Tag Archives: Memories

Use Real Life Experiences in Your Writing

Growing up I can remember many English teachers telling us to write using a memory or experience we went through. If you’ve ever attended a writing class you’ve probably heard the phrase, “write what you know,” more than once from an English professer. Hearing that advice, I immediately processed my life, and realized it was not exciting enough to write about. Many years past before I realized that I could use different experiences in my life. . Certain moments could be drawn back on to write about a similar experience perhap with a character. Using real life experience should only be done if it applies to the story. If there is a certain memory or feeling that you can convey in your story, and it fits, that’s when you should use your memories and feelings.

Many authors have done just this. Remember Stephen King, when he got into a car accident, he used that experience and wrote Misery.

Anne Rice is another example. In one of her books a vampire becomes human again and the detail of him eating food for the very first time is amazing. Where do you think these authors got such detail and feeling? They tapped into their own memories and wrote about it.

Using life events makes your story or novel more realistic to the reader. Think about strong moments or memories you may have, think about how you felt. How would your character feel if something similar happened to them? Think aboutt how you felt, what you were thinking etc. If you do use real life experiences in your novel, make sure the story benefits from it. If you can’t fit it in to your plot smoothly, don’t.

By using real life experiences in your writing you’ll not only connect with your readers, you’ll also make your characters more realistic.

To find out more check out real life experience. Or check out creative writing tips.

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Bad Education (Original Uncut NC-17 Edition) (2004)

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Writer/director Pedro Almodóvar’s dark, sexy Hitchcock homage is his best work since his Oscar-winning All About My Mother, and deepened by a sun-dappled sadness. Handsome, enigmatic Ángel (Gael García Bernal) arrives at the Spanish movie offices of director Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) and happily proclaims that he’s actually Enrique’s long-lost school chum Ignacio–an announcement that is both less than convincing and more than it seems. A novice actor, Ángel pitches a semi-autobiographical screenplay in which he’s determined to star, a revenge-laden reflection of the doomed love he and Enrique shared as boys before a pedophile priest cruelly intervened. The script, and the lost days it recalls, carefully unfurls into a series of brooding movies-within-movies and memories-inside-memories, which allow the sensual, multiple-role-playing Bernal to give the performance of his young career–among other things, he makes a stunningly convincing drag queen–an (more…)