Getting the courage to write a fiction book is no easy feat! Award-winning author Alle C. Hall wants other writers to know her top tip for helping people get started - separate the world of fact from the world of fiction.
Fiction writers often pull inspiration from their own lives or the lives of those closest to them for their stories. However, it can be challenging to separate the world of fact from the world of fiction for many people, especially when it comes to telling their stories, and this can greatly inhibit the writing process.
In her novel her main character survives sexual trauma as a child, steals money from her abusive family and escapes to Asia, where she discovers resolution through friends and tai chi.
“Being a survivor of childhood sexual trauma as well as someone who practices tai chi, lived and traveled in Asia, I had lots of experiences to draw on when creating a character that I gave those elements. That established, I didn’t simply change everyone’s hair color and call it fiction. I took that raw material and fashioned it into the story. At some point, all your experiences and all the experiences that you’ve heard if, traveling as a writer, you’ve kept your ears open; that jumble has to fall to the story. Life has a different shape than fiction. It is often long and boring. It is often too short and stupid. To writers who wish to pull from their own experiences in their fiction, I would say: don’t be afraid to let “what happened” get in the way of what could happen.”
Now available as an audiobook, Alle C. Hall’s award-winning novel, “As Far As You Can Go Before You Have To Come Back,” is a story about a survivor of abuse who discovers the path to healing after she escapes her abusive family.
I had a chance to interview Alle about why writers shouldn’t be afraid to let what happened get in the way of what could happen in their stories.
Why is it helpful for authors to draw on their own experiences in creating fiction?
When authors draw on their own experiences, it brings a reality to the made-up stuff that is often hard to capture, otherwise. For example, in my novel, the main character travels in a whole bunch of different places in Asia. The places I’d visited sailed on by, whereas beta readers and editors made a number of comments about the lack of detail, the lack of feeling reality when the main character was in places I’d never been. I had to work hard to fill those in.
It can be powerful for writers to use their own experiences. As long as they can separate their experience from that which doesn’t need to be the story.
What are some ways that it can inhibit their fiction writing?
When I was first experimenting with fiction, I found myself too locked into the details of my experiences. “But that’s the way it really happened” inhibits fiction. I had to learn to look at what I wrote in what writers call “The Barf Draft” – and many following drafts – as metal you used to make the instrument; and if I was lucky, the instrument used to make music. I started to understand how to write the kind of fiction I needed to write when I imagined over my computer a sign that read, “Yeah, but what could happen?”
How can authors balance drawing on real life themes while creating an original story?
I would say, follow the story. It’s the job of literature students to wrestle with themes. It’s that of self-help writers to teach lessons. All those are good things to do. It’s just not the way to write fiction. When I follow the story, it becomes clear what needs to be edited out, what needs to be changed. What \stays in and what could (again, that word!) grow. It always helps me to know my final image; if the muse is around that project,the closing sentence, as well. When I get stuck, I write toward that image.
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