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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33161
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33161
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I would say, don't give it to them.

There is a maxim in the writing world, that stories are not about facts, but the truth. What it means is that "what really happened" and "how I really reacted" tend to be boring, facts are boring. Facts are **told** , not **shown**. The "truth" in this maxim means emotional truth revealed by a good story.

Unfortunately, a study of real life that really happened very seldom makes a good story at all, because it has no plot or a very weak plot. The person in real life stories is usually a victim suffering a loss.

There is no plot! There is only persecution for being the wrong color, or homosexual, or unattractive, or disabled. Or sexual exploitation or child abuse (or both combined), or discrimination for being born a female.

There is seldom striving to reach a goal that is then triumphantly achieved against all odds: There are thwarted efforts that go nowhere and leave the person sad and disillusioned. There is seldom "justice", Karmic or real, there are seldom puzzles to solve, or mysteries to explore, or a world in danger.

Real life **emotional** journeys are seldom "big enough" or dramatic enough to make a good story. Some real life murders, revolutionaries, or national-stage or world-stage lives are big enough: MLK, JFK, Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, Churchill, Al Capone. But we aren't one of them.

My advice has two parts. First, write it out, write everything you feel in the moment, and try to catalog all those feelings and get them on paper (or disk) as best you can. Keep it to yourself.

Second, after getting real life on paper, and realizing there is no plot or arc, see if you can invent one that pleases you. Use your real life experiences to inform a work of fiction, in which a character **_does_** triumph against odds, struggles with failures but achieves some successes, and is finally freed of the hardship that plagues them, becomes a victor over them, finds love or success or freedom from persecution.

That is what people want to read. Then, if you DO get it published, you can tell your family (if they bother to buy it): This is a work of **fiction,** with exaggerations and, by definition, many things that are simply untrue.

Don't read it as my confession or an accusation, it is a novel (or screenplay). The villains are presented as evil without nuance or excuses because the audience you wrote to reach doesn't care for ambiguity. They aren't interested in real life or what really happened and I couldn't slow down my story to explain all sides of every incident. I wanted to write about something I do know something about so that my fiction would be plausible to others that also know something about it. It isn't a documentary.

Original score: 6