The Reality to Fiction Paradox

How to hold multiple truths while writing fiction to heal

If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an essay in my “Writing Fiction to Heal” series which is all about my method and process of turning real life pain into healing through the act of writing fiction. You can learn more about Writing Fiction to Heal here.

Today, I want to talk about the reality-to-fiction paradox that a lot of writers may struggle with or have hesitations about. I think this question from one of my students sums it up nicely:

I get too attached to the real events to fictionalize them. If I put it in a close enough scenario to reality, I just end up ranting out my feelings. If I put in enough differences, then I feel too distant from the event for it to become therapeutic.

So I guess my issue is about where to start to find a way into it that isn't forced. Is it maybe simpler than I'm trying? Do I just need to practice writing it 5 different ways to get these answers?

So let’s break this down.

Our attachment to our experiences

When we think of our experiences and what we’ve been through — it’s natural to have an attachment to it. After all, it’s our experiences that shape us. It’s normal that there’s an emotional charge to them and that’s precisely why writing about them is so hard and painful. If we haven’t processed the experience fully or haven’t entered into a “recovery” stage in regards to what we’ve experienced — then writing about that experience directly often results in rehashing the narrative we’ve always been telling (or have been told). That’s exactly why I love utilizing fiction to heal because you do get a buffer of distance from the actual event.

The healing proximity

“If I write enough differences, then I feel too distant from the event for it to become therapeutic.”

I think this is another common question or hesitation that many writers face when deciding if writing fiction to heal can work for them or not. And it’s valid because it’s true. When there’s too much distance from what you’re trying to write about, it loses some of the power to help you heal. Then it becomes just another story — a story that may well be good and healing in other ways — but not a story that helps you heal with a specific wound.

Essentially, what this person is asking is: how do I write a novel that will help me heal without focusing on the reality of the events yet not straying too far away to be unhelpful?

There’s a delicate dance that happens when you’re trying to achieve the healing properties of Writing Fiction — the dance between reality and fiction.

The Solution

“Creating a successful plot is as simple as giving your characters believable, tangible desires and putting the right obstacles in their way.”
— Bret Anthony Jonhston

The trick to writing powerful and healing fiction is to re-evaluate that delicate dance I mentioned. How we do that is by pulling out the emotional and somatic feelings that the real event brings up, and giving them to our characters to explore.

What we’re looking to do is to take the most painful/emotional parts and see them from a different perspective through our writing. In that way, we are still working with the very real events/experiences/emotions we have, while inserting enough distance not to be re-traumatizing. We’re giving our characters similar tangible desires that we possess. The obstacles they face in the novel? That’s where the divergence from reality to fiction gets to step in.

This all sounds good in theory, right? But how does it work in practice?

We break it down into bite-sized chunks to get where we want to be.

Mini Case Study

First, we have to identify what it is we want to explore. For this case study, I’m going to use the personal example I use throughout my workshop.

So the primary event/experience/emotion I want to explore is:

• My Sexual Abuse

What we want to do next is try to tie the emotions to the scenario that feels most in line with what we want to explore in the writing to heal. But we need to first know what it is we’re actually feeling.

The primary emotion of my event/experience/emotion is:

• Anger

Now, we want to identify where anger might also be a predominant emotion for other scenarios:

• Being wrongfully convicted

• Any type of assault

• Murder

• Kidnapping

• Harm to one’s family, friends, pets, etc.

After reviewing the list of scenarios, choose one that seems interesting to work with:

• Being wrongfully convicted/harm to one’s family

Let’s look at what we’ve done so far from a dual-list perspective:

Cool. So we have our “what” (wrongful conviction/harm to family), we have the main “conflict” (working through anger), and now we need the “who.”

This is where the 5 different ways are a great exercise because you need to get a feel for how close you want the character to be to you. Don’t worry, you’re putting yourself into your character whether you like it or not, but you do get the choice to make that character as closely related to you as you want. Some characters of mine have only bits and pieces of me in them, while some characters are heavily influenced by who I am. I find that as you start writing, they will reveal themselves to you, whether it’s a replica of you or a completely different person.

One really good way to see how close you want to be is to ask yourself “why” your character is feeling their predominant emotion for both of your reality and fiction scenarios.

So, sticking with my example — I would ask myself:

Why are you angry right now? [Reminder: Sexual Abuse]

I am feeling all the rage and pent-up anger I’ve had for years bubbling to the surface. I’m feeling it because I played the “good girl” for so long and stayed quiet. But I don’t want to be quiet any longer. I don’t want to be the good girl if it means that bad men get to hurt little girls.

Why is your character angry right now? [Reminder: Wrongful conviction/harm to family]

Izzy is angry for a lot of reasons! First, her father is wrongly convicted of a crime she knows he didn’t commit. Then, she realizes that something bad is happening to him inside the prison walls. When he’s murdered, her rage swallows her whole at all those who have taken the most important thing in her life away from her.

If you read closely enough, you’ll see that there’s a deviation in the second one, especially given that I used third person for it versus first person in the first one. But when you strip away the extraneous (but important) sentences, we’re left with a very similar “who.”

• Both Izzy and I have a deep rage running through our veins

• Both of us have had things taken away from us by bad people

• Both of us have realized that “being quiet” isn’t an option

• Both of us have a desire for the truth

• Both of us want revenge

See how this works? We’re gently peeling the layers of what we know to be true about ourselves and our realities while working it through with the character.

In both scenarios, the anger is distinctive in that someone has wronged another. For me, it was my abuser and family. For Izzy, it’s the people involved in her father’s wrongful conviction and subsequent murder.

The fictional characters may be in a completely different scenario than my reality, but in both, they are dealing with the dominant feeling in similar ways. That’s a sign to run with that emotion as the catalyst for future work.

Let’s recap the progression:

• We started with a “real-life” event (sexual abuse)

• We identified the dominant emotion (anger)

• We narrowed in on a scenario that felt similar enough to our “real-life” event emotions (wrongful conviction/harm to family)

• We found similarities in our character (the who) to our “real-life” self

The next step?

Do this whole exercise again with a different experience/event/emotion. Or keep the experience/event/emotion and select a different predominant emotion and scenario to explore. Try on what feels right and which mix of reality and fiction feels natural to you. I can promise you that if you do this exercise a few times, you will find one that calls to you. But you have to be willing to be open to it. You have to be willing to feel uncomfortable feelings. Once you accept that, you will start to see healing on the page.