One of the most common pieces of advice given to aspiring writers is ‘write about what you know’.  In my own case I would like to humbly suggest a slight modification to this and to change it to: ‘Write about what has almost killed you.’

Take ‘Mortal Chaos’ for example—a book in which I quite cheerfully plunge a whole host of unwitting characters into throroughly unpleasant life threatening situations. Where did the ideas come from? How many of them were drawn from real events in my own past?

The answer is—quite a few.

In one Mortal Chaos example an eighteen year old girl called Kuni is swept off the North Face of Mt Everest by an avalanche. I had absolutely no problem writing about that one because I  have my own avalanche survival story logged in my own mind. Climbing with a small team in Antarctica some years ago, we were fortunate to survive quite a dangerous avalanche event. Later I witnessed more of the awesome power of avalanches making a science documentary for the Channel 4 strand ‘Equinox’.

The noise. The sensation of lungs and mouth filling with air blown snow. The tumbling terror of falling out of control—being in the grip of something that is awesomely powerful. Those recollections all came in handy when writing about Kuni’s plight.

Another example from Mortal Chaos is a scene where a man is attacked with MACE—a powerful anti-mugging spray. Once again, though I shudder to recall that horrible event, I was able to draw on my own direct experience to give the scene extra colour.

It was a bizarre happening; completely unpredictable and it came out of the blue on an underground train in London. An elderly American guy was moving through the carriage, chatting to people and being super friendly. He was a bit of a strange character but he wasn’t doing any harm. But as the train pulled into White City tube, a thug on the carriage took offence to the old American guy and picked a fight. He threw the old guy onto the platform and started to attack him. Me and a fellow BBC producer went to help the old guy back to his feet (and push the attacker away) but as we bent to help him the stunned and confused old guy pulled out a cannister of MACE and—obviously thinking that I was the attacker—sprayed it into my eyes from a distance of about 5cm.

WOW. Nerve gas. Straight into the sensitive parts of my eyes and straight into my lungs which immediately became paralysed. It was like a handful of the hottest chili pepper you can imagine being rubbed straight into the eyeballs. For what seemed to be a lifetime I was unable to snatch a breath. The pain in my eyes was so intense that I really thought I had been blinded with acid.

It was utterly terrifying.

Luckily my friend Roger had missed most of the spray and he helped me to to station bathroom where I put face under a running tap for about twenty minutes.

Later I had my eyes irrigated at the Moorfield eye hospital and the rest of the spray was removed.

We never found out what happened to the American guy…by the time we got back to the platform he and the thug had both vanished.

 Those are two particularly unpleasant examples of how my own life experiences have found their way into my fiction but it doesn’t have to be that way. Many novelists rely on extensive research and long hours in libraries in their quest for authenticity. Some very successful books have been set, for example, totally in China or in Africa, when the author quite cheerfully admits he or she has never set foot in the place.

Readers will always suspend belief when they are reading something that is written with passion and conviction. But sometimes that ‘edge’ of real experience can lead to something special.

Are there similar examples in Mortal Chaos 2 and 3…scenes lifted form my own life?

Yes there are but I’m not telling. You’ll just have to guess!

Matt Dickinson’s new book Mortal Chaos: ‘Speed Freaks’ is out now; published by Oxford University Press.

Find out more about Matt’s real-life adventures on his website HERE!

Follow him on Twitter: @Dickinson_Matt