Using real incidents as foundation for your fiction
Posted: 23 Sep 2015, 12:11
Sometimes we use our real experiences as background to our fiction. Here’s an example from my soon-to-be published private detective novel “Blood Spiral” featuring Houston private eye Mitch King. Some years ago I was asked by a casual lady friend to give her a ride to a place in Houston’s old 4th ward. What I saw was nearly as grim as my fictional depiction posted below. Needless to say, that was the last time I had anything to do with her. Some harsh language has been redacted:
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I pulled up to a row of aging wooden shotgun houses, all alike, all sad in their squalor. Some were abandoned and boarded up. Others were occupied, mostly by the dregs of society. But this was fine with me because it was a dreg I wanted to find.
“I got to go in, ask this friend. He knows lots of bikers,” Jimmy said. Then his voice took on a plaintive whine. “Uh, Mitch. Could you spot me, say, twenty?”
I pulled out the money and handed it over. “Remember,” I told him, “looks like Mel Gibson.”
Jimmy clambered from the truck and wandered along the row houses, turning in at the last one on the right.
I waited. And waited.
After a while, I figured Jimmy wasn’t coming out, so I decided to go get him. I climbed out and walked over to the houses, reaching under my jacket to make sure the big revolver was riding free in its holster.
The sun had baked the nearby earth to broken clay, and all the moisture from the previous rain had long since evaporated. Nothing beside remained. A scrawny hissing cat scuttled from my path as I traced Jimmy’s steps. I edged carefully between the little houses and saw a side door standing open, its screen torn and hanging from the broken wood frame. Voices were coming from inside, one Jimmy’s.
I went up to the door, put one hand on the grip of the Colt and pushed the door open.
As soon as I stepped inside, the terrible stink of raw and rotting [crud] shoved at me like a pressure wave. Used to the intense sunshine, my eyes acclimated slowly to the interior gloom. I stood there trying to adjust to the stench and the dimness.
A single naked bulb hung from a frayed cord to illuminate the depravity in stark chiaroscuro. The room was piled high with trash stacked against the walls. There were empty beer cans, whiskey bottles, rotgut wine empties lying everywhere. Rivers of brown and black cockroaches slithered in and out of the rags and shredded newspapers that were cast in rotting heaps about the room.
Stuck in one corner was a large metal can, a makeshift toilet. It was full and overflowing. Piles of [crud] lay near the can, covered with a layer of newspaper as if that would make it all right. Hordes of flies swarmed and buzzed over the filth and the odor was choking.
Welcome to the shooting gallery.
The only furniture in the room was a stained and ripped sofa. Jimmy sat on it, wedged between two older men, one black, one white, both wasted. All three stared vacantly at me as I walked in.
“A minute,” Jimmy said.
In front of Jimmy was a cheap fold-up TV tray, and on it, cooking gear. There was a little votive candle, a spoon with blackened bowl, cigarettes and some matches, and a small foil packet of brown flake heroin. Jimmy had just finished cooking his fix in the spoon over the candle flame and was now sucking the liquefied junk into a dirty 5cc syringe, the filter from a cigarette stuck onto the tip of the needle to strain out debris. He’d already tied off his left arm with a scrap of clothesline.
Jimmy tapped at the syringe to get the air bubbles off the cylinder walls, squirted a tiny droplet from the tip of the needle, slid the point into an already bruised and pockmarked vein. He pulled back on the plunger to suck a little blood into the syringe, ensuring that all the air was gone from the needle and also ensuring that whatever pathogens were swimming in his blood would be shared with the next user. Then he pressed the plunger home and the expression on his face transformed from hunger to ecstasy.
The needle is all. The needle is life.
“Jimmy,” I said.
He looked at me with empty, uncomprehending eyes as though I were an alien creature, a wholly different species. And I was.
Human.
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Comments appreciated. And please add some of your own posts, telling how you've used personal experiences in real life to insert into your fiction. Not overall life modes, but specific scenes or events. Thanks.
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I pulled up to a row of aging wooden shotgun houses, all alike, all sad in their squalor. Some were abandoned and boarded up. Others were occupied, mostly by the dregs of society. But this was fine with me because it was a dreg I wanted to find.
“I got to go in, ask this friend. He knows lots of bikers,” Jimmy said. Then his voice took on a plaintive whine. “Uh, Mitch. Could you spot me, say, twenty?”
I pulled out the money and handed it over. “Remember,” I told him, “looks like Mel Gibson.”
Jimmy clambered from the truck and wandered along the row houses, turning in at the last one on the right.
I waited. And waited.
After a while, I figured Jimmy wasn’t coming out, so I decided to go get him. I climbed out and walked over to the houses, reaching under my jacket to make sure the big revolver was riding free in its holster.
The sun had baked the nearby earth to broken clay, and all the moisture from the previous rain had long since evaporated. Nothing beside remained. A scrawny hissing cat scuttled from my path as I traced Jimmy’s steps. I edged carefully between the little houses and saw a side door standing open, its screen torn and hanging from the broken wood frame. Voices were coming from inside, one Jimmy’s.
I went up to the door, put one hand on the grip of the Colt and pushed the door open.
As soon as I stepped inside, the terrible stink of raw and rotting [crud] shoved at me like a pressure wave. Used to the intense sunshine, my eyes acclimated slowly to the interior gloom. I stood there trying to adjust to the stench and the dimness.
A single naked bulb hung from a frayed cord to illuminate the depravity in stark chiaroscuro. The room was piled high with trash stacked against the walls. There were empty beer cans, whiskey bottles, rotgut wine empties lying everywhere. Rivers of brown and black cockroaches slithered in and out of the rags and shredded newspapers that were cast in rotting heaps about the room.
Stuck in one corner was a large metal can, a makeshift toilet. It was full and overflowing. Piles of [crud] lay near the can, covered with a layer of newspaper as if that would make it all right. Hordes of flies swarmed and buzzed over the filth and the odor was choking.
Welcome to the shooting gallery.
The only furniture in the room was a stained and ripped sofa. Jimmy sat on it, wedged between two older men, one black, one white, both wasted. All three stared vacantly at me as I walked in.
“A minute,” Jimmy said.
In front of Jimmy was a cheap fold-up TV tray, and on it, cooking gear. There was a little votive candle, a spoon with blackened bowl, cigarettes and some matches, and a small foil packet of brown flake heroin. Jimmy had just finished cooking his fix in the spoon over the candle flame and was now sucking the liquefied junk into a dirty 5cc syringe, the filter from a cigarette stuck onto the tip of the needle to strain out debris. He’d already tied off his left arm with a scrap of clothesline.
Jimmy tapped at the syringe to get the air bubbles off the cylinder walls, squirted a tiny droplet from the tip of the needle, slid the point into an already bruised and pockmarked vein. He pulled back on the plunger to suck a little blood into the syringe, ensuring that all the air was gone from the needle and also ensuring that whatever pathogens were swimming in his blood would be shared with the next user. Then he pressed the plunger home and the expression on his face transformed from hunger to ecstasy.
The needle is all. The needle is life.
“Jimmy,” I said.
He looked at me with empty, uncomprehending eyes as though I were an alien creature, a wholly different species. And I was.
Human.
====
Comments appreciated. And please add some of your own posts, telling how you've used personal experiences in real life to insert into your fiction. Not overall life modes, but specific scenes or events. Thanks.
I think this scene is vibrant and well-written. It's dark and unpleasant, but that's the reality of drugs. Scary!