Fictional anchors

How much of what we read as ‘fiction’ is actually a thinly veiled reflection of an author’s real life and expertise? The phrase ‘write what you know’ comes to mind.

Did you know that literary theorists and some authors suggest up to 80% of fiction draws on the author’s own direct or more commonly, indirect experiences.

This doesn’t mean that it’s autobiographical. It might just have been something the author witnessed or heard about.

Nevertheless, it forms the start of an idea for a book.

With this in mind, a novel really is a patchwork of experiences, ideas and knowledge – not a copy-and-paste of real-life kind-of thing. Instead, these things are used to anchor fictional scenarios.

For instance, we spend up to a third or more of our lives at work and to a lesser extent in training or engaged in a hobby. We as writers, have gathered quite a bit of knowledge that if referenced in fiction, rings true and ensures technical realism; our past emotions sometimes show up in novels too, not necessarily directly, but to make characters’ internal reactions to the events in a book feel authentic; and characters are never based solely on one person either, but on an amalgamation of traits and behaviours.

So why do we do it?

It’s true that real sensory details, e.g. the smell of a particular day or the jargon of a specific job cannot easily be faked. The emotional resonance of genuine psychological events is nearly impossible not to experience as a reader. It’s also more efficient to use existing knowledge to speed up the world-building process.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some drawbacks too:

• The ‘but it really happened’ trap – I too have had editorial feedback about a scenario based on a real event that didn’t seem believable.
• There’s a limit to the number of experiences an author is privy to and this might stifle creativity to some extend.
• Then there’s the personal fall-out of putting real people or identifiable characteristics or behaviour into fiction.

Rest assured, the latter has never been an issue for me. If anything unpleasant was said or done that might make for an interesting character detail, it hasn’t made it into the final draft of any of my books yet!