How to Turn Real-Life Events Into Compelling Fiction
My husband, Wayne, was raised as an only child by his aunt and uncle. His bio-mom remained in the picture, but his bio-dad seemed to have disappeared shortly after he was born. Several years ago, I got him a DNA test to see if he had inherited any health risks from him.
(Using Genealogy to Write Suspense Fiction.)
To our utter shock, he was DNA-matched with a younger half-sister he had never known about, who grew up in Southern California less than 25 miles away. Together they began to search for their biological father. Having just published my debut novel, I thought, ooo, this could be a book and imagined what their lives would have been like if they had met as teenagers and searched for their father in the present day.
Then I remembered what screenwriting guru and author Robert McKee had said about turning real-life events into fiction: facts are not a story. Facts are a collection of real-life people, places, and events while a story is a work of fiction with a plot, a theme, and characters with arcs. Unfortunately, facts do not come ready-made as stories, and I had a lot of work to do before the young adult novel inspired by my husband’s experience, The Search For Us, came to be.
First, I asked myself, what is this story about? I don’t mean the plot. I’m talking about a universal theme to which a broad set of readers could relate. I decided the theme of this book would be about yearning for absent parents, who I believe are still very much emotionally present in our lives.
With the theme set, next came creating fully dimensional characters with identifiable external goals and emotional arcs to match the theme. Readers need to understand what our characters are fighting for and be able to track their progression from one emotional state/belief system at the beginning of the novel to an evolved emotional state/belief system at the end.
In The Search For Us, the external goal for Henry and Samira is to find their father; the emotional stakes are around forging an emotional connection with him to heal their sense of abandonment and rejection—if they can find him.
Check out Susan Azim Boyer’s The Search for Us here:
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In order to ground the book in my emotional truth, I didn’t hesitate to depart from the facts. For instance, my husband and his half-sister are white/European in real life. However, in my novel, the characters are Iranian American as I am: Their mothers are white while their missing father is an Iranian immigrant and U.S. Army veteran. This way, Henry and Samira are searching for their father and a missing piece of their identity. And I got to write about my own culture.
With my main characters set, and their goals and emotional stakes defined, I outlined the plot starting with the story’s main tentpoles: the inciting incident (both characters take a DNA test), the first act break (they are DNA matched and decide to search for their father together), the midpoint (they meet in person), the all-is-lost moment (will they ever find him? was this a waste of time?), and the climax [redacted].
Remember, the story is more important than the facts—unless you are writing a memoir or narrative nonfiction. With that said, some details from my husband’s real life did make it into the book: Henry plays ice hockey as my husband did, and Henry’s two moms battle for his affection (his bio-mom and her sister) as Wayne’s did. But that brings us to another McKee maxim: the truth is no excuse.
Translation: Simply because something happened in real life doesn’t mean it fits into your story. The facts are there only to serve as inspiration. Unfortunately, my husband’s father passed away before they could meet, but that’s not what happens in my book.
What if you’re not writing about your own experience but that of friends or family, who might be upset about the creative liberties you’re taking with their story as I did? Talk to the people whose real lives you may be depicting; if there are specific, detailed events you’d like to include, tell them. Give them an opportunity to tell you what might be off-limits.
Bottom line: Interesting real-life events and experiences are happening around us all the time. I hope, with this set of guidelines, you’re able to spin them into narrative gold.