In an article for Writer’s Digest, Lucian Childs offers advice for using memories in fiction without becoming maudlin. “Memories are our powerful and constant companions, surging often from our subconsciousness in the form of nostalgia—a visceral experience of the past,” Childs says. “A longing for what was, one that propels us as writers to set stories in a time and place with vivid specificity. Yet that same impulse can mire our writing in wish-fulfilling fantasticating and sentimentality.”
Childs shares some strategies for using memories in fiction:
- Put setting under a microscope. Childs recommends digging deep into your setting. You may not use all the details, but your description may suggest plot actions, mood, or even secrets.
- Create difficult characters. “The more flawed our characters, the more specific their inadequacies, the greater the narrative potential we have at our disposal,” Childs says.
- Write at a distance. Physical, emotional, or temporal distance from the setting of your memories can be helpful. “Try avoiding first or close third-person narration and experiment with voice that lends itself to objectivity—second- or third-person objective or omniscient, out of favor tools in our me-obsessed moment,” Childs writes. “Alternately, map details from your personal history onto characters very different from yourself.”
- Peel back layers. “There’s always another layer of self-delusion that when peeled away reveals truths about characters and situations that in early drafts feel stereotypical,” Childs writes.
- Embrace open-ended outcomes. Sentimental attachment to material shouldn’t lead to a pat outcome. “To free our stories from the influence of whatever unmet needs linger from our personal experience, our endings must be unresolved,” Childs says. “Yet hopeful. Whether this awareness plays out for good or ill is for our characters themselves to discover after we complete the final sentence.”
