Using Real Experiences in Writing

One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to make your characters feel like real people. And though that is incredibly important, we’re focusing on something a little bit different today: using real life experiences in your writing. 

Now, the way that I do this in my own writing is as follows: taking a memory, romanticizing it a little, editing it to fit the context of the novel, and then sticking it somewhere. I don’t do this very often, simply because I’m not making a lot of memories that are relevant to what I’m writing, but I have noticed some things when I’ve done this in the past. 

First, it can really complicate a character. When you’re writing a romantic scene based off of something that truly happened to you, the love interest in the scene kind of morphs into the person you’re basing it on, at least for that scene. Which is all fine and good, unless something happens that complicates your relationship with that person. I could write a whole blog post on this, and I’m going to, so that’s all you’re getting on this subject for now. 

Second, it adds a lot of realism to scenes. I find that having actually gone through the scene myself means I can add extra little details that I may have missed if I was just pulling the idea from my head. That’s not to say that I don’t add little details for the setting of a scene, but it’s definitely easier to come up with them when I’ve experienced it myself. 

Third, using real conversations or people’s dialects makes your own dialogue better. This is another one of those writing tips that you’ll hear time and time again, but it’s true. Studying how real people talk makes it easier to write realistic dialogue. And truthfully, the reason I think that I write good dialogue is because I imagine a lot of the scenes I write in my head before I commit them to paper. If you’re one of those people that come up with fake scenarios in your head before you fall asleep at night, it’s like that. And if you don’t do that…well, I guess that’s just another one of the many crazy aspects of being a writer. 

So yes, using real experiences can have its benefits, but it does get a little tricky when real people get involved. I would recommend drawing inspiration from real memories, but be careful about it.

That's all for now, folks!

-C