Fiction is bi-polar. We make up stories but must always strive for emotional truth. I’ve never been to prison…been diagnosed with terminal cancer…had a premature baby…or many other of the difficult situations my characters find themselves in, but I can tap into the feelings they might have, because I have been sick, down and out, and worried about my kids enough times in life to know what that’s like. Every day when I sit down at my desk to write, I say a mantra: “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” In other words, I try not to let the writing get in the way of what is real and true. Lovely metaphors and descriptive passages are nice, but if they clog the pipeline to emotional truth, they must be discarded. Same holds true for characters who might be acting as you WISH they would (or as your mother wishes they would) and not how they would act in real life. I am always on the lookout for my tendency to pull the punches when writing about a character who is based on someone I know with whom I have issues. None of us wants a family member jumping down our throat demanding to know why you cast “them” in an unflattering light! But again, stick to what true and damn the torpedoes. You won’t regret it in the end. Nor will your readers.
