Writing fiction based on real life experiences

Learn how to use your experiences to give fiction the ring of truth

Real life is the greatest font of unbelievable truths. It's no wonder so many writers exploit their own lives as sources of complex relationships, dramatic events, observational details and pithy dialogue. But knowing how to weave elements of real life into a work of fiction requires some skill to maintain the ring of truth without being too slavishly literal.

This highly practical course uses illustrative examples to help you develop strategies for turning the raw stuff of life experiences and memories into fiction, including the decision making, editing and transposing techniques necessary to making fictional sense of factual reality. This course teaches you how to ask the right questions to better understand the thinking behind your own words and actions objectively, uncovering rich new seams of emotional and experiential detail.

This course is for you if...

• You're a new writer planning to draw on your own experiences as material from which to create a believable and intimately observed novel
• You're a more experienced fiction writer keen to explore new territories of inspiration and realism

Course description

This is a practical, intensive course designed to help writers of any level of experience access and utilise elements of their own lives within their fiction writing. Topics covered on the weekend include:

• Using prompts: how photographs, letters, significant objects and newspapers can create context and trigger memories and story events
• Reconciling fiction, fact, narrative and the writer – including questions on the psychology of self
• Guide to types of autobiographical fiction, including how to create unusual maps of periods of our lives to help explore experience
• Selecting the right material: basic storytelling and editing decisions, including how to join the dots between disparate events to create lively plots
• Creating composite characters with depth and purpose

Tutor profile

Steve Attridge's work includes 15 books, a dozen TV series and seven feature films, as well as documentary dramas, TV films, stage plays and poetry. He also acts and directs – last year he performed his own show at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Awards include an RTS for Best TV Drama Series, two BAFTA nominations, an Eric Gregory Award and two Writers Guild Awards. His latest book, The Natural Law, came straight in at number one in the Kindle Singles Bestsellers. He writes for adults and children. In another life he worked as a performance poet. Find out more about Steve on his website.

Full course and returns information on the Masterclasses website