THE MESSY WORK OF TURNING YOUR REAL LIFE INTO FICTION

When I asked my audiobook director, who is also one of my closest friends, who her favorite character was in my new romcom novel, SAVE THE DATE, she laughed and said it wouldn’t be fair to answer since so many of the characters are based on real people she knows. It felt too rude to say, for instance, that she liked Jackie over Alan because that would imply she liked my sister, Jocelyn, more than my father, Ken. Except…it wouldn’t actually be rude because Jackie and Alan aren’t real.

I have been basing my narrative work on my real life since my senior year of college. For the first few years of my screenwriting program at USC, I thought big. My first full-length screenplay was about a border town in Texas that built a wall to keep out immigrants. (Rather prescient for 2008 if I may take a moment to brag.) My next one was a love story about a trans soccer player and her college sweetheart, which was an unusual choice for someone who had never questioned her own gender identity. But by the time I hit my senior thesis, I decided to take a step back from tackling big, political issues I had no real experience with and instead turn inward. The result was a small story about a girl—very much based on me—trying to find her footing in her early twenties. This movie was not great. But the sitcom I wrote in another class that was clearly based off my own family was.

Everyone always says, write what you know, but I have taken this advice to its fullest. The first TV show I sold was based off my YouTube channel, Just Between Us, where my best friend and I played heightened versions of ourselves. My first novel, I Hate Everyone But You, allowed me to lift my (rather challenging) college experience out of my head and onto the page. My novels and scripts are filled with a mix of things that have happened to me along with stories and details I have completely made up. Sometimes I delight in thinking about readers trying to decipher which is which.

Apparently, I have gotten so good at mixing the real with the imaginary that my own father couldn’t remember which parts of SAVE THE DATE were based on true events. (To be fair, this might be more due to his poor memory than my expectational writing prowess. I guess we will never know for sure, which works for me.) It makes sense that this novel in particular has been hard for him to decipher since it is based off such a pivotal moment in my own life. You see, back in 2020 my fiancé walked out on me without any explanation other than something was missing. Given my life-long obsession with marriage and upcoming nonfiction book about the intersection of mental health and romantic relationships, this loss was a huge blow both personally and professionally. How could I, a budding relationship expert, not have realized my partner had fallen out of love with me?

When I returned to my parents’ home in New York from Los Angeles to lick my wounds, I expected everyone to tell me to take a long break from relationships. Instead, my father started making jokes about finding a new groom in time for my wedding date. My mom asked if there was anyone in my past I could just start dating again. The idea of slotting someone else into the role my ex had vacated seemed ludicrous in real life but absolutely perfect for the plot of a romance novel. Luckily, HarperCollins and my incredible editor, Lynn Raposo, agreed. So I got to work to complete a manuscript that was basically a multiverse version of my own life.

Except…(again) it wasn’t really. My protagonist, Emma, is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She grew up in LA rather than Westchester, NY. And her popularity as a YouTuber came after starting a career in psychology rather than the other way around (in addition to writing, I also have a master’s in psychology and now work as a relationship coach). While these might seem like minor differences, they matter more than you’d think. I didn’t want to tell the story of an influencer who got broken up with in the public eye and was embarrassed (closer to my real experience as someone whose career took off by working at BuzzFeed Video in 2014/2015). I wanted to tell the story of a couples therapist who regretted sharing her relationship publicly because now that she was dumped it threatened her professional credibility. If the character’s backstory was too close to my own, I would have been limited in what I wanted to explore and say about love and marriage.

During that senior thesis class in college, my professor shared an observation that has stuck with me. He said something to the effect of, “Main characters are often the most boring because we base them on ourselves, and we are too afraid to give them flaws.” Going into SAVE THE DATE, I did not want to make this mistake. And—as early Goodreads readers who are frustrated with Emma’s bad decisions note—I don’t think I did. I, Allison, would never have tried to find a new groom in time for my original wedding date because that is bonkers. But Emma, my protagonist, was willing to give it a go, which is what allows the book to exist in the first place.

While I love using my real life as a starting off point for both plot and characters, I have to constantly remember that it is not my job to stick to the truth. Instead, my job is to look for ways to distort and heighten the truth for the sake of my story. Emma’s sister Jackie is far more outlandish than my actual sister Jocelyn because that makes her pop and helps move the story forward. Whenever I make the decision to write fiction, I am no longer beholden to the real people in my life like I am in my nonfiction work. I am free to play and exaggerate and fuck everything up.

I will forever be a big proponent of pulling from your real life as inspiration for your fiction writing. It allows you to dive into worlds and characters that are familiar and captivating, while also processing your most emotional experiences on the page. But never let this approach hold you back from following the thread to somewhere even more compelling than what actually happened. That’s why fiction exists after all.

xoxo,

Allison

This essay first appeared in the Sh*t No One Tells You About Writing newsletter.

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