I would love to share a photo of my aunt Gisela with you.
I can’t.
I don’t have one.

My aunt Gisela died over thirty years ago. I was eight and I remember it vividly.
I remember, because everyone thought at eight years old, I had no concept of death.
I remember, because everyone thought at eight years old, I couldn’t possibly understand.

I understood, all right.

I understood that my aunt Gisela’s head had become the watermelon.

I should explain about the melon.
My uncle used to shoot handguns as a hobby.
He once showed us why we should never pick up a gun.
The demonstration included a melon. You know, the big green kind, with the red flesh.
He shot the melon. There was a neat hole in the front.
The back of the melon was splattered all over the wall.
It wasn’t a very pretty sight, but it certainly was impressive and shocking enough to make us completely aware that touching a gun was not a good thing.

Accidents happen.

What does this have to do with drawing from memory?
Everything.
I don’t remember my aunt’s voice. I remember she had dark brown hair, almost black. I don’t remember her face. Or only vaguely.
I remember the dark rose satin dress she wore to the ball. The one she promised to have a duplicate made of, if there’s enough fabric left over.
The one she died wearing.
I did get the duplicate. Years and years after Gisela was gone, the dressmaker asked very tentatively if she should deliver the dress she’d made for me. She knew I had long outgrown it, she knew I couldn’t wear it, she thought it might hold sentimental value.
She delivered it.
I have never touched that dress. As far as I know, it still exists, somewhere, in a box.
Perhaps that dress is the reason I don’t like pink. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I associate pink with death.
I don’t know. I just hate pink.

So, since I don’t remember clearly, I have to draw from memory. But when I do that, it also makes me remember the pain. Makes me remember how much everyone hurt, how lost everyone was. I couldn’t tell you what went through my dad’s mind at the time. Or what my cousin felt. He didn’t just lose his mom. His dad pretty much abandoned him at the same time.
Guilt? They were his guns in the house. I don’t know. I guess that was part of it.
I don’t remember anything my gran did.
I remember that I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral.
I remember people talking, saying how they’re glad we didn’t understand what had happened.
Let me disabuse you of that notion. I knew pretty damn well what was going on, and what had happened.
I’d have had to be deaf and blind not to understand.

Now, what does all that have to do with writing?

When you create characters, you get to create their past. You get to make them grow up and you get to shape them through their past, into the people they are today. Everyone comes with baggage. Some more than others.
If I had to create a character who loathed guns, I’d need a reason for that loathing.
How do you think I feel about guns?
I’ve clued you in that I hate pink.
Both are direct results of what happened when I was eight years old. Both are a part of me, an irrational, deep seated hatred I cannot shake.
So when you create your characters, look into yourself. See what made you the way you are, why you love some things, and completely loathe others. Use your memories to shape your characters. Know what happened to them to make them who and what they are. Why did your heroine decide to become a cop? Why is your hero a drifter? Why does your heroine hate ice cream? Or maybe just a particular flavor of ice cream? A song? A smell? A color?
If you know the past of your characters, you are less likely running the risk of them acting out of character. They’re going to be far more consistent, because of the restraints you established.
I know what happened to my guys and girls. I know it down to the smallest detail.
Hardly any of it makes it into the story. It’s not necessary for the reader to know where they went to school, or who their high school prom date was. It doesn’t matter (to the story) that her first kiss was sloppy and wet and she hated it. Or that her date groped her and they broke up in the parking lot.
The reader doesn’t need to know. But you do.
If you know how she felt about this, her reaction to the hero trying to make out in the parking lot is going to be far different to someone who had the time of their life and loved every second of that prom night. And because you know about her past, about how humiliated she felt, you can write it with conviction and it will be believable.

You’re drawing from memory.
Your character’s memory.

And yours.