My Truth

Q: As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever write stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your work?

From Susan

 

Taking a whole story or a major plot from something that made the news doesn’t work for me. For one thing, the real story already exists. And if it’s crime fiction, there are real people who might feel I was ripping the scars off their devastating wounds for my own benefit. I know there are TV shows that do it all the time. I would never watch them. But how many good writers actually do that? For one thing, that would insult our own creativity. 

 

What does fuel my writing is the small tidbits from the real world – a nasty overheard comment, the sight of a police car with lights flashing and sirens screaming on the highway, the image of a vulnerable old woman putting one foot in front of her at a time navigating a slippery sidewalk. The smell of oil leaking from a car can trigger a mental image. The smell of lilacs. The taste of garlic. Anything at the perfect moment that connects with something inside me, a memory, a hope, a frisson of happiness, a disappointment, fear….So, my external world and my inner world. After all, when memories surface because of some external poke, they are current again, aren’t they? 

 

My WIP is in a setting I haven’t written about, has characters not much like the ones I’ve written about in my seven books, but I realize that the plot and the characters and even the setting aren’t that far removed from the bits and bobs and have accumulated in my head and in my senses for years. The plot has a bit to do with art fraud, in the news often, and a  bit to do with billionaires who are in the news and in our faces every day, alas. There are women like the “Housewives of…” and imposters. 

 

Right now it’s a stew and I’m not sure where it’s headed. Funny, just last month there was a profile of a very rich man who is no longer as rich as he once was, and at least one of the tidbits I am stirring into my mix echoes his situation. The dialogue I create might be a riff on his complaint to the interviewer. Might, but might be juicier.

 

Is truth stranger than fiction? Maybe, but fiction gives writers the chance to bend truth without becoming liars. We smooth it out, rough it up, and get to write our own damn endings.