Average Interviewer: What inspired your short story “An Average Short Story on Something I Have Very Little Direct Experience With?”
Average Writer: I think there’s an ongoing debate within the writing community surrounding the ethics of using people we know or have briefly encountered as inspiration—without plagiarizing their life, of course. We sometimes want to give a demographic that’s underrepresented in literature a voice without taking away their agency. Who are we to tell the life of someone we barely know without interviewing them or somehow including them in our writing and editing processes? Sometimes, we know someone for a very short amount of time and they inspire us to write a story about someone who is similar to them, but we have no way of contacting them to ask, “Hey, without asking too much emotional labour from you, would you mind telling me if this is an accurate or acceptable portrayal of your community? Of course, I can’t pay you for your time, but I would be eternally grateful.” Ideally, you would pay them as a way of giving back to someone who helps you with your craft, but [...]?
It’s your responsibility to ensure you aren’t stereotyping any group of people. But writing can at times come from a very selfish place. We write because we want to tell a story or because we want to give ourselves closure. We see suffering around us and we want to write about it, so we do research and we hope we are doing our chosen topic justice. I’m still not sure what the proper etiquette is. It’s a very touchy subject, and I’m open to different perspectives on the matter.
Average Interviewer: Would you like to talk a bit more about (your) Main Character? What are their motivations?
Average Writer: Of course. (My) Main Character doesn’t want to be defined by (their) Central Conflict. They are looking to redefine what it means to be alive because they feel crushed by reality and the seriousness of their predicament. When writing about their motivations, I pulled from my own experiences and intrusive thoughts, but I think our characters shape themselves as much as we shape them, if not more so. I often find myself writing and suddenly feeling like I’m no longer in complete control of them. It’s like they occasionally have bouts of free will—if you believe in free will. […]
In fact, (my) Main Character was inspired by someone I met at {Setting}. I changed enough about them so that they wouldn’t be identifiable to others and I made {Setting} different enough from the {Setting} it was based on. Then again, if the person in question were to read my story, I feel like they would suspect it’s about them. I think it’s easier to tell when a story is loosely about you than when a story is loosely about someone you know.
Average Interviewer: Wow, I love how you said so much without really saying anything. What piece of advice do you have for emerging writers who might want to mimic your writing process?
Average Writer: Haha, thanks! And my advice would be to not write the way I do. I think my writing process is very chaotic. To give you an example, I once had a philosophy teacher who said she was writing a book sometimes felt that her characters had free will and were writing the story for her. Most of the class had no idea what she was talking about and thought she had lost her marbles, but I somehow understood that feeling. I alluded to this earlier, but it’s like when I write, I don’t always have a set idea of how the story will unfold—I kinda let my characters decide how they want their story to end… which I know sounds crazy, but I think you have to be a little bit insane to be a good writer, what do you think?
Average Interviewer: I think that’s all the time we have today, thank you very much for your time!
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