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.