How often do you include elements of your real life in your stories?

[Edey]

I'm curious how often people add some of their real life experiences to their stories.

I do this often, some(but not all) of my characters are literally ME, as I would behave or as I behaved in the past (situations, dialogues, etc)
95% of sex scenes come from my own sex life.

How is it with you? Care to share ?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Often. Most of my stories have some foundation or other in a truth from my life: a person, a place, an event. Plus a fair shake of fantasy and imagination.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Most of my stories are based on something I've experienced or know about first hand. Although, some are pure fantasy that might still contain little details based on real life

 

[SimonDoom]

Not much, except indirectly. I have not experienced anything remotely like most of what I write about. I would describe it as being like taking bits and pieces of my real life and putting them in a machine that chews them up and spits them out about ten times weirder and wilder and more exciting than what I've experienced, and the result is my story.

But more often than not it's just pure fantasy, me saying, "What if?"

 

[Edey]

Thx for your replies.
I especially do it with my dialogues, the look of my MCs and the sex scenes.
I have some problems with writing stories that include perspective of a person who experience sex in a different way than me, so I stick to adding my own past adventures to the mix. It works much better for me. Maybe I'm afraid I will mess it up.

For example. As I write only gay male stories I would not take upon myself a challenge of writing a story from a female perspective. I would mess it up royaly

 

[shakna]

So very rarely - I dislike self-inserts.

The few times I do include an aspect of myself, like the illness in "Care Package", I end up with a bunch of comments telling me how ridiculously unrealistic it is. So I wouldn't really say the commenting audience has a great grasp on how things happen in the real world, anyways.

 

[Escierto]

All of my stories except for two are recollections of my experiences. Of course the two fictional stories are my most popular by far. People don’t really like hearing about real life. They much prefer fantasies.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Some of my stories are anonymised truths, to protect the guilty. Some got expanded. Others take threads from my life and others and weave them into something totally new.

My one foray into Erotic Horror includes my real experience of London over the years (not hundreds of years, admittedly), other stories use locations and towns and industries I know well. Though some had to be located elsewhere for plot reasons - I now know more about Army barracks locations in NI during the Troubles than I ever wanted to, for example.

 

[Edey]

All of my stories except for two are recollections of my experiences. Of course the two fictional stories are my most popular by far. People don’t really like hearing about real life. They much prefer fantasies.

Sometimes life is like a fantasy and even more shocking, as I experienced myself...
But I think people would still think it's an actual creation of somebody's pure imagination.

 

[windar]

If I wrote about my real life, it would bore everyone, myself included, to tears.

If I did in real life what I wrote about, I'd be posting from the SuperMax Penitentiary (are they allowed internet there?)

 

[Edey]

If I wrote about my real life, it would bore everyone, myself included, to tears.

If I did in real life what I wrote about, I'd be posting from the SuperMax Penitentiary (are they allowed internet there?)

Ha! I have totally opposite experience. If I wrote about my true life love story - people would not believe me, or accuse me of "adding some colors" to it.
I was so in love with a beautiful young man, whose family blackmailed me by threatening to end the public career of my father, destroying his reputation using his gay-son deeds (I'm not from the US, but from more “traditional” country).
I had police invading my house multiple time (as his family was powerful, had connection with officials) and as I finally gave him up, I had suicide attempt, resulting in close-call clinical death, and one year of severe depression, where I could not actually see colors, only monochromatic, as I was so heartbroken and devastated.
People could think I overdramatized and just straight lied about such a situation, so I don't even try I just don't want to risk being ridiculed as it's still painful, even after a decade.

So, I restrain myself to write about my other boyfriends/their alter egos/ versions/ , which include much more "normal/boring" situations

 

[NC_Coastal]

Most of my stories are about things I would never do in real life, well probably not, but I do set them in locations I'm familiar with. "Write about what you know" rings true with me, even if I'm writing about fantasies or prescribed contest subjects.

 

[MKvDeepSea]

All my stories are based on our open marriage; how we came to open it and the adventures we had. Of course, names were changed, and locations are vague on purpose. The amount of sex was exaggerated due to wishful thinking that it had happened the way I wrote it.

 

[jehoram]

I wrote one story in two parts. The first part was true (except for changes in names), and the second was fiction. I took it off the site after one of the people on which the story was based was involved in something that might have jeopardized their career had somebody made the connection despite the changes.

All the other stories might have had a trace of something that actually happened to me, but most are from my own diseased mind.

 

[Escierto]

There is an author who writes transgender stories here and his stories are wildly popular. Completely ridiculous fantasies that have no connection to reality. He has never been with a transgender woman but all of his stories focus on sex with one. That’s what the audience loves!

 

[gunhilltrain]

Usually the main plots - especially the erotic elements - are completely fictitious. I can only wish that some of them had happened to me. Some of the background details and especially the settings are based on real elements. In some stories, one can follow the action on Google maps, including the street view.

I have written some non-fiction essays, and I plan to do more of them eventually.

Movies and Memory

The Past is a Foreign Country

 

[KeithD]

Assuming that "real life experiences" includes what I read and observe going on around me, then I'll say that real-life elements often are present in my stories--maybe even usually. The story I just reviewed for an anthology was sparked by the image of being able to see from where I was sitting in a restaurant into a bathroom at a hotel remade from an old mill workers cottage complex. The window went almost to the floor and was right next to the toilet and a shower stall clearly visible just beyond. A voyeur story quickly came out of that. The story I reviewed before that was what unfolded from eye contact made with an attractive someone across the aisle at a book festival program I went to and had such a connection (without the hookup that followed in the story). Both came out of real-life experiences. The story I'm writing now (for the Halloween contest) was inspired by a book I just read by Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, in which a character who has had a heart transplant thinks that the means of the death of the heart donor is popping up in his dreams. I'm using the premise, but the story I am writing is quite different. Reading that book was a real life experience for me, though.

 

[Duleigh]

Very, very often. It's a rare occurrence when I write a story that has nothing of my real life in it. When a story I wrote with nothing of me in it comes out well it's a surprise to me. I have nothing I could have put in Blindsided by the Blind Guy but I am very happy with the way it turned out, but I'm not happy at all with the Private Photographer which also has nothing of me, and I really expected that, because I had no personal investment in it.

I was once told to always tell the truth, because when you lie you have to remember what you made up. Same goes with writing, if you use people or items that you're familiar with, almost all of your work is done for you and you can add those personal touches that make a story more enjoyable.

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

Mine are based on real life. Maybe not the minotaur spanking people with its penis but most of the other stuff.

I knew these women who were Trouble with a capital T. They did crazy stuff, they had problems with addiction and did everything from stripping to drug muleing to pay for it. Most of my stories are about these women, the problem is they did strange things for strange reasons so my female characters come across as unhinged.

 

[the_single_gal_unconfidential]

I'm curious how often people add some of their real life experiences to their stories.

I do this often, some(but not all) of my characters are literally ME, as I would behave or as I behaved in the past (situations, dialogues, etc)
95% of sex scenes come from my own sex life.

How is it with you? Care to share

where's your stories?

 

[Edey]

where's your stories?

Well, on my Literotica's profile, of course.

 

[HeyAll]

To the average person, I might be what some consider 'boring,' which is fine. That means if I put too much of my personal life into stories, I won't have any readers. lol

I do keep my eyes and ears open in life, finding little things to put in stories.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

All the damn time. Usually the funny stuff, although I've been known to insert sad things as well.

 

[Duleigh]

To the average person, I might be what some consider 'boring,' which is fine. That means if I put too much of my personal life into stories, I won't have any readers. lol

I used to think the same thing until I sat down and took a look at what I've done and where I've been, it was boring to me, (except for that crazy North Korean spy who jumped the fence and was hiding in the smoke from the burning rice-straw and we were sure he was going to sabotage a few F-16s, that was kinda cool). But after further review, what I consider every day boring stuff, most people have never done, so a twist here and there and up she goes on Lit.

 

[April602]

All my stories are based on my experiences. So they are all true stories. Some are fun and others down right sad or even disturbing. I find it very therapeutic to write the sad one. My next story about how I lost my virginity is very sad/ disturbing…should be up this weekend.
April602