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I'm curious to know who here has written a storygame (or just a story in general) based on your own life experiences. I've come across a few in the short time I've been on this site thus far, and they seemed pretty well written, but that could be because of a number of things.

I suppose what I'm trying to ask is this: for those of you that have written something based on a real-life experience, was it easier or harder than writing something, say, fictional or historical? I understand that there are probably quite a few factors involved, such as what the experience is, and depending how sensitive you are to the subject, it may make it harder to write.

But in general, which do you find more rewarding? (I guess that makes this thread two questions.) Any feedback you can give would be appreciated!

I wrote Billy the. Butcher, it was based on my uncle and it was easier to write, there's less thinking involved to make a storyline

Right, I understand that, but do you feel limited when it comes to creativity? For example, are you at all hesitant to add details that may make the story more exciting, but may also blur the lines between 'real-life experience' and 'fiction' a bit? Sorry if I'm coming across as a bit unintelligible, I'm just trying to figure this out in my mind as I type.

For me, I didn't feel very restricted, I added extra characters and events to make it feel more interesting, after all it's meant to be a. Story not a memoir

I have. Most of my RP characters are based off of myself in some way or another, particularly a character named "Ryu" who hasn't really made much of an appearance on this site, but -all- of his experiences in his story are heavily based on things that really happened, albeit mostly in an MMORPG.

My character, Kiel, is also based ... very loosely off of myself, if I'm honest. Arguably a much darker and heavily fantasized / supernaturally influenced version.

As for your question: I know you addressed it, but everyone is different and some of the personal experiences people write about are very painful. It's easy to talk about a silly or stupid or random occurrence in your life, but sometimes the stories are about loneliness, abuse, anger, break ups, abandonment issues, trust issues, exc. How hard it is to write depends entirely on the individual writing.

And, as for how rewarding it is, that depends on the individual, too. If it's something you need to get off your chest and you express it well, a real-life based story can be very satisfying to complete. On the other hand, it can also be -too much- reality. Sometimes fantasy is just ... more fun.

I haven't written anything based on real life per say, though my "style" might've been influenced by my environment I guess.

As to writing real life experiences into the story, well it's never come up since I don't think anything has been as dramatic as what usually is going on in my stories. I mean I'm sure I could think of a few, but in the scheme of things it probably wouldn't be anything special since I'm sure many other people in the world have had higher highs and lower lows. I'd be more likely just to mention a real life experience on the forums rather than write it out in a story.

I'm sure some of the characters I've created have similar traits of people I've run into, but I can't say I've based them completely on anyone I actually know. Even if I had, they would probably be greatly exaggerated anyway since I don't tend to go for excessive realism, I decided years ago that it's just not quite as much fun for me to write.

One of the main reasons is I know I want to get something "just right" when I'm writing something. If I go for realism, I'm going to be overly concerned with researching rather than writing. (Like far does a nuclear bomb blast radius have to be before you can survive it, shotgun ranges, how much food an army needs, etc.) so I don't bother or at least not to the point where I'm overly concerned with it.

Not sure if this was helpful, but there you go.

How would you say that your style has been influenced by your environment? I'm genuinely curious!

Shouldn't that apply to everyone?  

To be honest, I'm not particularly curious about most people's writing styles. I was curious specifically about how Endmaster's style came to be.
 

Oooooh, you went that way. Makes sense

Well I grew up in Detroit, so that being one step above a Fallout environment (Lol) it probably caused me to focus more on less heroic protagonists.

Also, I wasn't exactly living near the polite upper class of society so hearing people swear all the time and generally being obnoxious was pretty much standard fare. So the characters in the stories tend to do the same.

Plus you sort of have to have a sense of humor about all the violence going on, so that resulted in gravitating more towards a gallows humor.

All of this might've caused me to focus less on realism too since "Hey, realism sucks let's go for escapism!" But as I said, the other factors were also in play, so it directed me to write a more over the top darker form of escapism.

So instead of writing about a hero who saves the world for example, I wrote about a necromancer who destroyed it.

That's cool! I'm from the polar opposite kind of city, but I find Detroit to be extremely fascinating. Some of my absolute favorite musical artists come from Detroit and I think it's true that great art is often born from rough places like Detroit.

Wait, are you f*cking serious?  Do you still live in Michigan?

Nah, I moved in 2011, but I still go up there occasionally to visit what little family I have up there.

Cool.  I lived near Detroit for a while, now I'm further north.

(For a second there, I was worried I might know you irl.)

Endmaster doesn't get his story ideas from this plane of existence.

I thought you said that the guy in Love SICK was based on you. ^_^

Of course he did.

My stories ("Infinite Sadness" and the one I am in the process of writing right now) are not based off of my life, but they do concern, to a certain extent, things that I hear about every day. I live in a pretty old, industrial city with lots of strange and twisted things happening behind closed doors. I channel the knowledge of these things through my writing.

Though, this is even more apparent in my new story game, "I Am The Night," because it has real places in my home town used as locations in the game, albeit under different names.

I'm more of an allegorical kind of guy. The universe a certain Solar-based psycho of mine that I RP from time to time came from was originally a wordless stickman comic series I made a long, long, time ago to cope with my bullying. The first part was just a bit of the world the way I saw it at the time combined with a revenge fantasy that got bloodier as it went on, the revenge-taker eventually gettnig killed by a detective to add a sense of 'morality' that wouldn't disturb the grownups around me.

I',m working on my first storygame and I hope it turns out good.

But it is based off of the time I was surfing and I was chased by a shark.

Very very scary

I wrote a Twine based on my some personal experiences for the 2014 Fear of Twine exhibition. I wouldn't call it a storygame, it was more of a hypertext essay, but it was about as personal as it gets. I didn't find it to be harder to write than anything else, but it was hard to put it out into the world. Despite favorable feedback, I've elected not to host it elsewhere after the exhibition closed.