Do you find the themes you write about come from personal experience?

[Lyra Jean]

Most of my themes for my stories, okay I have completed two short stories, deal with children who have absentee parents. The parents are physically there but they don't care about the kids.

Now I'm not saying that my parents don't care about me. They do very much but I'm a child of divorce and I think this where the theme is coming from. I don't write with my theme in mind. It just shows up.

Does anyone else feel like their themes come from personal experience or something you have to deal with everyday?

[aspiringwriter]

Many of my stories (the one's i've actually finished) don't really come from personal experiences....However I could probably write several stories using things that have happened to me in the past.

[maestrowork]

I do tend to let my experience or whatever I am thinking at this stage of my life (marriage, kids, parents, etc.) slip in...

[bsolah]

Some of my experiences slip in, my fears etc, but some of my themes are too much to have experienced and then I could write about them. I most likely wouldn't have lasted some of the things my character went through.

Benjamin Solah
Making no sense since, like, forever.

[Patricia]

I tend to write more the way I wished my life had been, rather than my real experiences. Weird?

[aruna]

I definitely have the same basic theme in all my books, and it does come from my own life. I'd say that the essence of every novel I've written is self-discovery. Someone, usually a woman, is unhappy with who she is and her life and goes on a physical journey of some kind - a different country, playing the violin, infiltrating a sect - only to grow through the experience and come out nearer to who she really is.
This relates entirely to my own life. I left home and country at a very early age, and most of the travelling I've done has been in quest of something illusive which can be neatly described as Self.

In several of my books I started when the MC is a child, and the childhood events that created the internal problem is solved by the action in the MC's adult life. This too reflects my own life, in which I feel everything I deal with now was somehow started when I was a child.

On the surface, tough, my books are fictional - I neither play the violin nor have I tried to save a cult from self-destruction! SO there's an inner and an outer layer to my novels.

[Zolah]

Does anyone else feel like their themes come from personal experience or something you have to deal with everyday?

Some do. Self-acceptance and letting go of the past are themes which seem to run through everything I write to a greater or lesser extent, and those have been biggies in my life.

On the other hand, I seem to do a lot of writing about grief and losing loved ones, and all my loved ones are still alive apart from my grandparents, whose deaths I don't remember. The only times I've dealt with grief was when adored pets have passed on (which I'm sure would make most people snort) and a couple of years ago when an aunt died, but I wasn't close to her. So why do my characters always get whacked in the head with death?

[sunandshadow]

My themes are mostly inspired by what I wish I had in my life - romance, friendship, pregnancy, a new world to explore and adapt to, etc.

[PattiTheWicked]

I think my ideas are inspired by things I'd LIKE to see happen, rather than things that specifically HAVE happened. However, I can say I just returned from a three week vacation in Wyoming, and two of the conversations I had with my daughter made it into my WIP.

One includes a reference to dancing the "Poop Scoop Boogie," and I'll let you just wonder about the other.

[Jamesaritchie]

In one way or another, loodely or tightly, a great deal of my fiction is based on personal experience. This is what comes out when I sit down to write, and I go with it.

[Maryn]

Characters, yes. My fears and self-doubts are often the characters', too. Minor characters are often amalgams of people who've been minor characters in my life, or borrow a trait from someone I know slightly (the bricklayer who took 4 hours to do a chimney estimate because he loved to talk, or the self-righteous parent of a friend of our son's who was sure I'd want a certain book banned from the school library).

Events, no. The plots tend to have no basis in my real life.

Interesting to look at it this way. Am I much stronger at character than plotting because I'm not really doing it?

Maryn, unoriginal

[Danger Jane]

Hmm. At first glance, I said no. But when I think about it, the very basic themes do seem to stem from very generalized areas of my life. Themes of mother-daughter, sister-sister...maybe my family has made a bigger impact than I'd have thought. Themes of being forced to accept situations and people probably come from my, ahem, problems in dealing with adverse situations and people who rub me the wrong way. And the theme of falling (from redemption or innocence or whatever) probably comes from this subconscious fear I've developed that I've lost something important that I used to have, when I was young and even more trusting than I am now.

Plots and characters, no, mostly made up, as far as I can tell. But my subconscious leaks in, too, I guess.

[PeeDee]

Only to an extent. I mean, certain characters are people I've met, or people I've thought I've met (sometimes, you get a different view of someone when you meet them a second time, and realize that the first time, you were mostly filling them in in your head). Certain situations have been based on personal experience. For example, my next project (a YA horror book, I think) is very personal and partly true.

Mostly, though, it's just stuff I make up out of my head which is then influenced by who I am and where I've come from.

[Alan Yee]

Events? Characters? In general, no, although my current protag is similar to me in some ways, although there's huge differences. Emotions? Hell yeah, my medical condition gives me a lot of emotions, and I try to use emotions in my story/novel, as they help drive the plot and build characterization. The presence of homosexuality and bisexuality is there because of things I've noticed happen with me that gave me reason to believe I might be gay or bi. I let that into the story because I wanted to imagine what would happen if I were indeed gay or bi, and how a half-human would deal with a characteristic that he inherited from his demon ancestors.

Have I actually experienced any of that? No, I haven't. I've just pondered it as I continue to grow older and learn more about myself. I might find my sexuality to be much different from what I expected once I'm an adult. I just wrote down my vision of what would happen to me under those certain circumstances in my story.

[gp101]

In one way or another, loodely or tightly, a great deal of my fiction is based on personal experience.

I'm sure you meant "loosely", but it's more fun to think you meant "lewdly".

[Storyteller5]

Yes, I think any themes in my work come from personal experience. I think it's inevitable to some degree. For me, write what you know really is about emotions. If I'm tying my emotions up in a piece, I'm thinking about how that applies to me on some level. :)

[rbflynn]

Sometimes I explore personal dilemas or experiences, but it's a very conscious thing. For instance, I'll take a dilema I am facing and transpose it onto characters in a totally different life situation than I am in and see how they handle it.

[Bmwhtly]

I don't set out to write about things from my own life (too dull to write about), but a lot of little things like character idiosyncratics come from my life. It's not intentional (most of the time), they just slip through and I usually don't realise until I read it back.
Is that wierd?

[bsolah]

I don't set out to write about things from my own life (too dull to write about), but a lot of little things like character idiosyncratics come from my life. It's not intentional (most of the time), they just slip through and I usually don't realise until I read it back.
Is that wierd?
No, not at all. It's perfectly natural for parts of you to seep into your characters. King says in On Writing, "When you ask yourself what a certain character would do given a certain set of circumstances, you're making the decision based on what you yourself would (or, in the case of a bad guy, wouldn't) do." Whilst I think that this isn't a set rule, I do think it applies a lot of the time.

[Shweta]

There are themes of isolation, or being outside a group or culture, or trying to integrate different cultures, that have been part of almost everything I've written. The story I'm currently working (uhhh stalled) on doesn't have those, so I was about to say that it doesn't come from personal experience.

Then I realized that, duh, it's set in the lab I've been doing research in. Down to the broken ventilation system. And the experiment my character is running is very much like the one my husband just ran.

So uh, yeah. :blush: Personal experience gets worked into my stories just a wee bit.

[Solatium]

The only thing that strikes me about my fiction is that I often default to male viewpoint characters. My (possibly cracked) explanation for this is that, as a female with no love life to speak of, I've never had the opportunity to be "feminine" in the one arena where it actually makes a difference. I am, for social purposes, sexless, so I can relate to men at least as well as to other women.

[Jenan Mac]

In the sense that "all characters are the writer", at least to a certain extent, yeah. Which makes my primary beta-reader a little nervous about the psychotic serial murderer her baby sister's written, even though I keep telling her he's an amalgam of too many nights doing emergency Baker Act intake.

[AdamH]

Does anyone else feel like their themes come from personal experience or something you have to deal with everyday?

Always.

This becomes the basis of a character or a plot or a theme. Then I let it grow from there on creativity alone.

[Shadow_Ferret]

I dont' have any themes.

[Jamesaritchie]

I dont' have any themes.

If you have a plot, you have a theme. Many writers do not start with a theme, and never, ever intentionally write around a theme, but you can't have a plot without also having a theme. If you find the theme, and tighten around it, the novel will read better, and probably sell faster.

[scarletpeaches]

Experiences don't make their way into my writing, but my feelings do. Let's say I mention divorce, it doesn't mean I've been through it, but I have experienced loss, heartbreak, anger and so on. If that makes sense.

[pconsidine]

I rarely write my fiction around well-defined themes, but I have seen certain recurring elements show up all the same. For example, many of my main characters have troubled relationships with male authority figures (fathers, teachers, etc.). I have recently realized that they tend to mirror my difficult relationship with my father.

Whether you mean to or not, things do have a way of creeping into your writing. I suppose it's a sign of how well you've dealt with your own garbage as a person how long the same themes keep showing up. :)

[scarletpeaches]

I think a lot of people get 'theme' mixed up with the circumstances of their characters. Someone once said to me that you should be able to sum up your theme in either one word (love, loss, betrayal) or in one sentence (we get what we deserve, love conquers all).

To me, things like abusive childhoods, family situations, mental illnesses, whatever, are just circumstances of the character. The plot is them acting out their lives and the theme is what drives them or what they learn by the end of the book.

I'm just thinking out loud here.

[pconsidine]

I think a lot of people get 'theme' mixed up with the circumstances of their characters. Someone once said to me that you should be able to sum up your theme in either one word (love, loss, betrayal) or in one sentence (we get what we deserve, love conquers all).

To me, things like abusive childhoods, family situations, mental illnesses, whatever, are just circumstances of the character. The plot is them acting out their lives and the theme is what drives them or what they learn by the end of the book.

I'm just thinking out loud here.
I had heard the same thing, Scarlet, but I think there's a difference in usage. When other people ask about theme (especially in screenwriting), they mean the first definition above.

However, when it comes to writers talking about theme, we usually mean the second. That's one of the bigger problems with developing stories in the commercial sense - not everyone means the same thing when they use the same word.

[veinglory]

Some of mine do (reviewers have noted a tendency to grappl;e with the issue of homophobia) some don't (Catholicism and its differences from other types of Christainity for example --I am a lifelong atheist so it hardly matters to me)

[AnnMB]

Since I typically write in the scifi/horror genre, I'm happy to say that the events/plots do not come from personal experience. However, the emotions which are infused into the characters, do.

[TrainofThought]

Does anyone else feel like their themes come from personal experience or something you have to deal with everyday?Yes, but it has more to do with circumstances than theme. Much of my writing reflects personal experience, indulging conditions. It is my first novel, so it is important to feed off what I know.

[bsolah]

I think someone once said the everyone's first novel is more or less a story of themselves.

[newwriter19]

yes my experiences have a big part in my novels

[SeanDSchaffer]

Snipped....

Does anyone else feel like their themes come from personal experience or something you have to deal with everyday?


Most of my themes are based on what I wish could have happened in my own life. Some of them are based on how things actually happened for me, but most come from wishful thinking on my own part.

[Tracy]

I noticed that all my heroines are motherless, either literally or emotionally. Hmm. Nobody else has commented on it yet. I don't know if my own mother has noticed this ... she hasn't said.
I always also have a theme of personal growth. To be it's so exciting to explore how we grow through adversity.

[MidnightMuse]

For the longest time I wrote with an underlying theme in my subplots that involved the protag having a difficult relationship with his father. After several long tales in this theme, it dawned on me what I was doing - and I forced myself to stop.

Coincidentally my own relationship with my father changed - sadly not in time to really enjoy - but I've completely washed my head of that theme in my writing and will ONLY use it again if the idea is imperitive to the story itself. Which is why any and all themes should or should not be used.

[pconsidine]

Which is why any and all themes should or should not be used.You work for the Federal government, don't you? ;)

I tend to think there's nothing wrong with recurring themes as long as they don't reach the level of personal cliché. Even then, there's probably nothing wrong with that. Some very successful writers have recurring themes or elements in their books (e.g., Stephen King's fascination with groups of pubescent boys/girls and some adventure that befalls them, as in It and Stand By Me).

Just my 2¢, though.

[MidnightMuse]

You work for the Federal government, don't you? ;)

I tend to think there's nothing wrong with recurring themes as long as they don't reach the level of personal cliché. Even then, there's probably nothing wrong with that. Some very successful writers have recurring themes or elements in their books (e.g., Stephen King's fascination with groups of pubescent boys/girls and some adventure that befalls them, as in It and Stand By Me).

Just my 2¢, though.

Government - yes. Federal - not sayin :)

But I agree here - if the recurring theme is working, then by all means the writer should keep it up. I think what I really meant to allude to were themes that ARE cliche or recur for no good reason. Which is what was happening with me, I believe, so I stopped.