Five-Minute Writing Tip: Truth in Fiction

Five-Minute Writing Tip: Truth in Fiction

Readers often ask if my mysteries are based on real-life crimes or circumstances. My answer is that my imagination provides the plots, so actual cases are not necessary. I don’t use people I know as models for my characters, but I do use snippets of overheard conversations and strangers who grab my attention. Some of my own feelings, experiences, and passions are given to my main characters. In the latest Kate Caraway animal-rights mystery, A Two Horse Town,

Kate experiences a couple of hair-raising moments while she’s driving along a steep, switchback mountain road. Her fear of heights is based on my own acrophobia.

But some writers add fiction to the truth, creating an even better story. An actual crime, adventure, heartwarming story, or heroic gesture in a magazine article, newspaper, or blog can be captivating, but readers are only provided limited view points. A good fiction writer can take that situation and delve deeper the story, using multiple points of view, a more compelling background, and a wider range of other emotions like suspense, thrill, fear, or humor—something a reporter or nonfiction writer might not do.

For example, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a Gothic novel, is a story of jealously, misunderstanding, heartache, and tragedy wrapped up in one of the best mysteries ever written. It’s loosely based on du Maurier’s own suspicions that her husband, Lieutenant General Frederick “Tommy” Browning, was still attracted to a striking woman he’d once been engaged to. Du Maurier has admitted that she and Browning had not been faithful to one another during their marriage, a situation that was also used in the novel: Max De Winter and his first wife, Rebeca (deceased), had cheated on one another; and De Winter’s second wife’s jealously intensifies when he becomes withdrawn and secretive, filling the story with a tension strong enough to snap one’s nerves.

I’ve also read the excellent biography, Manderley Forever: A Biography of Daphne du Maurier. Author Tatiana de Rosnay’s book has received raved reviews, but it was Rebecca, the fictional account of an obsessively jealous and fearful wife, that sold almost three million copies. I’m not as bold as Du Marnier to use my private life in a story—but then she’s sold a lot more books than me. So maybe I’ll rethink this.