Authors, How much is your book base on a true story?

[melissa love]

I know that being a writer you have to be creative, but being creative does that mean you have to have some true elements so your book won't sound so unbelieveable?

[Deacon Solomon]

Everybody has his/her own answer to your question. Pudd'nhead Wilson famously wrote: "Truth is stranger than Fiction, but that is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities whereas Truth is not."

Mr. Wilson's answer would be simple enough were it not for the fact that every story creates its own set of possibilities, and problems arise because possibilities that seem unbelievable to some readers seem perfectly reasonable to others.

[Shalini Ayre]

Hello Melissa
Good question. It depends entirely on your genre. If you're writing a dystopian/sci-fi type novel then then the 'true elements' can become unbelievable; but because you're readers know what type of book they're reading then there's an element of truth to it.
If you're writing about crime, police or legal procedures then yes, you have to have a lot of truth behind your work. So many people watch CSI, Law & Order etc that they know what sounds right and what doesn't.
The stories I've written have been based upon actual conversations, moments etc but that's how I find inspirations - the everyday. If you've written with honesty and enthusiasm then your work won't sound 'unbelievable'.

Good Luck!

Shalini 

http://lgib-bookreview.blogspot.com

[Doris Dix Caruso]

I write from at least a kernel of truth, for I believe that the reader is captured more readily when there is a believable premise with this concept...My current novel is drawn from a tale told to me by an Italian innkeeper on a trip to Sorrento a few years ago....She did not know the "end" of the story, thus I completed it and it makes for a captivating novel...

[Jane L Taylor]

Small elements of truth find their into my writing, especially in my characters. However, I would say in gereral it's based in fiction.

 

http://www.thinkinginkblog.com

[melissa love]

I feel the same way, I visit my review and some readers believe my book too unbelieve to happen. A husband supecting his wife cheating with another woman. I can't believe how long it took him to catch his wife.

[C. M. Albrecht]

In my own experience, and learning of the experiences of other writers going back a couple of hundred years, I've learned this: While the plot of the story may be "made up", most writers use personal experience to a great extent in creating characters, locales, conflicts and thoughts. 

Many books are known to be thinly disguised autobiographies, that's well-known. Often when you read a book you like — well take me for instance. Many years ago I fell in love with Philip Marlowe stories and (being young and innocent), tended to assume that Philip Marlowe was really just Raymond Chandler under another name. I never met Mr. Chandler, but I'm pretty sure that in real life he was nothing like Philip Marlowe, and he was never a PI. And when I found out he was already in his fifties when Philip Marlowe went into business, I felt almost betrayed. At the time, being wet behind the ears, fifties meant an old man, not a young robust and handsome private detective with lots of attitude. Just another middle-aged writer like the rest of us. 

In my personal life, I take jabs at many people, not by naming them, but by adapting some of their most annoying and/or ingratiating characteristics to my characters. I'm sure you know many persons, each with habits of living or speech, beliefs, prejudices...nasty habits like breaking wind at inappropriate times or belching, using certain words to death. I once knew a man who managed to fit the word "basically" into nearly every sentence. Many years later that came back to me, and in my novel, "Marta's Place" I ended up with a detective who started every other sentence with "basically". 

I don't think that sort of thing in any way conflicts with being creative or writing an original piece of fiction. 

If I'm wrong, sue me, but I don't have any money so you'll be wasting your time.

[Irina Shapiro]

I've always thought that some of my situations and characters would be based on real people, but once I started writing, the characters morphed into someone completely different.  I would be writing a dialogue and while in my mind I was thinking of a particular sentence, my hands were typing something else.  Once the characters take shape, they have conversations in my head and I honestly never know where those conversations are going to go and to what events they might lead.  I've started books with a particular story in mind, and wound up writing something totally different, and if I might add, much better.  For me, that's the fun of writing.  I wind up surprising myself as much as the reader.

Irina Shapiro

www.irinashapiro.com