If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard this sage advice: write what you know.
Our experiences help shape who we are and what we believe about the world, so they can be valuable veins to mine when it comes to writing. No one person in the world has had the same combinations of experiences as you. However, many have had similar combinations of experiences and have lived in the same time as you. That connection of shared, similar experiences can help engage readers and draw them in to your book. This is why the saying, “Write what you know, ” is so popular in writing circles.
But this advice isn’t the end-all be-all. Plenty of arguments can be made against it.
Oh, I see what you did there.
What if a physical handicap has limited the writer in combat experience, but the writer wants to write a medieval sword fight?
What if you’re a boring person? Do you just write about owning seven cats at one time because that’s what you’re familiar with? What not showering for three days does to the human body? Not clipping your toenails for three months?
While those topics can be very interesting and you should totally write about those, perhaps there is room for adding more information to your story even if you haven’t yourself experienced it.
This month, the Fictorians will discuss personal experience verses imagination: which
Okay, I don’t even know anymore.
is more important and where the two intersect. We’ll also consider how far you can/should/maybe shouldn’t go to experience what your characters experience. We’ll include some interesting experiences we’ve had, which may or may not include learning how to deal with post-combat stress, retracing Nikola Tesla’s footsteps, butchering our own meat, and breaking bones.
Later this month, we’ll get an exclusive interview with Fictorian Frank Morin, author of the series The Petralist.
Now we’re curious. In the comments below, please tell us how far you’ve gone to gain experience for writing!
If you have read anything by me on this blog before this post, you know I’m all about the unconventional way of doing things. What works for one person might not work for me, and similarly, what works for most people does not work for me. For example, I don’t write every day. I don’t make myself sit, ass to chair, for hours until something happens. If I couldn’t possibly force myself to write that day, I do something else, usually creative. Sometimes a week goes by and I haven’t brainstormed, written, or edited a single word. On the other side of that coin are some extremely productive spurts. I’ll write a novel in a month. I’ll write a short story in a day. I’ll outline an entire book in a week or less. You can probably deduce where I’m going with this. Absolutely stay true to this one thing, if nothing else: listen and obey what works for you.
What I propose is not an easy road. It requires you to be in-tune with yourself every day, and be honest with yourself. That means if you know you will not produce your best work today, then you might want to do other creative and important activities instead. That also means you should make yourself sit down, ass to chair, if you are perfectly capable of churning out prose but you just don’t feel like it. That’s where being honest with yourself comes in.
As an aside, what other creative things could you do instead?. Plenty. You may be stressed, tired, irritated. Try coloring, cooking, painting, even cleaning if that’s what will satisfy your brain and calm you down. If you sit and write and you’re rushing through every sentence to hit a word count, then what’s the point? Good work can’t be rushed, and if it is, it can’t be expected to be great work. It may even make more work for you in the end as you’re editing.
Ask yourself a series of questions to get an idea of how best you work.
Do I work (not specifically writing) best in the morning or evening? When do I feel the most focused?
Do I like to have people around when I write?
Is silence best when I write? If not, do I prefer ambient noise or music?
At what time durning the day do I start getting tired?
Would I feel better if I got my writing in at the beginning of my day?
Would I feel best if I wrote when my day concluded, all responsibilities done and taken care of?
Have I noticed if my writing is more rushed or hurried if I am hungry, tired, or cold?
Do I tend to nod off when I’m writing? What are the conditions (early morning, too warm, late at night)?
When do I have the most energy in my day?
Have I noticed a certain time of day where I do not feel like writing at all?
Have I noticed a certain emotion that negatively affects my writing? A positive emotion that helps my writing flow better?
Is there a month each year where I’m consistently not writing due to busyness or stress?
After I write a novel or short story, do I prefer to have a time to let the writing rest before jumping right into editing? Do I need to jump right into editing to keep up the momentum?
Under what conditions do I experience burnout?
Are there activities in my life that are in direct odds with my writing and/or writing time?
Do I like to think of work on a project-to-project basis or a day-to-day basis?
Do I like to work on one piece of writing at a time or multiple pieces?
As you answer the questions, you might have some important realizations. If you still aren’t sure or can’t find a good time or season for writing, consider keeping a simple daily log of your writing time and note the time, how you feel, the room temperature, if you’re hungry/full/just right, any large stressors in your life at the time, and how you feel about your project right then. Feel free to add more things to note to the list. Over time, you’ll come across patterns in your writing times, what worked best, and certain things that bombed your working time.
Many writers have kept curious schedules throughout history. Henry Miller’s morning consisted of “if”s: “If groggy, type notes and allocate, as stimulus. If in fine fettle, write.” Ernest Hemingway, who wrote standing, said, “When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.” To read more about other famous writers’ routines, visit https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/11/20/daily-routines-writers/.
https://podio.com/site/creative-routines
Also consider this graph of creative peoples’ routines in a 24-hour period. Note also that these schedules may have changed over time. Because the most important rule is and will always be: do what works for you.
While it can take weeks, months, or even years to nail down a routine that works for you, there’s something to be said for just jumping in. Once you’ve taken a personal inventory of your habits and routines, you may find a suitable writing time daily or a chunk of weeks in which to complete a project. It may not be perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. It will never be the perfect day or the perfect moment to write. The key is hitting a time that nearly is perfect, and running wild.
*Please note this is a two part series. Part one of the series was published on Monday, December 14th.*
On Monday, I gave a brief overview of K.M. Weiland’s fantastic writing resource Outlining Your Novel. Today, I’ll give a peek into her follow-up writing book Structuring Your Novel.
Let’s just get the argument out of the way first. Kristin, you’ve already said Outlining Your Novel was fantastic for me to have. How is Structuring Your Novel any different? Doesn’t she just repackage the material covered in Outlining Your Novel in this book?
First, Structuring Your Novel is, surprisingly, completely different than Outlining Your Novel. I can only think of a handful of times where Weiland references something from Outlining Your Novel, but usually to note something you should’ve already have done in the pre-writing stage. Think of it this way: Outlining Your Novel is about conceptualization, like blueprinting a future house. Structuring Your Novel is actually building said house. They are similar in that they are both processes of making a house, but completely different in action.
K.M. Weiland breaks up her book into two sections: the macros of story structure and the micros of story structure. The macros include: the hook, the beginning, the first act, the first plot point, the second and third acts, the climax, the resolution, and the ending. Some of these macros are similar, but Weiland breaks down their differences, what percentage into your book they should occur, and why each are important. She also outlines some common mistakes and pitfalls, how to avoid them, and how to fix them.
The second half of Structuring Your Novel consists of the micros, or scene and sentence structure. Once you’ve structured the overall story, now your attention needs to be paid to each individual scene and chapter. You want these micros to mirror the bigger story: the highs and the lows. Weiland specifically examines and defines The Scene and The Sequel, which I can assure you I did not learn in college. She also briefly examines sentence structure, getting super-micro with structure.
How important is structure, really? It’s the difference between the second book in a trilogy being the ugly stepsister, or as brilliantly important as The Two Towers. How you structure the events in your story will equate to how believable your characters and their actions are.
“Structure is required in all art. Dancing, painting, singing, you name it — all forms require structure. Writing is no different. To bring a story to its full potential, authors must understand the form’s limitations, as well as how to put its many parts into the proper order to achieve maximum effect.” (From the Introduction)
In summary, K.M. Weiland’s books on writing put information on outlining and structure in two, easily accessible locations. What I love best about Weiland’s overarching style in these books is that it is humble and unassuming. She draws from a huge breadth of knowledge on writing, drawing from other writers and other authors of books on writing, and presents the information as clear as a bell.
If you want a clear, no nonsense approach to the basics of prewriting and structuring a story, you need these books.
