Writing Fiction About Your Past? Remember, It’s Not Therapy

Temper your emotion with objectivity

In some way, we’re all writing the story of our own lives.

Our ambitions, failures, tragedies, romances, they all sneak in somehow. I’ve looked back on my stories and recognised bits from my life that I never intended to put in. Now that they’re there, though, I see how perfectly they belong.

Many choose to deliberately write fiction about their past as a form of therapy. It’s a good way to come to terms with the things that happened by giving them an existence separate from you. And that’s its own category and is entirely personal — neither I nor anyone else can tell you how to do it.

Here, though, I’m talking specifically about drawing bits from your past and treating it as material, the same way you would an idea from anywhere.

And in that context, some approaches are undoubtedly better than others.

One of my favourite opening lines is from LP Hartley’s novel The Go-Between:

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

And indeed, reliving memories of the past can feel like watching a movie about someone else, because you were a different person then. There’s rich, interesting material to be had there for your fiction, and from a craft perspective, true incidents often makes for more vivid reading than imagined feelings. There’s also tremendous potential for you to own the truth of what happened by retelling events your way, without sugarcoats or censors.

But here’s the thing about pain— it always comes out. If you’ve written an angry or painful piece about your past, people who read it will feel it. Which is okay, because like I said, it adds authenticity.

But the risk is that the writer becomes so caught up in the emotion that the focus shifts to getting catharsis by letting out the feelings, rather than writing the story.

And in the process, the story itself risks being unfulfilled.

So. Again. If you’re writing fiction as a way to process your past — perhaps even on your therapist’s recommendation — you do you.

But if you’re looking to treat your past as a source of material to write better fiction, here are some things that work for me.

Choose incidents from which you’re sufficiently distanced

A few weeks ago, I got the germ of an idea for a story based on something difficult I went through during my school years. Up until recently, I couldn’t think about it without feeling mad — now, finally, I’m distanced enough from it to see the situation objectively and even see the funny side of it.

Time isn’t always a great healer, but it’s certainly an excellent stabiliser. Sections of the past that have stabilised are almost always safe to use.

Change one significant detail about it

If the raw truth is too hard to write about, this is a great way to make it less so while keeping the essence of the incident. So if the thing happened to you, you could try to write it as a third-person narrative for someone of a different gender or different age. Or if it happened to your mom, make it happen to a middle-aged man.

Try listing the facts of the incident

This is a good preliminary step for incidents that you maybe have confused feelings about.

Here’s what you do — write about the incident as blandly as possible. List any details, such as the colour of people’s dresses, what the weather was like. List the sequence of events, list what happened afterwards. Just the facts — nothing about what you thought or how you felt.

That’s your raw material. Free of emotion. Now, you can mould it any way you feel comfortable with.

Make up a collection of anecdotes

You don’t necessarily have to go into the exact details of what happened.

You can turn the incident into an anecdote and insert it as a single line, mentioned by one character to another during a party.

I’ll use an example from my life:

I was bullied for being fat in school. If I don’t want to write about the experience but still want to use it in some way, I could mention it in a throwaway context. Let’s try.

“My girl’s having a hard time of it,” said Toni. “Puberty, you know. It’s changing her.”

“They’re demons in the sixth grade,” said Maya, shaking her head. “I heard they put toothpaste into a girl’s sandwich at a class party.”

“Lord, why?”

“She’s fat, apparently.”

I didn’t have to dilate on the feelings attached to a trick that someone played on me (which was one of many tricks and slights that came my way), but I could still use it to propel the conversation forward.

Write it like a diary entry in the first-person

This is especially great for non-traumatic events from your past.

Write about what happened, feelings and everything, but write it like it just happened and you’re telling your diary about it.

There are two ways you could do this:

• You can write how you felt in that moment
• Or, you could assign a different set of feelings — maybe imagine what you might have done in the situation rather than what you actually did

The latter is a bit more of a creative exercise, but it’s also a nice way to comfort your past self for things done or not done.

Step away whenever you feel uncomfortable or triggered

This is non-negotiable.

I don’t believe in writing through discomfort. Writing is hard enough as it is — you shouldn’t have to feel triggered by hard things that happened to you just for the sake of a story. If you feel that happening, step away immediately. No questions asked. Do what you have to in order to feel better.

And before coming back, ask yourself — do you want to come back to this particular story? Your feeling triggered, it’s a warning. Be careful which way you choose to go from here on out.

Choose the happier incidents

Not all past anecdotes have to be gloomy. Try writing about something happy, or funny, or something you learned an important lesson from, or something that evokes pleasant nostalgia.

I honestly feel like modern fiction is way more depressing than it needs to be, and that the answer lies in some good old happy thoughts — well-seasoned steaks and As on tests and unexpected presents and chocolate cake, among all the human condition stuff. And in case it wasn’t obvious, writing about happy things is a great tonic for mental health. Double whammy.

Ask yourself — honestly — whether it’s therapy or fiction

Both therapy writing and fiction writing call for honesty.

But with fiction, the goal is honest art, not the honest truth.

A piece of writing is not good literature merely because it’s honest. What’s more, not every piece of honest writing can become fiction. Some writing needs to carry the weight of what happened so you don’t have to — and to change that for the sake of fiction would be doing yourself a disservice.

How to tell? You can’t. Not at first. Often not until you’re halfway through, or even done with the piece.

But I promise, you’ll know the difference when you see it.

And if that does happen — if you do realise that the art isn’t as honest as it ought to be, that’s fine. I’ve found a lot of closure through stories that didn’t quite work as stories, but which allowed me to come to terms with unscratched itches about my past and my subsequent growth. Did I feel bad about them not working out? Sure. But are they valuable in their own way? Heck yes.

The past is a foreign country, but it’s one you’re a frequent flier to. Over time, your relationship with your past strengthens, and you’ll be able to treat it in a manner of your choosing — as a source of inspiration, as writing material, as a guide for future decisions, or simply as something that once existed and doesn’t exist anymore.

For us writers, though, there’s no goodbye that’s final. The past may slip back in unexpectedly, and in places and contexts wildly different from anything you could have imagined in relation to the actual incident.

If it does, my advice is — shake hands with it. Say hello, see what it has to tell you. Ask it head-on: “How do you intend to inform and improve my art?”

And if you like the answer, usher it in. :)