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Transfer Your Experiences To Your Storys
Author: Arline Chandler
Writers often hear the statement: “Write what you know.” Yet, sometimes we think we don’t “know” enough to make an experience come to life for a reader. But if we comb through our memories, we often come up with emotions and senses that transfer to our characters. For example, who among us has traveled in a space capsule? But have you ever lived for a day or a week in the close confines of a travel trailer? A tent? A pop-up camper?
Perhaps you’ve never jostled in a wagon hitched to a team of mules. Or stood on the edge of a prairie untouched by humans. But have you ridden over back roads in an open-air Jeep? Or stood in a national park surrounded by pristine mountains and meadows?
In a story that grabs young readers’ attention, writers must create three dimensional characters. Our heroes and heroines must have emotions and passions that make readers care about them and their struggles. To maintain interest in the book or story, youngsters must identify with the character. In order to write in those identifiable emotions, writers can draw from their own wells of experience.
The late Pam Conrad brought this point home at a Highlights Foundation Writers Workshop in Chautauqua, New York. She talked about her feelings as she wrote the scene in My Daniel where the heroine of the book gave up the dinosaur bones her brother had found to the men from the museum. Conrad explained that she had been through a painful divorce shortly before writing this part of her book. She and her husband had lived in a beautiful Victorian house—her dream home. In the final settlement, the house had to be sold.
Conrad stood in the foyer, watching the movers pack up the memories of things that once were. She moved to the sidewalk as they loaded her possessions onto the truck. And she lingered in the street watching the moving van roll away, marking the finality of her former life. Conrad transferred those emotions over to her character, Julia Creath, as the young girl handed over the bones so precious to her dead brother and watched the men and the wagon rumble away.
Our job as writers is to put ourselves at the center of the experience we’re writing for our character. Is there any parent who cannot remember the desperate and panicky feeling if one of our children was lost? Why could we not transfer that feeling to a character who gets lost in the woods or in a mall?
I recalled the elated feeling I had as a fourth grader when my teacher announced that I had won a poster contest. My best friend’s poster had clearly been neater. But I also knew that my friend’s father had lettered the project. When my name was called as first place winner, I felt that sense of an underdog coming out on top. Justice in an unjust world!
When I wrote my story, The Winner is a Green Frog, I transferred those emotions to my character, Peter. However, I also had to call up the disappointment and embarrassment I suffered when my friend viewed the posters displayed in a downtown store, and my name was actually on the back of her poster.
We all have experiences to bring up from our memory bank—sensations that we were the “odd” person at an event, memories of losing something precious, or the exultation of getting a perfect grade or winning a prize. The trick is projecting an experience you’ve known on to one that you’ve imagined.
What Your Childhood Memories Say About You by Dr. Kevin Leman brings to mind memories and emotions of childhood. Insights from this book and thinking back over experiences and memories of your childhood can give valuable material for building credible emotions into your characters.
With prompts from Dr. Leman’s book, make a list of memories that come to mind and how you felt emotionally during that experience. Note how you reacted. Were you a “rebel” or a “pleaser”? Think about people central in your childhood—teachers, parents, grandparents, friends, the storekeeper in your town. Remember that your stories must have antagonists and supporting characters. Recall experiences to build into your secondary characters, as well as your hero or heroine.
Within your own heart, mind, and memories, you have a wealth of information to incorporate into your writing. Call it up—and write it down!
This column first appeared on DM in 2009, but we think you'll agree that it still has some good information!
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