![]() ![]() ![]() If we don’t have to stick to the actual facts–as journalists must–it allows us to weave new truths of our own. Perhaps it’s because of my background as a journalism undergrad that real-life stories often act as my muse, and what I love about writing fiction is taking reality and twisting and turning the story into something that adds layers of what ifs.Ĭreative license in fiction writing is an essential part of what we do as storytellers. I’ve found that reading long-form articles like Aviv’s can act as inspiration and research, so I keep a digital folder archived with the most interesting pieces I come across. As of writing this article, she has not been seen since September 14, 2017. Aviv details Hannah’s story of being diagnosed with dissociative fugue and going missing three times. I was inspired to write this story by the real-life story of Hannah Upp, which I first read about in Rachel Aviv’s gripping New Yorker article, “How a Young Woman Lost Her Identity.” I was teaching journalism at the time, and my students and I read the piece as a mentor text for writing strong features. In the end, I mostly assigned that task to three mothers because frustrated women get things done. I restructured timelines and renamed characters and deleted chapters, all the time sorting out which characters could best move Emily’s story forward while she’s lying in a hospital bed. With such a foolproof process, you may be surprised that The Night She Went Missing didn’t just flow out of me. I write unreadable first drafts and then revise chapters up to twenty times. She can’t remember where she’s been, with whom, or why she went missing ten weeks ago.Īs a pantser, I’m getting to know characters, their dilemmas, and their hometowns as I go. My debut novel The Night She Went Missing opens with one such character: when eighteen-year-old Emily Callahan is found floating in Galveston harbor, she is unconscious but alive. Writing a character who has forgotten creates a myriad of problems and opportunities for the writer.
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