Writing Fiction from Experience
Translating Everyday Events into Narrative on the Page
Look within for inspiration to create a truly realistic world for your fiction.
Good authors draw on their own experience for structure and use their creativity to generate a story based on those experiences. This can be difficult if writing is whittled down to a formula, a tried-and-tested system that can be broken down into tutorials and expensive books that promise help for those with writer's block, those who can't create a character, those who can't find a "good" plot, and the list continues.
The Holy Trinity of any good story is conflict, dialogue, and action. The hard part is making it interesting, which is where most writers fail. The successful writers find connections in their own worlds that can be distorted, morphed and ripped apart and put back together again in an interesting way.
Conflict: The word itself conveys a generally negative meaning, however conflict can mean any sort of general opposition of forces in either the outside world or within a particular character's head. In the outside world, writers should be aware of the real-life conflicts that occur every day. Count them. Which ones are interesting? Examine each external conflict and find a way to expand upon it to create a short story. Now look at it again and try to find a way to expand upon it to create an entire novel.
Look to internal conflicts as well. This can be wide-ranging, as simple as a decision of where to park to the much more important decision of whether to work out. Examine the consequences of how you chose to resolve each conflict. Record internal conflicts that may present an interesting angle in a future story.
Record the actions that affect everyday life, and the reactions that follow. Make a list of everyday experiences that had an effect on day-to-day activities. These experiences can be used in future stories, and the reactions that follow can be examined under further scrutiny as examples of how characters in future stories might react under similar situations.
Listen to everyday dialogue and make notes for inspiration on how characters in a fictional setting might talk and respond under similar circumstances. How a character speaks is directly related to events that have affected that character. Make character sketches of friends and families, including relevant histories that might provide insight into how that particular friend or family member reacts under certain circumstances.
These are the same kinds of writing prompts "Writing Software" attempts to create, however every writing prompt and computer program is limited by the experiences of the authors who create it. Each writer is unique, and each writer's experiences are unique. Harness your own unique experiences and use them as writing prompts.
Keep it up and you'll soon find that the need for "writing software" is a crutch.
