Stories Based on Real Events

[liliput1]

Everyone's life eventually turns a little bit into Shakespeare, and Shakespeare covered most of the ways life can be utterly fucked up.

I have friends and acquaintances who have worked out some of their drama publicly, so I have the benefit of their wisdom and failings to add to my own that covers a lot of decisions I either hadn't faced yet (like telling a parent about your sexuality and having that go sideways) or will likely never have call to use for myself, (like the dangers of being a "straight" girl's experiment). When others write about those topics I am less of a tourist. Those scenarios aren't hypothetical to me. I won't write an entire story around those themes but I'm confident to write them as part of another story.

 

[Stanfield2025]

I couldn't think of a better pair for that to happen to. And oddly on brand. Good for her.

Yeah I saw Alissa as more or less the protagonist of that story, so I wrote the protagonist of my story off of her.

 

[Stanfield2025]

Truth is stranger than fiction as they say.
A college friend was at a party and watched a girl confront an older woman about sleeping with her boyfriend. Turns out it was her mom...
There are probably very few stories on Lit in the basic categories where something remarkably similar hasn't happened in real life a time or two.

That's insane.

 

[liliput1]

Once upon a time, some jack wagon floated the idea that Mars colonists could pay their way to the red planet by entering into what essentially amounted to indentured servitude contracts. I got a story out of this (and then some) with Tales from the Stream. Lesbian space pirates who said screw this indentured servitude crap, stole a spaceship, and set out on adventure.

So yeah, go for it!

I had a PG-rated story premise where I was thinking the same but it started to look more like Kim Stanley Robinson the longer I workshopped it.

 

[liliput1]

Truth is stranger than fiction as they say.
A college friend was at a party and watched a girl confront an older woman about sleeping with her boyfriend. Turns out it was her mom...
There are probably very few stories on Lit in the basic categories where something remarkably similar hasn't happened in real life a time or two.

But I feel like most of us know someone who related a story like that second hand.

My college classmates where half big city kids, some of them with silver spoons, some from the projects, and half people trying to put their family in the rear view by force of will and merit. The working class college kids always had fucked up stories about cousins or neighbors.

 

[liliput1]

I can't count the number of times that some element of true life hasn't inspired a story.

Songs are frequently an inspiration for me, as are news stories, historical events, and people I have met in real life.

Write what you know. At least until you can write something else.

 

[Britva415]

Do any of you see things happen in real life and write those things into your stories?

Consciously or unconsciously?

 

[Stanfield2025]

Consciously or unconsciously?

Consciously. But I'm willing to hear about it being done unconsciously too.

 

[Britva415]

Consciously. But I'm willing to hear about it being done unconsciously too.

Yeah, I was sort of saying-without-saying that practically every idea comes from stuff we already know about or thought about or heard about or experienced.

It is vanishingly rare that a fiction idea is original at all. Even the very first people to ever write down a fiction story weren't being completely original, because there was an oral tradition long long long before writing was invented.

There is practically nothing you can write which wasn't a real event somewhere sometime. Whether you had that specific instance in mind or not when you started writing, you definitely have previous experience with the idea because of hearing about someone somewhere sometime having done it.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Consciously. But I'm willing to hear about it being done unconsciously too.

If it's unconscious it has to go into NC. Let's not have another fight about that category.

 

[SmilingLez]

I'll start. I don't know how many of you know about Jake Paul and Logan Paul, but they're YouTube vloggers who get up to all sorts of crazy antics. There was an incident in which Jake Paul carried on a toxic relationship with a YouTuber known as Alissa Violet. Alissa cheated on Jake by having sex with his brother and it created a whole YouTube drama that lasted for several months.

I was so inspired by this I took that basic situation and placed it in a medieval setting. In the story, the queen cheats on her cruel king by having sex with his brother, then has a child from that brother, and things eventually escalate into a civil war due to the succession crisis.

So, I'm wondering if this sort of thing is normal. Do any of you see things happen in real life and write those things into your stories?

My almost 1300 word graffiti free verse will post tomorrow.

Real life is my spark

 

[BeechLeaf]

I don't write science fiction; what I write is like what I know around me. If my characters look up, the sky is blue, not pink. The trees they see are oaks and planes. not sqazzaax trees. But I never use incidents from real life. If I describe an oak*, it's made up, not copied from real life, but based on my accumulated knowledge of how oaks look. Likewise people - I've known lots of people, and they've behaved in various ways, so my entirely fictional people are grounded in a general knowledge of real people, without actually being based on any,

* cue Flanders and Swann on seeing the horses plant their proud hooves...

 

[Stanfield2025]

Yeah, I was sort of saying-without-saying that practically every idea comes from stuff we already know about or thought about or heard about or experienced.

It is vanishingly rare that a fiction idea is original at all. Even the very first people to ever write down a fiction story weren't being completely original, because there was an oral tradition long long long before writing was invented.

There is practically nothing you can write which wasn't a real event somewhere sometime. Whether you had that specific instance in mind or not when you started writing, you definitely have previous experience with the idea because of hearing about someone somewhere sometime having done it.

I think I get what you mean, but I'm not sure if all stories subconsciously come from real life events. I agree nothing's original anymore in the purest sense of the word, but real events are a bit different. Was Jurassic Park based off of real events? It uses real concepts and fictional ones, but is that the same as being based on a specific thing that happened?

 

[Stanfield2025]

I don't write science fiction; what I write is like what I know around me. If my characters look up, the sky is blue, not pink. The trees they see are oaks and planes. not sqazzaax trees. But I never use incidents from real life. If I describe an oak*, it's made up, not copied from real life, but based on my accumulated knowledge of how oaks look. Likewise people - I've known lots of people, and they've behaved in various ways, so my entirely fictional people are grounded in a general knowledge of real people, without actually being based on any,

* cue Flanders and Swann on seeing the horses plant their proud hooves...

In case you're misunderstanding me: I'm not asking about whether people use elements of the real world in their stories. I'm just asking about specific real-life experiences/events being integrated into fictional stories.

 

[Erozetta]

There's some truth in most of my stories, whether that's exploring a kink, telling an actual experience under a fictional veneer, or just telling a real story from my life...

But one that sparked an from that idea of "real experience turned into fiction" recently is Pretty When You Cry.

About two weeks after I submitted A Letter to My Readers I had a moment where I hit a very bad headspace and just fucking spiraled into not wanting to be alive. Into feeling like a burden for having basic human needs and wants. For having friends I loved and felt like I couldn't express that properly. For not doing everything exactly perfectly constantly. It hit me really hard. I wanted to be alone.

I told a friend I wanted to call out of work for a few days and be alone, and they knew what I meant. They didn't let me. They actively forbade me from either harming myself or being fully cut off from people I cared about. They understood the risk of me having time where I wasn't needed by anyone.

I don't remember exactly when, but at some point during that weekend, they told me the affirmations I wrote in "Pretty When You Cry." I think they had me write them? Maybe? I don't remember. Parts of that weekend are a blur, but the words stuck with me so fucking hard.

I couldn't let it go. They just replayed in my head and I sat with them for a long time, really taking them in. And I cried a lot because there had been people who had told me I wasn't burdening them or I wasn't a burden, but not the rest of it. And all of it together just hit me exactly how I needed them to.

I was a fucking mess of a person for many days. From maybe the 24th of April through the 30th, maybe? My essay published while this was happening. It had been submitted weeks before, and I didn't expect it to get published. I expected a rejection for it because of the subject matter. But it published, and it published at probably the worst fucking time it could've because I was in full meltdown crisis and had stopped checking to see if it had been rejected... and it fucking published when I wasn't looking. I was panicked. Full on panicked because I didn't know what to do with everything happening all at once. Too much. Too many emotions. Too scary. Too much input into my head in a short span of time.

Then I woke up one morning and wrote "Pretty When you Cry" in about two hours. It was just full emotional release of what those words did to me at a time when I most needed to hear them.

Did the sex happen? No. But did it feel like that when someone took the time to actively take care of me at a time when I *couldn't* take care of myself and couldn't show that I couldn't take care of myself? Yes. It felt like an embrace and comfort, and care, and a deeply personal penetration of my body through forced care in the only way I could accept, after hurt, after roughness, with the promise of release, in this case emotional, but on a level that *felt* physical. So I wrote it exactly as that from the POV of the person who gave me those much needed affirmations. I wrote it as a thank you to the person who kept me alive that weekend.

Real-life words around events that created what might be the best and most real story I've ever written.

 

[BeechLeaf]

All right, more specifically: sometimes in the park I see something like a dog doing a cute backwards jump. I think, that's lovely, that would be good in a story. But I don't use real events, I make things up. So I have to think how I could put something like that in a story. A cat? A cat pulling back? I spend time trying to invent something that would have a comparable effect. Or a child runs up to her mother and does something... it inspires me, I like it, I want to use something like that. So now I have to work at inventing something with a similar effect. I'm a fiction writer, so I can't just drop in pre-existing things and claim I invented this fiction.

 

[Stanfield2025]

So now I have to work at inventing something with a similar effect. I'm a fiction writer, so I can't just drop in pre-existing things and claim I invented this fiction.

Interesting. I've never seen that stance on fiction, but interesting.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My college classmates where half big city kids, some of them with silver spoons, some from the projects, and half people trying to put their family in the rear view by force of will and merit. The working class college kids always had fucked up stories about cousins or neighbors.

The silver spoon kids probably have even more fucked-up stories - they just don't spread them as far and wide. Example: school friend got to go to boarding school because her mother had been having an affair with a married man (and was married herself), and as part of keeping her sweet when the affair partner broke it off, paid her a lot of money and the school fees for six years. We knew this for years, didn't rate that highly in the endless conversations on "who has the most fucked-up family?"

Only years later did friend let on that the guy her mum had been having said affair with was actually her own stepson. Who extracted the money from his dad's (ie the husband's) company. The auditors noticed. Which explained the divorce.

Parents having messy divorces so sending their kids to boarding school was 10-15% of my year group, actually. My best friend's parents were a couple years into their divorce when we were in first year. I was doing my degree eight years later when it was finally settled. The lawyers had ended up with most of the money, and I think all four of her siblings had been disinherited at least once.

Then you got the spill-over from politics, where a minister in a country decided to deal with a problem - ie girl 1's dad had girl 2's dad murdered. Girl 1's mum served jail time, but I think dad is still in the government.

Got a good amount of Royal gossip, too, but that's all public now. If anything, Jilly Cooper's novels don't have enough sex and shenanigans in them!

 

[Bramblethorn]

So, I'm wondering if this sort of thing is normal. Do any of you see things happen in real life and write those things into your stories?

My partner was in a café one day and overheard an older man and younger woman working out the ground rules for their sugar-baby relationship. She told me about it and that became part of the genesis of one of my stories.

 

[Daddy_Daimion]

The old items on my account hardly matter for this, but the two newer are completely written to and for others and hold some ways that are very true to life.

Goodbye is literally a goodby letter I wrote to friends, with one in particular being the target of it. I never sent it to them, but they have read it here and I didn’t leave.

Logismoi was written to get out feelings that are real but never happened at the time. It’s raw emotion, every word of it true and directed for a singular audience.

There’s not much I post here often, but the ones that I do are all “real” in a sense that they are meant to be for someone, not everyone, and to give them and emotional release when the physical is not possible.

 

[Stanfield2025]

There's some truth in most of my stories, whether that's exploring a kink, telling an actual experience under a fictional veneer, or just telling a real story from my life...

But one that sparked an from that idea of "real experience turned into fiction" recently is Pretty When You Cry.

About two weeks after I submitted A Letter to My Readers I had a moment where I hit a very bad headspace and just fucking spiraled into not wanting to be alive. Into feeling like a burden for having basic human needs and wants. For having friends I loved and felt like I couldn't express that properly. For not doing everything exactly perfectly constantly. It hit me really hard. I wanted to be alone.

I told a friend I wanted to call out of work for a few days and be alone, and they knew what I meant. They didn't let me. They actively forbade me from either harming myself or being fully cut off from people I cared about. They understood the risk of me having time where I wasn't needed by anyone.

I don't remember exactly when, but at some point during that weekend, they told me the affirmations I wrote in "Pretty When You Cry." I think they had me write them? Maybe? I don't remember. Parts of that weekend are a blur, but the words stuck with me so fucking hard.

I couldn't let it go. They just replayed in my head and I sat with them for a long time, really taking them in. And I cried a lot because there had been people who had told me I wasn't burdening them or I wasn't a burden, but not the rest of it. And all of it together just hit me exactly how I needed them to.

I was a fucking mess of a person for many days. From maybe the 24th of April through the 30th, maybe? My essay published while this was happening. It had been submitted weeks before, and I didn't expect it to get published. I expected a rejection for it because of the subject matter. But it published, and it published at probably the worst fucking time it could've because I was in full meltdown crisis and had stopped checking to see if it had been rejected... and it fucking published when I wasn't looking. I was panicked. Full on panicked because I didn't know what to do with everything happening all at once. Too much. Too many emotions. Too scary. Too much input into my head in a short span of time.

Then I woke up one morning and wrote "Pretty When you Cry" in about two hours. It was just full emotional release of what those words did to me at a time when I most needed to hear them.

Did the sex happen? No. But did it feel like that when someone took the time to actively take care of me at a time when I *couldn't* take care of myself and couldn't show that I couldn't take care of myself? Yes. It felt like an embrace and comfort, and care, and a deeply personal penetration of my body through forced care in the only way I could accept, after hurt, after roughness, with the promise of release, in this case emotional, but on a level that *felt* physical. So I wrote it exactly as that from the POV of the person who gave me those much needed affirmations. I wrote it as a thank you to the person who kept me alive that weekend.

Real-life words around events that created what might be the best and most real story I've ever written.

I've read that letter to your readers before. Shame that the site did its bullshit and that affected you. I ought to read Pretty When You Cry sometime. Interesting that you wrote it from the POV of the person who took care of you. I'd find it hard to do such a POV.

 

[Stanfield2025]

My partner was in a café one day and overheard an older man and younger woman working out the ground rules for their sugar-baby relationship. She told me about it and that became part of the genesis of one of my stories.

That's epic.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think I get what you mean, but I'm not sure if all stories subconsciously come from real life events. I agree nothing's original anymore in the purest sense of the word, but real events are a bit different. Was Jurassic Park based off of real events? It uses real concepts and fictional ones, but is that the same as being based on a specific thing that happened?

Was there a real island with cloned dinosaurs? Nope. Have people built projects that got out of hand? Yep. Depends how specific the "based on" needs to be.

 

[Erozetta]

I've read that letter to your readers before. Shame that the site did its bullshit and that affected you. I ought to read Pretty When You Cry sometime. Interesting that you wrote it from the POV of the person who took care of you. I'd find it hard to do such a POV.

The site had no clue what was happening. It was just karmic universal coincidental timing that said "Fuck you in particular, Liz."


Also... The pov? Easiest thing I ever wrote. No thought went into it whatsoever, just pure emotion.

 

[Erozetta]

I will say... I normally cannot write from a Dom perspective. Just can't get into that mindset. And I didn't publish that piece until the person who gave me those words read it and gave me their approval.