'm willing to expose myself.

I have not lived the kind of life that is memoir-worthy. But it has still been peppered - like most everybody's, I imagine - with all kinds of noteworthy incidents and gut-wrenching experiences. And I really don't want to face anything like: "There's no way he would have done that!" or "Did you seriously do that?" or "Did you write that to get back at your kids?" or ... Well, you get the idea. So when I use my own experiences, they pop up in such vastly different circumstances that even I don't see it half the time.

I think fictionalizing morbid/disturbing/difficult real-life events is a way of processing them. At least for me. I don't do it often, but it's hard when I do.

That happened to me recently, only I didn't notice it until working on a revision.

There's a corpse. The corpse isn't even physically there, someone is remembering finding the corpse, and they think the deceased's name. It turned out to be the name of a friend. A resident of the hospice center I worked at, that I found dead. The nurse made me clean and prep her body since I was the bottom rung medical staff. Just...that was not very nice of my muse to put in there. I couldn't write anything for a few days after discovering that little bomb.

I think we all do it to some degree. Maybe not an 'exact' experience per say, but we will transcribe the emotion and other factors into the story. If we were to take a step back from our works and looked at them objectively, i'm sure we'd see many parallels between some elements in our stories and our 'skeletons'.

I've written about lots of stuff that has happened to me. The more painful, embarrasing, stupid or illegal, the better - for the story, not necessarily for me at the time. There's not much I wouldn't magpie from my own life, with the exception of credit card details.