Writing from personal experience

[DeMont]

Dear colleagues,
How would you go about starting, proceeding and finishing a story of a personal sexual experience (names changed to protect... well, someone) without coming across as a braggart, a douche, a tramp, or worse?
Respectfully,
D.

 

[Erozetta]

Dear colleagues,
How would you go about starting, proceeding and finishing a story of a personal sexual experience (names changed to protect... well, someone) without coming across as a braggart, a douche, a tramp, or worse?
Respectfully,
D.

Don't say it's a true story. Write it as though it's fictional.

 

[StillStunned]

The same way you'd go about writing any other story, I should imagine: try to make the main character likeable.

Downplay some traits or happenings, exaggerate others, don't have the character take themselves too seriously.

And if the story is about the events, rather than the characters, that's where you should put the focus. Push the personilities to the background, perhaps even alternate the POV, and let the reader enjoy a hot sex scene. Most of them probably won't believe it actually happened anyway.

(Now I have a plot bunny for a Baron von Munchhausen-like series of improbable sex scenes. Maybe that should be a challenge for next year.)

 

[TheLobster]

How would you go about starting, proceeding and finishing a story of a personal sexual experience (names changed to protect... well, someone) without coming across as a braggart, a douche, a tramp, or worse?

Why? You are changing the names, and if you don't mention the story is based on true events then all the people involved will be just fictional characters in a fictional story.

Why is it important, then, that those fictional characters to do not come across as "braggarts, douches, tramps, or 'worse'"? Make them appear to the reader exactly like they would if the whole narrative was imagined, including all their flaws.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Dear colleagues,
How would you go about starting, proceeding and finishing a story of a personal sexual experience (names changed to protect... well, someone) without coming across as a braggart, a douche, a tramp, or worse?
Respectfully,
D.

Just don't tell anyone that it's personal experience.

 

[Jorunn]

Even if you say it’s a true life experience, no one will believe you! So just don’t.

I write from some personal experiences, I think many authors do, but within a complete story, my personal experiences are only parts of the larger fictional story. And I do not attribute them to myself, but to my character.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Only fictional stories are allowed on Lit. As soon as you change the names, it's essentially fiction - so write it and then edit out the boring bits or anything else, and add some text to make it look like a thought-out story of connected parts, rather than just 'this happened, that happened, the other thing happened...'

Other people's lives may have made more sense at the time.

 

[Djmac1031]

99.9% of stories here that authors claim are "based on true events" I don't believe are true anyway.

I always found it pointless for authors to note "names were changed to protect their identities."

As long as you're not using full names, first and last, no one here will know these people.

Just write the story and drop the pretense of "based on real events."

If anything, THAT is what makes a story sound like a bragging ego.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Dear colleagues,
How would you go about starting, proceeding and finishing a story of a personal sexual experience (names changed to protect... well, someone) without coming across as a braggart, a douche, a tramp, or worse?
Respectfully,
D.

Having done this extensively at the beginning of my writing journey, just write it.

The only problem I experienced was readers contacting me and assuming I wanted to do the same things with them. As a guy you might not get that so much.

And I changed some names, particularly family names, and was non-specific about locations, or altered them. And I exaggerated and combined and spliced in fabrications and compressed time to get a more intense effect.

It was a good way for me to get into writing with training wheels attached. I don’t really write that way any longer, though obviously experience informs my stories; just like any writer.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I think every author writes from some personal experiences, whether they admit it or not. They just might not write an entire scene from a first-person POV.

Things we've experienced allow us to write some of those details into other stories. Or we might write a different story around a scene we remember. I once toured Porto, Portugal, and the tour guide pointed out a small bookstore saying, "That's where J.K. Rollins spent her time writing the first Harry Potter book." I could imagine the trees surrounding the small park outside that shop as her inspiration for the "Whomping Willow" tree.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I have one story here that is 98.97% factual to my second marriage. The 1.03% is the fictional names associated with the characters.

I don't promote it as being based on real life experiences, however, and I doubt that anyone would accept that as fact if I did.

On a side note, in one of my later stories, I had an author in it who was recovering from a stroke. The details about said author's works resembled my own, and I had several readers e-mail me to see how my recovery was going. The point is, you can't count on the readers to separate fiction from non-fiction on their own.

 

[EmilyMiller]

and I doubt that anyone would accept that as fact if I did.

It’s funny. More than once I have had a reader comment that X was totally unrealistic, when X was the only thing in the story with any IRL basis. Truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

It’s funny. More than once I have had a reader comment that X was totally unrealistic, when X was the only thing in the story with any IRL basis. Truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction.

It happens.

 

[iwatchus]

For all the completely unrealistic things that I put into some of my scenes, two of handful of things that readers complained about being unrealistic were from personal events. Or very slightly adjusted from y personal experience. And neither of these were sexual exploits, but medical-ish things that people told me were impossible.

As I was typing this, @EmilyMiller said basically the same thing. But worded much better, naturally.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The point is, you can't count on the readers to separate fiction from non-fiction on their own.

I've had two or three guys message me thinking that I was Punjabi because the main character in one of my first person stories is Punjabi - obviously that's me, right? : P

 

[iwatchus]

I've had two or three guys message me thinking that I was Punjabi because the main character in one of my first person stories is Punjabi - obviously that's me, right? : P

I guess that provesyou nailed the sense of being Punjabi pretty well.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I guess that provesyou nailed the sense of being Punjabi pretty well.

Well, the story doesn't dwell on her ethnicity much at all and we never meet her family ... (shrug)

 

[iwatchus]

So the burden of proof seemed to be very low.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

So the burden of proof seemed to be very low.

Apparently.

 

[ruddygore]

Dear colleagues,
How would you go about starting, proceeding and finishing a story of a personal sexual experience (names changed to protect... well, someone) without coming across as a braggart, a douche, a tramp, or worse?
Respectfully,
D.

Even if you tell people it's a personal experience most of us won't believe it.

 

[Rob_Royale]

In my story, My Beautiful Debbie, I told the reader at the very end that the story was autobiographical.

 

[Britva415]

Dear colleagues,
How would you go about starting, proceeding and finishing a story of a personal sexual experience (names changed to protect... well, someone) without coming across as a braggart, a douche, a tramp, or worse?
Respectfully,
D.

Don't say it's true.

 

[Britva415]

Only fictional stories are allowed on Lit

Not quite true.

From the actual guidelines:

No "Works professed to be true about real people in the title, tags, and/or description. You can use “true” within the body of a story as part of your fictional storytelling."

Yes, yes, it does still say "fictional" in that last bit. But it becomes fictional (yet can still be "true" or based in real life experiences) as soon as you change a name, a location or a bodypart measurement.

Many stories get published regularly which do profess to be true/real-life events. Policing whether it's truly "only" fictional or not is completely impossible, and I don't believe that that's what the intention is. The intention is "to protect authors as well as third parties," which the advice given here - fictionalizing names and places - achieves.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I have never hidden that My Fall and Rise is almost entirely autobiographical, but I never said so explicitly in the text. I did write it in first person perspective, and used two names unchanged, my own and my husband's (He took umbrage at being given a pseudonym). So it seems like most readers have accepted it as a true story.

 

[Erozetta]

For what it's worth, I've written about some of my relationships here. Some of the stories are no longer up and one (and its companion love letter) will never be put back up anywhere as it dealt with suicide, suicidal ideation, self harm, abuse, etc. I wrote it. I put it out there, then I deleted it because it was a little too raw to leave out in the open.