Marie G. Lee drew on her own experiences heavily when writing Necessary Roughness, which is inspired by her own childhood. Lee is Korean American; her parents, born in North Korea, crossed the border to South Korea and spent years there before immigrating to the United States. She drew on her experience growing up as an American daughter of immigrants to create the characters of Chan and Young and to establish the dynamics of the Kim family unit. Lee was raised in the small mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota, which served as a clear inspiration for the fictional town of Iron River, where nearly the entirety of Necessary Roughness plays out.

She experienced difficulties as the only Asian child in her very white town, but, like Chan and Young, she recognizes the different world that her parents experienced living through the Korean War. Her parents emigrated from Korea in 1953, the year that the fighting in Korea stopped. They experienced firsthand the trauma of war and came to the United States so their child could be safe and secure, so she would be able to worry about normal things like homework and extracurriculars. Due to the contrast between her parents’ experiences and her own relatively safe upbringing, Lee grew up with an inherent tension present in her household.