Making Fact into Fiction

Use your past to make stories, but don't hesitate to twist the truth. When I was thirteen, a friend of mine had a pop-up camper in his driveway. His parents left it up all summer. Groups of us would sleep in it throughout June, July, and August. One night, at about two in the morning, we heard a loud crash. We went down to the road, followed it to the overpass, and saw where someone had gone off the road and smashed into the overpass piling. When the paramedics came, they opened the door and, from the bridge above, I saw my first dead body. She just slid out onto the highway's shoulder. I remember it vividly. I also remember people coming out of their houses in bathrobes and pajamas and gathering on the overpass.

I've tried to write a story about it many times, but it just doesn't click from the thirteen year old perspective. Then I got the idea to write the story from someone else's point of view -- from the point of view of one of the adults that wandered down to see the accident. The story isn't finished yet, but it ends up being about a guy whose wife recently told him that very early on in their marriage she had an affair. She loves him now, wants to stay with him, but just believed that he should know. He's dealing with that at the beginning of the story, lying awake in the their guestroom, when he hears the crash.

So, the details of the night will be true, but the fiction comes from how I choose to develop the character and his conflict. What about you? How could you turn events from your past into fiction. Try to tell the story from somebody else's point-of-view.