Real VS Made up stories when writing

[keatonb]

I'm new here and have read a several stories posted and am interested in writing a story or two myself based on experiences that took place in my life.
When writing a story based on a real experience how much should be what actually happened and how much should be filler/made up to round out the story?
Hopefully one day I'll post a story of my own here.
Thanks for all of your advice !

 

[freshface]

In my opinion, other people's real life usually makes for boring reading. I would say that your focus should be on writing an interesting story. Certainly real life may influence your story, but you need to filter/make up/round out enough to make it interesting to others.

Including an author's note that says "This is a true story" is a great way to keep people from reading it, simply because most readers know that if it's true, your focus was not on writing a story.

There are lots of great resources on this site to help with your writing, including this forum. Write you story and find your audience.

 

[CWatson]

It should be a story.

Whichever bits of the real-life event that would make good drama, keep. Discard the rest of it.

Whatever fictional embellishments you can think of that would make good drama, add. Discard the rest.

Only story serves the story.


...I realize that's not very specific, but I don't really know how else to explain it. Real-life events make a very good basis for fiction, but only if you treat it as a BASIS. People want to be entertained, thrilled, scared, titillated... They don't want to read a journal or watch a documentary. They don't want a blow-by-blow description of the action; they want a story.

If that's what you're writing, then you're good to go.

 

[DeeZire]

If you can introduce conflict or doubt at the beginning of the story, the reader will want to keep going. If the story's predictable, the reader will lose interest, unless the writing is so stellar the reader is mesmerized by the prose, but that's not likely to happen in a first story.

Personally, I like flawed characters. The reader may want to root for the character to overcome his/her flaws, or the reader may want the character to crash and burn - anything but the same old same old.

I just discovered this writer:
http://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=17146&page=submissions

Her stories are succinct and compelling, (and short!) While we're not always going to be writing little morality plays like she does, we can aspire to draw the reader in and make them care about what happens, (or what might happen but doesn't.)

The alternative is to write what amounts to a Penthouse Forum letter, which, to me, is not a story, it's a porn video set to words.