In my last entry I talked about how sparks can impact the little details of our writing. But those details aren't what make up a novel. Novels need substance. How do we creatively come up with substance?
Well you don't have to search hard for that--all you have to do is reflect.
Your mind is made up of a lifetime (however long or short thus far) of experiences that make you who you are. Your feelings, your opinions, your history of actions and conversations...these things influence what you write.
All you have to do is write what you know. We all have histories of pain, pleasure, love, and frustration. We all have political views, unmet desires, families that drive us crazy, lost loves, and mistakes we'd like to undo.
Pour that into your writing. Let us feel the grit and emotion. As you subconsciously (or perhaps consciously) apply your personal being to your novel, we will experience what you've experienced. Your novel is a part of you; it is a result of the way you see the world.
You don't have to get very creative to be yourself, do you?
I love, LOVE that you said this. SO many writers hate the saying "Write what you know" but I think it is one of the, if not THE, most important rules for writing. The rule doesn't mean you can't write fantasy - it means you must first innately know every detail of your fantasy world before you start writing about it. It means you must *get* to know the subject of your writing, not that you should give up if you don't know the intermolecular electrical wave patterns between Hydrogen atoms or something! You have to research it! It's writing about something you know very well which makes your emotions and fiction incredibly realistic. I love, love that you said this. I'm so happy someone else thinks like I do!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment! It's funny what you said about writing fantasy; I wanted to put something like that in my post but it didn't fit with the flow. You are exactly right--you don't have to have lived in an alternate dimension to write a fantasy novel, but you do have to be immersed in it if you ever expect your readers to believe what you write. Do you research and pull what you know about human nature into it.
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