What Color are Your Glasses?
How Life Experiences Influence Our Writing
I’m pondering the topic of my next project, and a lot of factors enter into my thinking. I primarily write book length fiction, and draw heavily on my life experiences for inspiration. All writers approach their work through the particular color or lens of glasses that is their life. I am no different.
For instance, one of my critique partners comes from a large, expressive, and loving family. She is a very sweet person, choosing to avoid distressing topics whenever possible, and—fairly predictably—writes sweet historical Westerns. My other critique partner pulled herself out of a poverty stricken, dysfunctional childhood and scraped and scrabbled to create a healthy, close-knit family of her own. Her writing reflects that background, with edgy characters and a darker tone. We encourage the first author to ramp up the conflict in her stories so readers will stay engaged; for the second, we suggest softening characters or dialogue so the reader will be more likely to identify with and like her protagonists.
I fall somewhere in between: my typical challenge is to make my heroine more three dimensional and create ‘rooting elements’ for her, so the reader will like her enough to keep turning the pages. For some reason, they never complain about the hero, just the heroine! (No armchair psychoanalyzing!)
My heroine for manuscripts #1 and #2 is a young woman who is a pilot (as am I), and who endured—and survived—a violent crime (as did I). The story is semi-autobiographical, but fictionalized. It began as my attempt to come to grips with the long-ago event, and morphed into a what-if scenario involving forgiveness, restorative justice, and repair of relationships gone horribly awry. The characters moved through the very human desires for revenge and retribution into a new place requiring change. True change, not lip service. Of course, being fiction, this all came at great cost to the characters.
As I move forward to a new project, I draw on my roles as wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, grandmother (the ideas there are rich and unlimited); on my aviation background (will any of the new characters be pilots? Will the setting include airplanes or airports?); on my nursing experience (hospitals? doctors? nurses? patients?); on my personal and spiritual experiences, which color my worldview dramatically differently from many people, and (I can only hope) provide depth and interest to my writing!
As I sift through ideas, the same foundational criteria keep coming to the fore: Write stories that touch and inspire. Write stories that matter, stories that offer hope and light and new beginnings for flawed and struggling people. Write because words matter—to me, to readers, and to God.
Because, after all, that’s the point. To do His will, be His eyes and hands and voice in this world; and to co-create avenues for all of us to find our way back to Him.
God, grant me the grace to obey Your every direction to the fullest possible extent. Amen
Leslie Lynch gives voice to characters who struggle to find healing for their brokenness – and discover unconventional solutions to life’s unexpected twists. She is an occasional contributor to the Archdiocese of Indianapolis’s weekly paper, The Criterion. She can be found at www.leslielynch.com and is on facebook and Twitter.
Jennifer Fitz
Jennifer Fitz is the author of The How-to Book of Evangelization: Everything You Need to Know But No One Ever Taught You from Our Sunday Visitor and Classroom Management for Catechists from Liguori Publications. She writes about all things evangelization and discipleship at jenniferfitz.substack.com. For updates on where else to find her, visit JenniferFitz.com.
Funny, I end up writing about people who aren't like me: zombie exterminators who have no problem wading through gore; snarky dragons who think they're superior to everyone (and rightly so), psychic teenage driven insane by his abilities…
Still, there are always elements of what I know in each one and each situation. Those can be hardest to believe. I wrote one scene based on a personal experience (tweaked to the character), and I had to rewrite it because my editor believed that kind of thing never happened. (And it wasn't even the fantastic part.)
Beautiful encouragement!!! Thanks for writing this article. Blessings, Gloria