You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is
fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Psalm 16:11 ESV
Rules.
Before I became a writer I never imagined all the rules
involved in writing a manuscript. There are rules, or standards, for the type
of font used, for the size of the words, for what you can and can’t write. And
then there are rules that aren’t really rules but more like guidelines.
One of those guidelines says that I should never write about
my own life. That real life doesn’t make good stories no matter how much you
might think they do. As a writer I have taken that rule to heart. I do not
write about my life. There are some things I encounter in real life that have
turned up in my stories. A little girl in one of my books is based off my
cousins daughter, a couple in my second manuscript married in the same way my
great grandparents did. But that is as far as I’ve gone. Just little things.
Small details that don’t delve too deeply into real life.
Recently someone close to me told me that events that have
happened in my life lately would make a good book. That it has all the elements
needed to create a good story.
And they are right.
My life lately would make a good book. It has all the basic
elements to make the plot intriguing and to keep the reader interested to the
last page. If I picked up a book about the events in my life lately I would
want to keep reading to the end just to find out how it all turns out.
But it is my life. And the ‘rules’ say that real life does
not make a good book. Maybe it would if someone else wrote it but it apparently
will not if I write it.
Which is a shame because I can almost see how it would
unfold in story form.
But there are those ‘rules’ that mean I should stay far away
from writing anything that remotely looks like my real life. Because real life
does not make good fiction.
Or does it?
Have you ever written a story based on real life? Yours or
someone else’s? How did it turn out? Was it published?
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