Writing From Experience

I’ve written a blog post with a very similar title before. It was about how the ‘write what you know’ rule doesn’t necessarily mean you need to limit yourself to writing things you’ve experienced before. You can read it here: Write What You Know. But today, I thought I’d really explore the pros and cons of writing semi-autobiographical stories and novels.

Firstly, there are a lot of ethical reasons not to write autobiographical stories. If you’re going to include real people and broadcast their stories, you might want to get their permission first. And even if you have that permission, they might not appreciate the finished result. It’s almost inevitable that you are going to depict these people differently to how they see themselves. Furthermore, if you’re going to write realistic characters, they need to have bad qualities as well as good and your friends and family may not enjoy seeing themselves written in that light. Of course, you could always not tell them and hope they never accidentally end up reading the story, but that throws up a whole lot of other ethical questions that need to be considered.

Secondly, there’s the idea, that I think a lot of writers get hung up on, that writing autobiographically is less creative. It’s less imaginative to pluck a story from your own life than it is to make up a new story, new characters, new setting etc.

I have to say though that I completely disagree. I think you need to be just as creative to write a semi-autobiographical story than you do an invented one. Even if characters are based on people you know, they still need to be portrayed, written and planned out like fictional characters do if you’re going to portray a rounded character that your readers can connect to. It’s more than just writing a memory. It’s using that memory to create a new world.

Furthermore, it has been suggested many times that the real reason people write is to explore the oddity of human behaviour. Wouldn’t an autobiographical story do that much better than a fictional story would? You’re taking real people and real behaviour and writing it in a way that makes it enjoyable to read. Critics always talk about how ‘realistic’ characters are in novels. If you’re writing autobiographically, it’s hard to have that problem.

I also think that semi-autobiographical writing tends to sound more real. If you read a story that is written so well you think that the writer must have experienced it (even if you don’t know that they have) that story is bound to effect you more than another story might.

It’s hard to really explore the benefits of writing semi-autobiographical writing in 500 words. But, in my opinion, taking a personal experience and writing about it is a really brave thing to do and more often than not, the results can be spectacular.

So, I guess what I’m saying is, don’t put yourself off of writing autobiographical or semi-autobiographical things because you think it’s unethical or too personal or just not creative enough. Take a risk and see what you end up with.

Thanks for reading.