Fictionalizing Stories from Life
Posted on | April 28, 2010 | 2 Comments
If you are writing stories from your life, there are may reasons to fictionalize them, or at least fictionalize elements of them. I’m going to briefly focus on three:
- For your benefit
- For the benefit of the people you’re writing about
- For the benefit of your reader
We’ll start with the most obvious, for benefit of the people you’re writing about.
For the People You’re Writing About
The old cliché from the television show Dragnet that ran from 1951 through 1959, “… the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Often, though, just changing the name might be insufficient. Consider: You are writing a story about an experience that your child had. If you simply change his or her name, but leave the locations, characteristics and circumstances the same, it will become very obvious to anyone who cares to look who the model was. The child will grow up and feel violated by the story. I rather doubt that a parent would want to make their child feel violated.
In this case, I recommend changing enough that the essence of the story is still there, but the particulars are imagined as if the entire thing were a fictional story you’re writing. If your child is named Bill, consider changing it to Janice. This will immediately remove the story from specifics that will embarrass the child.
If the person isn’t a child, some of the same things might apply.
For Your Readers
When you write something from your life, you are crammed with information about the incident or incidents. There are things that happened in real life at the same time that aren’t really directly related to the incident. There are steps that happened that are really inconsequential to it. It is very difficult to edit these things out because it feels like a violation of the truth and you are telling the story, after all, because it is the truth. (I realize the irony, but I say that by fictionalizing it, you are telling a bigger truth.)
By giving yourself fictional elements, you must then really look at what the point of the story is, what beginning, middle and end that would express that point and what people you need for that. It becomes much easier to edit a story that you aren’t as invested in. In reality, the third and fourth time your teacher screamed at you were as awful to experience as the first. For a reader, however, the first and second will probably be more than sufficient to get the point across and more than that might make their mind wander. (Don’t look at the numbers, here, look at the point itself. I know you wouldn’t be all rigorous on my math, but I must say that for my own sake.)
Here is where fictionalizing can be powerful for the reader.
For Yourself
The parody of the Dragnet quote is, “The names have been changed to protect the guilty.” This was funny through about the mid-sixties, but it is important, here. Besides the benefit for you of making it easier to edit, fictionalizing your story will make it much less likely that you will be sued, or, at the very least, harassed by someone you have exposed or profiled.
This is not a small thing.
As I said, this is a brief discussion of why fictionalizing a story from your life might be effective or wise. These are not rules. (You may have noticed that I don’t much like rules when it comes to creativity.) So forget everything I just said and go write your life.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.
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April 28th, 2010 @ 5:49 pm
My writing partner and I wrote an entire novel based on events from my parents and my life. Very cathartic, but I changed enough detail in it so that no one would know unless they knew it was based in reality. Thanks for giving me validation that this was the right way to handle it. And besides, I got to change history that way. GGggrin! Better ending that way. Ggggrin! Made it more interesting too. BTW, Geoff, a side question if you will. A good friend read the novel and gave this review. Is it something that could be used to advertise the book once I get it published? She said, and I quote, “I laughed. I cried. I got PISSED off and then I laughed again.” Just curious what ya’ll think. GGggrin!
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April 28th, 2010 @ 5:55 pm
Kate – that’s a great quote. One friend once said something I had written was “Gently subversive.” I love that so much I’ve been using it to describe my writing every since.
Yes, I say use it!