#writewhatyouknow

[lightnersdream-archive]

all my ocs are lesbians that do nothing and kind of suck #writewhatyouknow

[louislamour]

Write what you know is the foundation of a good author. Louis certainly lived and breathed the world around him and shared his experiences through his novels and stories. From CONAGHER (https://www.louislamour.com/novels/conagher.htm) At sunset Evie walked away from the cabin and stood alone, her hair stirring a little in the faint breeze. She stood on the edge of the trail, a hundred yards from the cabin. All was very still. She never tired of the mornings and evenings here, the soft lights, the changing colors of sunlight and cloud upon the hills, the stirring of wind in the grass. Out here there was no escaping the sky or the plains, and Evie knew that until she came west she had never really known distance. The air was incredibly clear. Fresh and cool as it was, one breathed it in like drinking cool water; and always there was a definite odor on it, the odor depending on the direction from which the wind blew: the smell of cedar, and of pines beyond, the smell of sage, or, from the dryer lands after a rain, the smell of the creosote bush. #louislamour #writewhatyouknow https://www.instagram.com/p/CpyHLrLP_x3/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[brendamariesmith]

Some Ways to Write What You Know

People told me, “Write what you know,” and I thought, “Well, that sounds boring.”

But I’ve since discovered ways to follow that advice. We can put our personal emotions into our characters and use them for different purposes. We can pull bits from one facet of our lives, add pieces from other aspects, stir them up, and sprinkle them throughout a story to good effect.

After I self-published my first novel, a paranormal thriller called Something Radiates, friends who read it kept saying to me, “This book is about you and your ex-husband, isn’t it?”

“My exes were bad,” I would say, “but they weren’t supernatural stalkers.”

Still, the truth is that my two ex-husbands were abusive to me in different ways. One was controlling and tried to squelch my intellect. He burned my poetry, saying I was on an ego trip. The second ex had a serious mean streak that first emerged in increasingly cutting remarks. Then, he lost it and beat my kids. He came damned close to pushing me down a steep flight of stairs. I was frozen in fear, but he did me an enormous favor and dumped me.

Once I was free of these men, I got my revenge by taking the worst aspects of each of them, smooshing them together, adding supernatural abilities, and ramping them into overdrive to create a truly creepy villain for Something Radiates. It was healing for me to make my villain even worse than my exes, especially when the villain gets his comeuppance in the end.

I also used my experience of falling in love with a good man, my longtime current husband, to write a romance for my protagonist—the best kind of revenge. And I set the novel in Baton Rouge, where I once lived, with a trip to a cave near Boulder, where I’d camped out long ago. The novel is loaded with hippie spiritual lore and belief systems that have always fascinated me.

In my next novel, If Darkness Takes Us, and its standalone sequel, If the Light Escapes, a solar pulse destroys the U.S. grid, and the characters must survive with no power, cars, phones, or running water. Many reviews for If Darkness mentioned that I must have done a lot of research to describe the details of their lives so well. But when I was much younger, I’d lived off the grid for many years by choice, in a vegan hippie community where my sons were delivered by midwives. I didn’t have to research it. I lived it. And I set both novels in an altered version of my own Austin, Texas, neighborhood.

In If Darkness, which is narrated by a grandmother named Bea who’s raising her grandkids in an apocalypse, I was able to draw on my experiences with love and divorce as well as my twenty-eight years of raising five sons, plus several more years of being a grandmother. I also gave Bea some health issues I’m familiar with. While she is similar to me in certain ways, she’s her own woman with plenty of differences, too.

For If the Light, which is narrated by Bea’s eighteen-year-old grandson Keno, I believe his heroic nature and casual-cussing voice came straight from those sons of mine, tempered by the college students I worked with for fifteen years. Keno was waiting inside me to be let loose. It was astonishing how fast his words spewed out of me. And as I delved deeper into his character, he revealed even richer veins of heroism, intellect, and moral conviction. I have watched many young men come of age in my life, but seeing Keno do it in an apocalypse made my heart bleed.

I have a novel in development that will call on my experience living in the woods of the Ozark Mountains, on my attraction to Eastern religions, and on the time that I spent living communally. For all my fiction, I pull character emotions from the various ways I have felt them myself or have observed them in others.

The best advice I can give to any writer is to dive into life and live it to its fullest. Then you will have no shortage of tales to tell and experiences to draw from, whether your characters dwell in alternative worlds or come straight out of history. And your stories will never be boring.

[jenniferniven]

All the Bright Places began with this girl, Violet Markey, who in some ways was me. It’s hard to believe how far she’s come on this journey. I can’t wait for you to see her on the screen. 🌸 #allthebrightplaces #atbp #allthebrightplacesmovie #violetmarkey #writewhatyouknow #ellefanning #fanartfriday #fanart #sketch #february28 #gratitude (beautiful artwork by @mar.szalek 💜) https://www.instagram.com/p/B7t3l01pRtJ/?igshid=113u7fo1rrqa1

[leavesofthelaureltree]

“The Pedestrian”- short story recommendation

“The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, was written in 1951 and still manages to be relevant to a modern audience, while also obtaining a vintage feel. The short story is a perfect example of ‘write what you know’. This is due to Ray Bradbury writing this story when everyone was beginning to watch and own their own television.

‘Write what you know’ doesn’t necessarily mean you must write about what you have personally experienced, otherwise mob or crime films would only be written by people that have experienced those things personally. No, ‘write what you know’ is about learning and researching something thoroughly enough to portray an accurate and believable story. In this case however, Ray Bradbury was writing about the extreme outcome of our future if people were consumed by television. In a rather scary way, he was right. Nowadays, our generation are consumed by media and entertainment, so much so that we don’t see any real reason to leave the house.

“The Pedestrian”, as mentioned in one of my previous posts “Stranger Danger”, has also influenced some of my own writing. This was in the way that he uses ‘write what you know’. This technique was taught to me by Ray Bradbury, and my year 12 english teacher, showing me that I can take an issue present in my everyday life and make it into a whole dystopian (or to some people Utopian) world, which may not be so far fetched as one would think (in some elements that is).

This short story is an interesting portrayal, of a still rather present issue in modern society. It takes place over the course of two pages, Ray Bradbury has also written novels which take place in a dystopian future where mass consumption of media was also dominant in the world he created. This book is called “Fahrenheit 451″, if anyone fancies a slightly longer read.

Link for short story: “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, written in 1951.

- Millie Rowley

- Leaves of the Laurel Tree

[asthecrowwrites]

The Second Commandment of Writing: Write What You Know?

This continues my series in which I tackle the great pieces of literary advice. Any writer who has ever studied the craft has stumbled upon this phrase. Some writers swear by it. Some writers protest it. But how many understand this phrase? First, we must understand what it doesn’t mean. “Write what you know” does not mean to restrict you to autobiographical stories. It does not restrict you to memoirs. Nor does it restrict who or what you write. If you are a twenty-something millennial, then it does not force you to only write twenty-something millennials. If you are a teacher or a fast-food worker, it does not limit you to writing fast-food workers. “Write what you know” is not a restriction upon your creativity or ingenuity. Those traits form the heart of any writer’s work.

What does it mean then?

I view this literary idiom as having multiple applications and interpretations.

You Know Emotion

Writers should draw upon their emotional experiences to create realistic emotions and actions within their characters. When you are writing a character who is frustrated or scared, recall a time when you yourself were incensed or terrified. This is something akin to ‘method acting’ (another widely misunderstood term). You use your own memories of those emotions to solidify your understanding of the character’s mindset.

The question arises then; How do I write a character who is feeling something I’ve never felt?

This is where an author’s creativity comes in. Imagine you are writing a character who has just committed a murder. You have (presumably) never committed a murder. How could you ‘know’ what that character was feeling? You mutate and magnify your own experiences. An author is reliant upon empathy. You have never committed a murder, but perhaps when you were young you broke something. You tried to sweep the pieces under the rug so that your illicit behavior would go unnoticed. You can recall the initial panic, the paranoia, the fear of punishment, but also the thrill when you felt you might have gotten away scot-free. A good author takes those memories and magnifies them to fit the situation.

Write What You (Can) Know

We writers are fortunate to live in the modern era. The internet is the greatest asset for modern writers. There is a great wealth of knowledge at your fingertips.

Before you write a character, you should do your research. The more distinct their lives are from your own the more research you should do. Research their career. Research the terms and skills they use. If they come from another place in the US, perhaps there are region-specific phrases you can familiarize yourself with. Perhaps there are different cultural beliefs, or cultural traditions your character would know.

As a writer in the modern era you can know almost anything. Write what you know, but research, and know what you’re writing.

This also plays a part into writing fantasy and sci-fi; You may not know what it is like to walk through the streets of a medieval city, but you can research it. You may not know what it is like to be an engineer aboard a space ship, but you can research what it is like to work on a car motor, or a NASA spacecraft. You should also be just as detailed in your research of your own world. You should understand your world just as much as if you were writing any modern or historical setting.

Write What You See

Writers are notorious for borrowing people from their lives and inserting them into their stories. It is something we are accused off constantly. Everyone wants to know what character is based on them. But it is never that simple.

The people in your life are extensions of your experience and understanding. You may not know how to write a character coming home from war, but perhaps you have an uncle who is a veteran. You can base part of your character upon him and his behavior.

You can also base it off another character in other media you have consumed. As writers we should not feel bad while doing this; it is the natural way literary ideas evolve and propagates themselves. While it is important to understand your characters, a writer should have an equal ability to interpret and understand other writers’ characters, and reverse engineer them.

In the same way, you can interpret and understand people as characters, and reverse engineer their actions to be aspects of your character. Perhaps you notice someone on the bus, looking at their phone every five minutes, nervous about missing their stop. You notice their clothing, their foot tapping, the way they put their book away about five minutes before their stop, just to be sure. You can throw these into your vast library of character traits for later use.

As a writer you must know an entire world well enough to tell a story in it, be it the real world or a fictional one. “Write what you know” is often misconstrued as being a limitation upon the author, meant to restrict and confine one’s writing. Rather it is an instruction to write actively, thoughtfully, and emotionally. The second commandment instructs us to use our emotional and situational knowledge to breathe life into our stories.

As “Write what you know” is a counterpoint to itself, my next post will tackle the third commandment of writing: Avoiding Passive Voice.  

[multiplemindfulmusings-blog]

Sylvia, why did i not learn from your brilliance and your darkness? You shared them so eloquently, so bravely and yet, still lost the fight. How did i not learn from your battle? How could i allow my children to witness my surrender?

- red

[rebeccaartemisa]

A panel from my comic 💧WEEPY💧If you like reading about bby queer xicana friendships and ghost stories it’s up in my shop! rebeccaartemisa.etsy.com

[writersmama]

#giftideas #holidayseason BUY #books ❗️#author M.L.Webb inspired to 🖌this book for children from his own childhood experience of wishing he had such a book to help navigate the unchartered territory of his own feelings. #writewhatyouknow #writewhatyoufeel #writersofinstagram #readersofinstagram #lgbt #lgbtq🌈 #booksbooksbooks #writersmama #holidayseason #hoildayshopping #quirkbooks https://www.instagram.com/p/CItF3SKFblk/?igshid=1jzsvswfuyasf

[kjscouten]

Doing what I love so I can write about it later. #ranchlife #reallife #writersofinstagram #cowgirlsdoitbetter #girlsbestfriend #writewhatyouknow #amwriting #alltheprettyhorses #inthesaddle

[whoislauralee]

Just a couple examples of art imitating life with me & Mona...🌠#fbf #thedarkmatterofmonastarr #monastarr #lauraleegulledge #artimitateslife #autobiocomics #emergencyroom #dorkestra #writewhatyouknow https://www.instagram.com/p/B-zgKNylaiR/?igshid=1pwchzp469ac6

[rowenarede2019]

Pretty sure I’m turning into a vampire. #writewhatyouknow #urbanfantasyauthor #nightshiftcrew https://www.instagram.com/p/B8znfRsgf72/?igshid=nnoari7xneuq

[davejacobs]

@writewhatyouknow​ continued from here

Katherine had been the one to find Davey against a wall after her long day at work, and he looked more than down for the count, which in turn scared the crap out of Katherine. She was quick to get him medical attention, barely being able to sit still as he was being worked on.

After she was told that she could go in, she was more than excited to, happy to see that Davey was alive and well - as far as outward appearances go. She hadn’t gotten much information on his state (or if she did she wasn’t listening all that well), but she came in and sat next to his bed, grabbing on of his hands. “Hey, Dave. How are you feeling?”

Flinching slightly at the sudden presence of another hand around his own, Davey’s expression softened a bit once the stranger spoke.

It was Katherine.

“--If I’m being honest- I feel like shit, Kath- I mean, doc says theres swelling in my brain- any time I move more than my arms I feel like I’m gonna puke--” Davey blinked, eyes glassy from unshed tears, “Hell, Les has been crying all morning. It’s torture...And you know what the worst part is?”

The slow rise and fall of Davey’s chest was the most movement that occurred in the subsequent seconds of silence.

“----the doctor doesn’t even know when I’ll get better.”

[jennyleewrites]

Anna K has two Newfoundland show dogs who compete in the Westminster Dog Show... their names are Gemma and Jon Snow. This was inspired by my own newfy, Gemma Bunny. (See pics!) Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a joyous holiday season! Gemma’s stylist: @janenw ; Gemma’s photog: @jacksonberlinphoto ;Gemma’s crazy dog lady Mom: me! #newfoundlanddog #merrychristmas #writewhatyouknow #annak #happyholidays2019 #christmas #christmastree #newfoundlandsofinstagram #weeklyfluff #christmasdog (at Montage Palmetto Bluff) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6cR_m6pGen/?igshid=1s991ti0xpubl

[writersmama]

The day after Livi’s 🎂, I’m re sharing my trip down memory lane @facebook post from 6 years ago. (Excuse the pg2 repetition, editing from photos racks my nerves🙃) #memoir - like #snapshots -it’s what #writers do...🖌 #writingcommunity #writersofinstagram #writersmama #writewhatyouknow #writewhatyoufeel HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIVI💖💋 (at United States) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGPxXsTF-Xp/?igshid=1wkxfhkr81mpr

[kirtzkreations]

New recipe. Inspired by a few things. So yummy and so quick to make. #writersofinstagram #writewhatyouknow #onetreataday #kirtzcalm #yumyum #baking (at Fort Saint John, British Columbia) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4jBwF2FRxq/?igshid=1bjha9sdqeou2