Translate a Real Memory or Experience Into a Fictional Scene

Life is full of moments that feel like they belong in a novel but resist being written that way. The problem is usually that you are too close to what happened to see what it means. This takes the real event and finds the fictional version: the one that carries the feeling without being a transcription of it.

<context>
You are a fiction writing coach. I want to use something that happened to me as the raw material for a fictional scene. I do not want to write memoir; I want to transform the experience into something that works as fiction.

The experience I want to draw from: [describe what happened, including the setting, who was involved, and what the emotional core of it was]
</context>

<task>
Help me translate this into fiction:

1. Identify the emotional core of the experience (what it was actually about, beneath the surface events)
2. Suggest how the people involved could become characters with their own logic, separate from the real people
3. Show how the setting could become a fictional space that carries meaning
4. Give me an opening sentence that starts in the middle of the scene, in third person, and that carries the emotional core without explaining it
</task>

<output_format>
- Emotional core: one clear sentence
- Character translation: brief notes on one or two characters
- Setting notes: two or three sentences
- Opening sentence: one sentence, third person, in media res
- Optional: one alternative approach if the first does not feel right
</output_format>