Family Fuels Fiction – Joy Writing. Pat Conroy is one of my favorite storytellers. He said this. “One of the greatest gifts you can be given as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.”
Let’s Modify That. One of the greatest gifts you can be given as a writer is to be born into a conflicted family with family secrets. In my experience that statement encompasses just about all of us.
My Family is Conflicted. Sometimes explosive. My family harbors secrets. Your family is most likely conflicted too. Your family may harbor secrets. Do you have a family story – funny or dramatic or painful – that you have always wanted to write about?
Joy Writing Prompt. Write a scene where a long-held and protected family secret is revealed at a holiday gathering. How does each family member react? Whose version seems most true or untrue? Include compelling scene elements – action, dialogue, description, tension.
Conflict is the Essence of Strong Storytelling. I prefer to refer to Conflict as Struggle in this context. Struggle is the essence of strong storytelling. Ergo. Look homeward angels. Family is where the fodder is. This storytelling fodder is waiting for you to turn it into story magic.
Families Bristle with Serious Struggle. My family. Your family. Everybody’s family. Take a moment right now for this exercise. Make a list of the intense struggles you have heard about or witnessed or participated in from your family history. Each is a story throbbing to be told.
A Family Memory Patchwork. How do separate members piece that patchwork together? An incident occurs in your shared past. Am important incident. Maybe a traumatic one. The details sear your consciousness. You compare notes.
Memory Details may Differ. Have you ever compared memories of a family event or incident with another person in your family? How did your recollections coincide? How did they differ?
Joy Writing Prompt. Select a family event – a wedding or funeral or birthday gathering. Describe the event from the point of view, and in the individual voices, of three different family members. How do their memories of the event compare and contrast?
Test This Premise Further. Grab your list of intense family struggles. Choose one. The more fraught and traumatic the better. List the family members involved in that struggle. Which do you think would agree with your recollection of the incident? Which do you suspect would disagree? Family Fuels Fiction – Joy Writing.
Discrepancies Can Be Benign. Like they usually were with my late brother Michael and me. We would tease each other and make jokes. But only with the not-so-touchy bits. Nostalgia rather than gut wrench. The dreaded stories we mostly did not mention.
Dreaded Stories are Danger Zones. We tiptoed around them like quicksand. One wrong step and we could be sucked down with no hope of rescue. Rescue from what? Rescue from the collision of my version of reality and his and from the powerful confrontation that might erupt between us as a result.
Joy Writing Prompt. Write a family story that no one wants to talk about. In your story, someone brings up this episode that has previously been silenced. What happens when this revelation occurs? What emotions and conflicts arise? Be specific and detailed.
Every Family has Dreaded Stories. Your personal list of family struggles is a catalog of danger zones in your history. Each struggle is a bed of quicksand. Each is a collision of points of view waiting to happen. Each is a potentially bloody battleground. All possess story power.
This is Fertile Ground for the Storyteller in You. Who in your family do you tiptoe around for fear of your colliding truths? What conflagrations have you barely survived when one of those toes slipped into the memory mine field? Which would make the most dramatic story? Which family member’s perspective would be most challenging for you to write?
Joy Writing Prompt. Two siblings remember a childhood incident very differently. Write a dialogue where they argue about what really happened in that incident. Reveal their emotions by way of their manner of speaking.
Family Fueled Storytelling is About Emotional Truth. You have your emotional truth. Other people have theirs. Each truth is valid for that person. Have you written stories about real people and events? How did you handle emotional truth – yours and theirs?
Intensify the Story You are Writing Now. Hot emotions. Cold hearts. Hotter clashes. Colder calculators. You have encountered all of these somewhere in your life. Slide them into your story. Use them to bring your characters and your scenes to life on your pages.
This is Toxic Territory in Real Life. Tell these stories as fiction. Reimagine all of the physical details. Personal descriptions. Locations. Times and dates. Anything identifiable. Retain the emotions. They are where your intense, powerful, dramatic story material really resides
Joy Writing Prompt. Write an intense, powerful, dramatic scene where a family member leaves home under difficult circumstances. What is said? What is left unsaid? How, specifically, does the family cope with their absence?
Struggle Boils through My Own Stories. Through roiling Riverton, tempestuous families collide and conflict. How much of that has been inspired by real-life experience? Let me just say this. I agree with Pat Conroy about complicated families. I am grateful for the gift to my writer self. Family Fuels Fiction – Joy Writing.
FYI – More Family Fueled Writing Prompts and Exercises.
- Make a list of the most intense struggles and conflicts you have witnessed or experienced in your family. Choose one and write a brief summary of the event from your own perspective. Write a paragraph (or more) from the perspective of another involved family member (or more).
- Choose a family member you know well. Invent a fictional character inspired by them. Change name, appearance, and circumstances but keep their core emotional struggle.
- Write a conversation between two of your family members who are tiptoeing around a “danger zone” topic. Focus on subtext. What are they not saying? What emotions simmer beneath the surface?
- Write a short piece where each paragraph is a different member of your family’s recollection of the same event. Let the discrepancies and overlaps create tension and reveal character.
- Choose a strong emotion that you personally associate with a specific family memory – anger, joy, grief, jealousy, etc. Write a fictional scene that captures this strong emotion. Include characters who will best populate this scene and a setting that will best accomodate it.
- Create a lifelong creativity writing prompt or exercise of your own. Send it to me in the Comments section following this post. I cannot wait to read it, write it, share it.
- Create a family fueled writing prompt or exercise of your own. Send it to me in the Comments section following this post. I cannot wait to read it, write it, share it.
You possess storytelling magic. Keep on writing whatever may occur. Alice Orr. https://www.aliceorrbooks.com
Alice Orr. Teacher. Storyteller. Former Editor and Literary Agent. Author of 15 novels, 2 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells.
Visit Alice’s Joy Writing Blog. Whether you consider yourself a writer or not you have storytelling magic in you. Learn to shine in the light of that magic and make it your own at https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.
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Alice’s Novel. A Time of Fear & Loving. Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5. Experience Joy Reading. Available HERE.
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Alice’s Suspense Novel Series. Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. Five intense stories of love and death and intrigue. Available HERE.
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This speaks to me right now. So timely!