The Devil’s in the Details
Dear Maggie,
Have you ever incorporated something from your real life into your stories?
Sincerely,
Interested in Ithaca
Dear Interested,
Absolutely! I think adding my own real world experience provides a flavor of authenticity to my writing. Of course, I’m writing romantic suspense, so the characters need drama, and the plot needs tension, and things have to go very badly before they get better. I wouldn’t like it much if my real life contained as much turmoil as my poor characters’ lives, but it makes for good storytelling!
When I’m weaving a tale together, it’s fun to write about places I’ve been in real life or things I’ve experienced personally. I can write from the heart and from my own memories, and I can easily add those small nuances that bring flavor and color to the story. For example, the TSI series is set in Boston, a place I’ve lived and worked. In Sing for Me, when Fiona takes Jake to a Red Sox game on their first date, I can picture the Green Monster in my mind, smell the hotdogs and fresh cut grass, and hear the crowd roar.
The opening scene of Lost and Found features Lissa racing toward an accident victim on the Life Flight helicopter. When I was an EMT years ago, I trained on one. I still remember watching the skyline disappear and feeling the adrenaline rush through my system as we covered the miles in mere minutes. Later in the same book, Lissa brings Cam to the beach for a mental health day. It’s the beach not far from my house where I spend hours in the summertime.
It’s important to get the details right, even if those details are only featured in one sentence of the narrative. When I can sprinkle them in from my own memory banks, I know they’ll ring true. If I’m writing about something outside my realm of experience, I do my homework. Whether it’s reading up on the FBI’s structure and ranking system, or using Google Earth to locate a warehouse in LA, I don’t want to do anything to pull a reader out of the story. Someone, somewhere will know if I got it wrong! The devil’s in the details, after all!
Do you have a question for me? Send it to maggie@msmaggieclare.com, and I’ll answer it here on the blog.
In other news…
This is the last week to enter my Goodreads Giveaway for a chance to win a FREE copy of Lost and Found. The contest ends April 30th. You can’t win if you don’t enter!
Here’s a look at that beach where Lissa and Cam spent a lazy afternoon!
