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Joined: 5/14/2011
Posts: 4
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I am curious how many of you are using personal experiences in your MS, even if they are altered a little? In my book Shifting, I have had some of the dreams and experiences that I wrote about. I am just curious if its a good idea to use them?
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Joined: 3/29/2011
Posts: 19
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I do, all the time. It helps me by basing a certain experience that my characters are going through on something that happened in real life, whether it's a profession or an interaction or anything like that.
I do try to remove specifics, especially if it was a real-life experience with others, though. That's too close. Sometimes all I need is the feeling from a past experience that helps give a bit of a pop to a scene that I'm writing.
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Joined: 5/8/2011
Posts: 13
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A lot. Since most of characters begin my stories at college grad age, I constantly think back to my experiences in college and my early years in the military. Not only does it give me the realism I want, but it gives me a real connection to my MCs. When I write, I even put on music from those years to jog more memories.
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Joined: 5/10/2011
Posts: 69
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I pull from life experiences often. I agree with Amberh, sometimes all it takes is an emotional memory to trigger something to write from.
I imagine whether intetionally or not every writer's personal experience seeps into their stories.
In theatre, it is often said that it takes 7 years for an emotional memory to go from trauma to drama. I am not sure I agree entirely; I don't think it has to be that long before you can experince perspective that allows it to become dramatic rather than just re-living the trauma of a memory. Still, I think having some distance from a personal experience I am pulling form is a helathy choice for me.
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Joined: 3/29/2011
Posts: 25
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Well, it's impossible to remove all personal experience from your writing. When you write, you're almost always drawing on things that have happened to you in the past. That said, I try to avoid obvious parallels to my personal life. You never know who you're going to offend that way. I also agree that events that are too personal can seem like sensationalism.
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Someone once said that everything that happens to a writer will, sooner or later, appear on one of their stories. Hell, I even found a place to have a character take a barium enema (well actually, be in the room, observing when someone else did). It was more fun to have them take it than myself.
But here's the thing. You can't realistically have your character do anything you don't know, personally, unless you do a lot of study on the subject and talk to people who have done it. But when you've done it yourself...
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