Anyone who has written autobiographically has faced this fear. I’ve had terrible reactions, by loved ones, to stories I’ve written and I’ve also had reactions that were surprisingly reaffirming.
Always remember this: There is no original ideas, but there are original thoughts. What I mean is this:
EVERY single book out there, every character in every book, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc.. is about someone that the author personally knows. The key is , write the book, like you are on the Oprah show. As if Oprah herself is interviewing you. Save it. Print it. Then create that character into fiction. That way, if that person reads your book, hints of who they are , they might think it is them, they just can’t prove it. I call it ‘layers of writing’.
An author friend told me, his childhood friend reached out to them after reading a story with a character she recognized as herself, and wrote a curt note that basically said: “I’m shocked and hurt at your portrayal of me, that you would see me as such a shallow person. Obviously you’ve never known me.” The author friend was at the very beginning of his writing career at the time, just out of college, and completely freaked out by her reaction.
He embarked on an 8-page letter in response, a long involved explanation of how he come up with a story, how he mix actual events from my life with total fabrication – fiction – and how the character she thought was herself had actually been a combination of three women he knew. His disappointment was that in her reaction to the story, she completely missed what the story was about, which was a celebration of their friendship, which had withstood the fact that they went in very different directions in their adult lives. When he pointed all this out to her, she was embarrassed and apologetic. She reread the story and admitted she’d overreacted.
These days would probably not honor such a reaction with the time and effort it took to write that letter. People who respect you and what you do, tend to respect the complexity inherent in the writer’s challenge.
All this is to say that ultimately, if you’re going to write, you have to not care who might be bothered by what. If you concern yourself with that, you’ll find yourself silenced. There’s no autobiographical story that doesn’t take on this risk. All we can do as writers is be committed to telling the truth as we know it, emotional truth as opposed to factual truth. (But that’s the subject of another Q/A.)
There’s a good movie, Australian I think, called “Sorrento Beach“. A woman writes a novel about her family and it becomes a bestseller and in the process, the lid is blown off the family’s secrets. She and her two sisters get together, and for awhile it’s easier for everyone to pretend the book is pure fiction. Eventually, strange dynamics ensue and the women undergo a sort of catharsis. From my experience, the truth or a truth, however painful initially, rarely results in something totally destructive. As is the case for the characters in “Sorrento Beach“, quite often it can be constructive. But ultimately we can’t concern ourselves with these outcomes. A professor I had in college said something I’ll always remember: “If you’re into the business of sparing people’s feelings, don’t write. Do something else.”
And again, more often than not, people will surprise you with the generosity of their response to your work, in which they are featured. People, all of us, enjoy at times being the focus of attention and many folks are simply flattered that they’ve been a subject in your story.
