Writing a Novel Based on True Events... Should You Do It?

My Grandmother was in town for the holidays and while at my house - freezing and watching my pathetic attempts to start a fire using my first draft - she asked to read a few pages.

I beat around the bush for as long as she'd let me. "I don't know. This is my first draft and my second draft on the computer is so much better."

"Computer?" Grandma isn't a technology friend. "Just give me a few pages."

So I flipped through what was left and found some relatively good pages - safe page - as what I've written about is taken from my life, and a not so nice part of it. She read through what I handed to her, decided that yes, first drafts do suck, and added then to the fire herself.

"See, Grandma. Told ya so."

However, this brought up something rather important. Something that I think everyone should consider when thinking about writing a novel based on a true story or true life events. Especially real life events that instantly make people you know say, "Hey. I know who you're writing about...That's you!"

If you are thinking of taking your life's experiences and putting them into your book, or making the book all about them, there are questions that I think you really need to sit down with yourself and answer...

Do you really want this story to get out?
Because once it's out, it's out. I do admit, though, that writing is the best form of catharsis available. Talk therapy number two. Throwing a temper tantrum where you get to break something number three. So if you are ready and you don't mind others knowing and you want to write a book about it...go for it. Just make certain you are ready.

Are you okay with EVERYONE knowing? Grandmas included?
When you start writing your book about your own true life experiences, you might have all these lofty ideas that you're going to be fine once it all comes out. Because let's be honest, you're not going to show everyone the book until it gets published. And if it gets published? Who cares! You'll be so excited to even notice anyone's curious glances... HOWEVER, let's shed that daydream for just a second. Everyone you know will want to get a copy of your book...and read it. Are you okay with that? Really? Be honest with yourself... Are you?

Alright...What are you okay with them knowing?
Most fiction work is born directly from the author's life experiences. We write what we know. Otherwise there's no authenticity to it and that's when we loose readers. So it's obvious that we all already write 'based on a true story' to some degree. But what parts of what really happened need to be in your book? Remember, you can always leave out bits and pieces and still make it work for your story. Not everything has to be in there. Especially people's names. In the words of Stephen King (paraphrasing, of course) "Unless you want to be sued, use fake ones."

And lastly...What is your comfort level?
Most importantly, keep in mind that you're comfort level TODAY might not be equal to your comfort level a year from today. So when you're sitting down with yourself - minus your pride, inner sensors, and anything else that gets in the way of you being totally open with yourself - really ask yourself about your level of comfort. Think about what you'll feel like a year from now. Five years. Ten. And so on.

Above all, be honest with yourself. And if you're not sure, test the waters. Give a sample to a close friend and hone in on what you feel the moment those pages leave your hands. Do you want to snatch them back and say, "Forget it! Never mind!" Or are you freely giving over your real life thoughts and feelings to others to read, dwell on, talk about, and share with others, so on and so on...

Writing a novel based on true life events can be fun, therapeutic, and useful, in the sense that you already have some of your story outlined for you. Whether or not you should really do it, and whether it will work in your story is up to you.

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Why You Can’t Make the Draft Without Making the Time... by guest author Harrison Demchick

Good morning writers! Today we have with us return guest author Harrison Demchick to talk with us about how to make time for writing. Because, as we all know, it's not an easy task. However, it's a necessary one if you want to realize your writing dreams, right? So, without further adieu, here's his words on...


Why You Can’t Make the Draft Without Making the Time
by guest author Harrison Demchick

A couple weeks ago, my friend Jen finished her first draft.

I was there when it happened. Since August of 2013, my friends and I have been meeting every Sunday for what we’ve come to call Write Club. Write Club, as our matching T-shirts indicate—yes, we have matching T-shirts—is a time for writing, and nothing but. It’s a four-hour window during which the only priority is each of us developing our own individual projects. Jen, also the designer of the aforementioned T-shirts, had spent the preceding several months almost finished her first novel. Any Sunday in that span could have been the day, but then there was always something else that had to be written, and logic issues to hurdle, and all of the other things that make finishing a draft so frustrating. The end, somehow, seemed to move further and further away. Until it didn’t.

Jen didn’t have to say anything when she finished her draft. I knew. I could see it in the look on her face as she stared at her laptop screen. I expect I looked much the same early this year when I finished the first draft of my screenplay Ape Canyon. It’s a pretty incredible feeling, the warmth tiptoeing its way across your neck and down your arms, into the fingers that have devoted hours, days, months, years to the completion of that one magical story completely and entirely your own. Your heart pounds, and the tension floats away like misty rain on a summer night. The world becomes a pretty spectacular place to be.

I’d already been working on Ape Canyon for a couple years when we started Write Club. Though actually, working is a strong word. I’d started Ape Canyon, for sure, and I’d written some pages, and by the summer we began Write Club I was trying to devote time every weekend to writing. I’ve always been a disciplined writer, and moreover a writer who works best in solitude, so I was confident I could maintain that routine and, simultaneously, skeptical that the writing group friends had proposed from time to time would be of any use. I didn’t need it, and if I was going to spend time with friends, I wanted to spend it having fun, not working quietly on my own projects.

But the truth is that the day we started Write Club is the day I began to build momentum on Ape Canyon. I completed in five months what I’d been tinkering with on and off for two years. It was amazing, and it felt amazing. And I knew that it would never have happened had I not forced into my schedule at least four hours every week to devote to writing. The existence of a group kept me accountable. It kept us all accountable. It became the highlight of my week, and it’s the reason that I’ve never been more productive as a writer than I am today.

Now if there’s anyone who shouldn’t have the time to devote to writing, it’s Jen. Jen is one of the most absurdly talented and driven people I’ve ever met, but these attributes also make her extraordinarily busy pretty much at all times. She works in publishing during the days. She works on her art around the clock (which you can see for yourself at http://herchenroeder.see.me/). She works in architecture and design when she can. Her obligations have obligations.

And yet she still makes the time nearly every week to come to Write Club and work. This devotion of time and energy is the reason she was able to experience the unmatchable high of completing the first draft of a manuscript on which she’d worked seven years.

Jen has finished any number of amazing projects in the interval. And I wasn’t being idle either while Ape Canyon was in progress. I wrote a couple work-for-hire screenplays. I wrote songs. I was creative. But neither Jen nor I was devoting the time to writing until we started Write Club and made that effort every single week.

Another thing Jen and I have in common is a background in publishing, which means that our expectations are realistic. That is to say, Jen may have completed that first draft, but the next step is editing and revision, and this, too, will take a lot of time and a lot of energy. It was the same for me when I finished the first draft of my novel, The Listeners, and for that matter I don’t imagine that I’m entirely finished with Ape Canyon. The end of the first draft is not the end. In a lot of ways, the end of the first draft is just the beginning.

But it’s a pretty incredible benchmark. It’s a tremendous accomplishment to reach it. It’s the first part of the whole process during which you can sit back and say, I’ve done this. I wrote a book. I’m a writer. 

And writers write. They take the time, and if there isn’t time, they make it. That time doesn’t need to be four hours on Sunday. It can be a half hour every morning or a writing binge at midnight every Thursday. That time doesn’t need to be with a writing group, either. But if it weren’t for attending Write Club and making the time to write, Jen wouldn’t have a completed draft of her novel, and I wouldn’t have Ape Canyon. If you don’t take the time to write, you will never know that feeling Jen experienced on a very important Sunday just a couple weeks ago. It’s worth it.

Harrison Demchick came up in the world of small press publishing, working along the way on more than three dozen published novels and memoirs, several of which have been optioned for film. An expert in manuscripts as diverse as young adult, science-fiction, fantasy, mystery, literary fiction, women's fiction, memoir, and everything in-between, Harrison is known for quite possibly the most detailed and informative editorial letters in the industry—if not the entire universe.

Harrison is also an award-winning, twice-optioned screenwriter, and the author of literary horror novel The Listeners (Bancroft Press, 2012). He's currently accepting new clients in fiction and memoir at Ambitious Enterprises (http://ambitiousenterprises.com). 

WHAT THE LADY WANTS is like GONE WITH THE WIND meets the North... a BB B&B Book Review

by Lia Mack

When guest author Renee Rosen sent me her newest novel WHAT THE LADY WANTS as a thank you, I was touched. 

A free book for me? How sweet! 

I wasn't sure when I'd get around to reading it as my own editor is tapping fingers, waiting for me to send back my manuscript, and I already had 4 books in my currently-reading-pile. But when I saw the cover - with it's opulent texture and lovely font - I added it to the pile right away. Then, when I had a free moment, I sat down and opened the book to page one. 

Page one sucked me right in. Renee Rosen's writing voice is vibrant as well as sensual. It draws the reader in in a way that, before you know it, you're elbow deep into the book and you're not sure where the time went. 

WHAT THE LADY WANTS starts off with a hot-as-fire attraction between the main characters amidst the Great Chicago Fire. Being the snob reader I am - and always pressed for time - I wasn't interested in a history lesson and had planned on skipping ahead, but Renee Rosen's historical fiction didn't read as a one. Her characters are so alive on the page, it was like I was there, running with the main character, Delia, trying to find her way through a town ablaze. That, and the scene reminded me so much of Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler trapped in the fiery ball of Atlanta. 

And just like GONE WITH THE WIND, WHAT THE LADY WANTS takes on the task of rebuilding. Only rebuilding to the lavish degree. Gowns, balls, elite gatherings. I kept thinking, "WHAT THE LADY WANTS is like GONE WITH THE WIND meets the North." I half expected Delia to invite Miss Scarlet O'Hara over for tea and the latest town gossip. However, the Great Chicago fire was in 1871, just on the brink of the industrial revolution. 

Only, it was the revolution of shopping - oddly enough - that WHAT THE LADY WANTS is focused on. I'm not a big shopper myself, but now that I have seen the evolution first hand through the eyes of Rosen's characters - Marshall Field specifically - I see how his vision of giving the lady what she wants is quintessentially the very reason we have shops and malls and "experiences" as we do today. No one thought the way he did and no one valued a lady's opinion like he did either. Not back then.  

One reviewer stated that there are contemporary elements to this story that set it apart from other historical fictions, but I disagree that these elements are truly "contemporary." Rather, they are honest. And it is with this honesty that Renee Rosen sets this historical fiction apart from others as she doesn't skip over nor hide these so-called "contemporary" elements that have only been a part of the human experience since the beginning of time. I won't spoil it though -- you'll just have to read the book for yourself!

I actually cried toward the end. You  will come to love Renee Rosen's characters so much that you don't want to watch when tragedy strikes. Thankfully you get to cheer along with them when they triumph over all! And the love. Ah, the love... I'm a sucker for Love ;)

Bottom Line: 

WHAT THE LADY WANTS is a grand and magnificent story with characters you'll love to the end.

The fact that I read this book and this book alone until the end makes it 5 stars. I don't usually stay with one book, one voice, one story line unless it's engaging enough to keep me in the mood for more.

So, 5 stars, Renne! 

I'm inspired so much, I think I'll be planning a trip to Chicago some time in the future so I can see all the buildings from the book - especially the Lady's Half Mile. 

Can't wait for your next novel :)