Experience is essential in life and writing. It’s the source of our foresight, confidence, and caution. Writers are just people who feel compelled to share that journey with others through the stories we tell. Some of my favorite authors, including Ian Fleming, Jack Carr, and Brad Taylor, have backgrounds reflected in various aspects of their characters’ lives. These novelists drew on years of experience to create compelling, realistic characters that leap off the page and immerse us in their world.
When I set out to write my first novel, Homecoming, that’s exactly what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to create a character who felt real. A flawed man who does valiant things. To start, I reflected on my personal life experiences. I drew from it elements of the heroic struggles of the men and women I have known and actions I have witnessed and/or been a part of. In the story, my protagonist, Case Younger, is a combat veteran struggling to manage his anger. He’s also a Federal Air Marshal, trying to stay under the radar and avoid attention—all traits Case and I have in common. Hopefully, these aspects make for a gripping read. But for me, the most essential part of writing this story was to offer the reader a glimpse into a world they might not fully understand—a world where flawed men and women make life-and-death decisions in the service of their country.
Chapter one of Homecoming begins with the hijacking of a commercial airliner traveling from Athens, Greece, to Philadelphia—the kind of event I devoted much of my adult life training to prevent. But would the media attention gained from stopping another 9/11-style attack be worth the cost of the lives lost onboard? My answer was a resolute no. Thus, Case Younger’s dilemma came into being.
Once I got the ball rolling on the first draft, I realized I couldn’t put everything on the page. The Federal Air Marshal Service likes to protect its numbers, tactics, and techniques, so I made some changes. I knew that my experience as a firearms and aircraft tactics instructor would allow me to lend a sense of realism to the story without revealing too much. However, I believe there’s another layer to storytelling that’s just as important as the cool guy stuff: the chaos and confusion a situation like a hijacking would create. Federal Air Marshals study the body’s reactions to stress, and we train to work through those effects to achieve our goals. But what about everyone else on board? How will they respond to that same stress? That’s what I needed to get right. In the scene I’m referring to, I took special care to reflect the body’s responses to extreme fear, so the reader can immerse themselves in a situation alongside the hero and feel the reactions of those around them. It allows a reader to determine how they might react in a similar situation. It makes them a part of the story.
Writers aim to evoke visceral emotions on paper, engaging the reader in a shared experience. A common mantra in writing classes is to “write what you know.” For me, that means drawing from the events and life experiences that initially inspired you and sharing them with the world. And then, we hope, readers appreciate being brought along on the journey.
