Writing Autobiographical Fiction

What is the difference between writing autobiographical fiction and writing about what you know?

Never thought about it? Then you should, because it is one of the biggest areas of confusion that exists for novel writing beginners...

When you are learning to write a novel, it is one of the first things you hear: write what you know about.

You also hear that autobiographical fiction is a bad thing - which totally contradicts the advice to write about what you know. Doesn't it?

Actually, it doesn't. The fact is that both pieces of advice hold true, and I will explain why in this article and the next. Here, I will talk about what the problem is with being too autobiographical in your fiction. After that, and more importantly, I will explain precisely how you should write what you know about.

The Trouble With Autobiographical Fiction

Pure autobiographical fiction is a thinly-disguised version of your own life story. Apart from changing names and locations and any other key facts, you do virtually nothing to distinguish the events of your novel from the events of your life.

And you know what? It rarely if ever works, no matter how fascinating you believe your life has been.

Your job as a novel writer is to shape new experiences, not to rewrite old ones.

Note the word "shape." Real life doesn't have any shape, and that is the trouble with trying to pass it off as fiction.

As you will discover in the section on How to Plot a Novel, a plot in a novel consists of a series of linked events, each one an effect of the event before it and a cause of the event to come.

It is this linkage that keeps the reader turning the pages, eager to discover what happens next.

But real life doesn't often work like that. It is more random, more episodic. Event A happens and then Event B happens, but the two events have nothing to do with each other and are therefore hopeless for the purposes of good fiction.

There is an awful lot of dull stuff in between these events, too.

And real life rarely provides perfect endings, with all the loose ends neatly tied. Oh, and have you noticed how real life is full of incredible coincidences?

• Like when you think of an old friend you haven't seen for years and they phone you the very next day.
• Or when you're on holiday a thousand miles from home and you bump into the couple who live three doors down.

We know that things like that happen all the time in real life, but put one of these coincidences in your novel and the reader won't believe a word of it. Life really is stranger than fiction.

Another problem with writing autobiography disguised as fiction is that it is difficult to be objective.

Yes, the passing of time helps us to gain perspective on events, but do you think you could ever gain enough perspective when the protagonist is you and the protagonist's story is your story?

If you are still drawn to autobiographical fiction, despite everything I have said, I have two pieces of advice:

1. Reshape and rearrange the facts of your life as much as you can. Don't see your novel as a fictionalized version of your life so much as a fictionalized version of what your life could have been, or should have been, or almost was. So play around with the chronology, introduce invented characters, make up some events. You will find this far more creatively fulfilling as it requires you to use your imagination.
2. If you don't want to distort the facts or rearrange them into more pleasing shapes, consider writing an actual autobiography. It can be a tough market to crack if you don't happen to be famous, but if your life really has been as fascinating and as adventure-filled as you believe then a big market certainly exists.

If you don't want to write purely autobiographical fiction, but nevertheless want to make full use of your own experiences, the next article explains the right way to write what you know about...