Real life writes the plot

[fighterxaos]

Hey guys I'm fighter xaos. While I was working on my webcomic New Courage I started to wonder who else had real life be the major factor in inspiration for creating a story. I'm not asking about stories where it's literally your life or someone else's life. But one where it's still it's own story but people you knew in real life or stuff that's happened inspired you in your story someway.

Like, New Courage was not only conceived from my love of fighting games but two of the main characters are based off of people I know (my parents) and they're back story are pretty much slightly changed versions of what's happened to them. Despite it taking place in a fictional fantasy planet called Toberetz.

You don't have to say what it was if it's private of course but if it's something you don't mind sharing let's hear it.

[abbastudios]

The first rule of writing is write what you know

[RiverKai]

I second this! I always write somewhat from experience

[scythe]

So far in my comic I'd had a cloaked dude open a huge stone door with a hand gesture, another guy jump like 3 stories high and pull a padlock open with his bare hands, and a different guy use water to teleport people while someone else says he can 'see' where people are in his mind. Oh, and one other guy did a 30 foot karate kick into some poor sap's guts.

So yes, I get what you're saying. Real life experience plays a huge role in what I write.

[scythe]

p.s. I might be drunk.

[whydocowsfall]

I don't often base characters off real people because I always feel they have their own, unique personalities and sort of come to life in my head. But I do notice similarities between them and real life people! Polyphemus, for example, is in some ways very like a friend I used to have who was obsessed with sheep and had a large collection of toy sheep. Also all my characters have a bit of me in them, and whenever I used to draw one of the other characters (who hasn't come up yet) I used to draw myself, so... there's that. However I have already-established mythology to base my comic off so that's where I take most inspiration from, rather than real life. Luckily there's a lot of variation in mythology, so I get to pick and choose a little, and it's very easy to find reasons to interpret it your own way. d:

[Waterdrain]

I kind of do that all the time with my writing when it comes to using real life as a reference. Sure, I don't go exactly of what happened to me or what happened to people that I've known but I do try to connect those different events to similar things in my writing. I do reference most of my characters of people who I thought were interesting or meant a lot to me. When I do stuff like that it makes me feel that my work is more meaningful and it feels like I put a little bit of my own soul into my own pieces of work( yes, everything I make are just my own horcruxes spread all over). It can be really easy to write from real life though, and I agree with Abbastudios with this one, because it is a lot harder to write about what you don't know than it is to write from real life.

[Hug_Mug]

The first rule of writing is write what you know

I disagree with this somewhat.
Then how do sci-fi writers write about unknown worlds? How did the first fantasy writers imagine all their monsters and lands?

Is Jk Rowling really a wizard?
Are the writers whose main characters are serial killers mass murderers?

Writing is about creativity. Yes, some people have lived extraordinary lives that are fantastic stories in their own right. But, if you have an average life and are looking for inspiration from what's right in front of your face, I doubt something particularly amazing is going to come from that.

It depends on the definition of 'know.' The way it seems to be used here is to use something that you know from your own experience. I think this is always a bad move because it's probably going to end up like someone's blog. Think of the craziest story that happened to you or to anyone you know and then take a look on a website like reddit for stuff like 'what's the weirdest thing that ever happened to you?' and I guarantee that your story will turn into nothing before your eyes.

If you have to use the stories that have happened to you and your friends then I'm sorry, that means that at this point you are limited as a writer. A good writer can think 'ok, I want to have a couple who are always fighting' and then be able to create a realistic world, plot and dialogue just from out of their brain. They shouldn't be basing it on what they have experienced. This is my opinion.

If we take know to mean knowledge, then yes. If you are doing to write a about serial killers then you should research that topic to 'know.'

[JigokuNeko]

The "write what you know" rule is not meant to be taken literally. That defeats its purpose. However fantastically magical or however far into space you venture into your story the bottom line remains: the story is always about people. Or something anthropomorphized. I've yet to see a story without the human element. And everyone "knows" people. We know lovely people and pretentious people, people who want power and money, people who are kind and people who like to hurt others and so on and so forth.

So, yes, writers are encouraged to observe these elements in the people around them and inject them in their story. In some ways, there is not escaping it. The way you end up with paper-thin characters is not enough "knowing". Writers assume what a type of person is like but don't know enough about them and it becomes a stereotype (ie. the token female girlfriend character or the inadvertently racist minority character). Luckily, if there's a will to learn more, these things can be fixed and the writer will always get better for it.

[amoritacouret]

Well, I based myself on local folcklore for my horror comics; and sometimes the characters design is based on someone I know or in a celebrity: The mother of the witch is based on one of my college teachers, with her big unsetling eyes and long silky hair, the father of the witch is based on my fiance (because he wanted to be in the story, though he was not happy to see his in-story wife), and the antagonists are based on the members of Daft Punk when they still showed their faces, mostly because they already looked kind of cartoony. But those examples are purely aesthetical, none of this people´s personalites or histories was written into the story.

NOW for my OTHER comic, which is of the humor genre, I based the Snob panda on my brother-in-law, who in the outside is shy and kind of adorable but on the inside is super snob.
But I also base the Panda´s actions in others and myself, because we all have a little panda hidden in ourselves...

[abbastudios]

You miss the whole point of what creativity is about.,

Using the examples you mention, they aren't successful because it's about magic and different worlds.

They are successful because they are about relationships, the difficulty of growing up, being different, overcoming hardship. I could go on, but I don't want to belabor the point. The common elements to susccessful stories is that the audeince can relate to the characters,

"No one understands me. Why am I different? People hate me because of who I am. It's good to have have friends and be trusted.

Characters get people hooked and invested in stories and if the writer is skillful enough the environment becoms a character also.

Also stories make statements about current events. From Gulliver's Travels and Game of Thrones in books to Star Trek and Black Mirror on tv.

So no, I've never been to Faityland. However, I can write stories about characters who struggle, succeed and fail. Who have to exist in a political cal system that doesn't help them like it is supposed to do. Fairies who are killed because they have purple wings and not yellow. Wnating to grow up and not having adults tell them what to do.

Whether you agree or not, there isn't a good story you can choose that is not based on the human condition and our struggles. if you've had to fight fir a promotion at work and choose to tell that struggle in a fantasy setting, where jobs don't exist, that's great. Someone else has fought for a promotion or seen others do it and they will relate, as well as enjoy the swords and dragons along the way.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause.

[bsienk90]

Yep. All the way. Now Confessions isn't based off my life or anything but my over arching story that Confessions fits into is. Confessions is only a small part to a much larger story. My actual main character is a girl about 17 years old and she is basically me. Most of her experiences are spin offs of what has happened to me in my life. Pretty much every writer or illustrator I know pulls from their own life, and sometimes people do it if they are aware or not. It's just the name of the game.

[johndanims]

Is Jk Rowling really a wizard?

No, but I'm sure a lot of what inspired her stories came from her own life and things that happened to her in school. I know that a lot of the locations in those stories are based on real places that she'd visited.

Then how do sci-fi writers write about unknown worlds?

Someone else mentioned Star Trek, part of Star Trek's original idea was based off looking at the way the world was at the time and imagining what it could be. Interactions with creatures from other worlds could be metaphors of people of other races interacting. There was a lot more race segragation when the first Star Trek came out and showing a world where different races and species from other planets working together was the creators vision of what the world could be without prejudice.

I'm sure there are many more examples but others have already done a good job of describing what is meant by it.

[Hug_Mug]

I don't think you read the whole of my comment.... I made sure to make a distinction between the different types of 'knowing' so as to pre-empt these types of predictable replies.

Otherwise someone could just say 'Yes, you need to know the alphabet before you start to write!'

[abbastudios]

I did read your entire comment. Twice before I responded. I have no idea what you're saying now.

I agree with @JigokuNeko

[Hug_Mug]

It's quite simple really.

I made sure to differentiate between the different definitions of knowing.
Knowing via direct experience or knowing via acquiring knowledge.

I was careful to explain that I was saying that writing from direct experience is boring and shows a lack of creativity, then you and others came alone and started to talk about knowing via the acquisition of knowledge.

Anyway, a simple misunderstanding. Everyone has a different approach to writing. I personally try to avoid taking the easy way out and basing characters on people I've met or basing locations on places I've been. Other people are free to do that if they want, it's nothing to do with me really but the OP of this post was asking for opinions and I gave one.

[TheLemmaLlama]

It's literally impossible to write about anything you haven't encountered in any way shape or form whatsoever Even if you haven't met a fire golem, you could only write about one because you got the idea of fire and golems from somewhere XD