Cribbing from Real Life

Novels, short fiction, and verbal storytelling give readers whole worlds that exist only in their heads. Literally in their own heads because no two readers are going to mentally see all the details of these fictional creations in quite the same way, but they can seem very real. As fiction writers, if we want to steal material from real life to create fiction, how do we separate the two in ways that disconnect truth from fiction?

People

It can be tempting to write a colorful person you know in real life out of whole cloth, but that can lead to claims on your work, embarrassment for you or others, and libel suits, among other consequences. Unless you have that person’s written and witnessed permission, keep real people out of fictional stories. Historical or living, public figures are usually okay to include in fiction, as long as you don’t libel their character, attribute serious crimes to them in ways that could be mistaken for actual events, and stick to the recorded truth.

The best approach is to steal a quirk here and an eye-color there. If your fictional characters must be influenced by living people, make them composites of several people. Take a single trait or behavior from each and combine them. Doing so will give you a unique character who reacts to situations in their own, original manner. When embellishing a historical character, root them in their recorded history.

Places

Real town or fictional town? Derry, Maine is a familiar place to many Stephen King readers. And it’s completely made of the imagination. Creating places can give you the convenience of a lake or a mountain where none exists in real life. You never have to argue with locals about which direction Main Street curves or when the local bank first built its five-story tower. On the other hand, using a real town can be a challenging sandbox, delight readers who have lived or been there, and lend an air of realism.

A good compromise is to choose an actual place, but get creative. In my debut novel, I added a man-made lake outside Charleston, West Virginia, a place with a river, but no natural lakes. Add small streets or neighborhoods tucked in-between real thoroughfares. While the rule of thumb for real businesses is that you don’t portray them in a bad light in your fiction, feel free to include them if you have good things to say. Add a fictional business next door or down the street from real businesses for the flavor of reality, but leave the real employees out of it unless you have written permission to include them.

Events

For fiction, disguise real life happenings by sticking to the concept or premise. Readers might still discern the true-life news item or family legend camouflaged in the story, ie: ripped from the headlines, but keep it fiction by changing not only all the identifiable details, but also locations, sexes, ethnicities, occupations, motivations, and outcomes. Treat the truth as only an idea on which to build a story. Conversely, if the real life happening is a vital part of your fiction, stick to the recorded facts.

When including historical or well-known events in fiction, do your research. Write around the edges of the events or choose the point of view of an outsider or someone on the fringes who could have been there. A good example of this type of disconnect is the anonymous to the historical record witness to an event. The soldier, the firefighter, the nurse, the spouse, the daughter. Your character could experience an event peripherally or viscerally. Use your writerly empathy, just be sure to get the details of the event right.

Cribbing from real life for fiction means borrowing bits and pieces and twisting them for a fresh perspective or to illustrate a theme. All these truth to fiction conversions are also great for shaping stories set in non-real world universes.

Share your experience with the truth in fiction in the comments below, and join me on the first Friday of each month for exploration, discovery, and discussion of the writing life.