Could Your Life Review Make A Great Story?

Have you ever awoken in the middle of the night and wondered about your life? The choices that have led you to the current moment in time. If you haven’t, you’re lucky. After all, there’s little to be gained lying in bed and rehashing the past unless there’s something to be done about it. But then, if you could, would you reach back and fix a mistake? Do any of us want to dwell on things that might be unpleasant or admit we might’ve been wrong?

Regret

I’m all about regret and as an author, it works for me. Without regret, I wouldn’t be able to understand a character’s motivation. Or at least the motivation of characters that wind up in my fiction. Because if you’re always certain of your choices, there’s no way your characters can struggle. And if there is no struggle, then the storytelling is linear and boring. It’s the twists and turns that readers love. And so the challenge for an author is to build the plot and reveal character, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, page by page. Hopefully, by the end of the novel, the whole shebang comes together successfully.

The Seed of Truth

So, if you have friends who are authors, be warned. Everything in an author’s life is grist for storytelling. This seems to have been especially true in Feud’s new season on FX, Capote vs. Swans. The lesson for writers—when you use source material involving friends, you’re bound to experience backlash. Instead, why not mine stories from your private field of carnage: childhood traumas,  young adult missteps, or foolish mistakes? Better yet, you can write about the controversial events happening around you. One can only imagine what Charles Dickens must have witnessed in his lifetime to bring David Copperfield to light. And maybe that’s the mark of true brilliance. To illuminate some marvelous insights that will resonate with readers and even inspire a change in social conditions. That sounds like the great American novel worthy of an author’s sleepless night.

Now For Something A Little Extra!

Over the past year, I’ve been working on a new novel entitled Friends for A Season. The story centers on Helena, a spry and active senior who takes a sudden tumble and thinks her life is over until she meets Zak, a college student struggling with his own set of life issues. It’s exciting to be working on an intergenerational story that I hope will have some broad appeal. So stay tuned, and in the interim, here’s wishing you the best of tax season along with a video that reminds us that May is just around the corner and so are the gorgeous flowers of the season.