100 Things You Should Know About Writing (Part 2)

39) Using Experience, Imagination and Skill

In this section, I'm going to address one of the biggest false rules in the writerly existence. Of course, this means you'll also find thousands of writers who disagree with me. It's part of our lives, I fear. Writing is a contradictory thing and everyone has their own opinion on what the rules should be. That said, this is a big one that I wish would go away in its current form.

The rule? Write What You Know.

It's so pervasive, somehow almost always being among the first things new writers are taught.

It's also absolute crap.

JRR Tolkein didn't know any hobbits when he wrote about them. JK Rowling didn't physically go to Hogwarts. I bet you that Douglas Adams never hitchhiked through the galaxy. 

Getting closer to realism in writing, a lot of men write characters who give birth. A lot of women write from a male point of view. (Me included. The War of Six Crowns is written from four male perspectives and one female's.)

So yeah, thinking about this rule for about 30 seconds should do enough to illustrate that writing what you know is impossible to do absolutely all the time. Strict adherence to this rule would create some severely limited reading. 

My big problem with this rule isn't even just that it exists. I mean, I'm pretty good at ignoring crap when it comes to writing. However, new writers are often made to feel bad for daring to stretch beyond their hard-and-fast knowledge. Not on purpose, but it's a way of thinking that gets ingrained because people throw this fake rule about as an absolute truth and writers start to believe it.

When those bad feelings come, so do the doubts. I don't know what I'm talking about here. Who am I to write about something I have no experience of? This is too ambitious for me. I should just write something else.

I often wonder how many amazing stories are lost because of writers who bought into that "rule".

The truth is more inclusive, and actually gives writers permission to mess around with stories even if they don't just know everything about them. See, the truth is that even if writers write "what they know", there are three ways they "know" things:

Experience/Knowledge, Imagination, and Skill

Practically speaking, writers usually only need to use two of these three things at any given time.

If it's something you've experienced, you use skill to bring it to life on the page.

Or if you've experienced something close to but that's not quite what's happening in the story, you can use your imagination to get it there.

You can completely rely on your imagination and your writing skill to make something completely fictional come to life.

Sometimes you use all three. I speak four languages and have a nice amount of knowledge of how they work. I used my imagination to create new languages. I use my writing skills to know when and where those languages should be used.

The lack of experience or knowledge about something doesn't mean you must avoid writing about it.

Firstly, you have your imagination for a reason. Use it. You don't need to lose a child to feel the grief if your character loses their children. What matters is that your characters feel that grief and that you made the reader relate emotionally.

Secondly, when it comes to hard and fast knowledge, there's this little activity called research. You don't need to be a professor in medieval history to write a book set in the period. You will, however, need to read up about it until the era and the people in it come alive in your mind. The same goes to writing a murder thriller or mystery without being a cop. Research is your friend.

Thirdly, you need to develop your writing skill. This is the thing that ensures you can gloss over your lack of hard-and-fast knowledge without anyone noticing. It's also what makes people read your historically accurate stories without being bored by all the history. Luckily for you, the act of developing your writing skills depends on two things: reading and writing.

Write everything. I wrote about writing things for yourself in Section 37. This applies here. Even if you're not sure if you can pull something off, write it anyway. The only way you'll ever know if you can make something work without experiencing it is by actually writing it. 

Don't worry about whether you can do it so much. If it doesn't work, you can edit until it does. Or you can cut it out completely and find something else that does work and improves your story. You're still better off for having learned from the experience of writing the scene. 

But don't ever say: I don't know anything about this. I can't write this. You're never going to finish a book if you're scared of every little thing you don't know yet (because there are so many of those). Just write the damn thing.

Thanks for reading! If you found this helpful, please let me know and/or vote. As always, please feel free to ask questions related to this post or anything else about writing. If your questions inspire me to write a section, I'll dedicate the section to you.

Coming up in 100 Things:

Likeable and Relateable Characters

Mixing Fantasy and Reality (Marissa the Marvelous)

Using Flashbacks (Marissa the Marvelous)