Write What You Know? Yes & No

August 15, 2020 by Rebecca Forster in category Writing with 0 and 0

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Recently someone posed this question: is ‘write what you know’ still the best advice?

My answer is yes and no.

YES! Your life is full of emotions: joy, heartbreak, success, and failure. Just by living you have built a warehouse of emotional resources that you will gift to your characters. Even if you were a Disney princess you would have had to deal with the terror of wicked witches, the joy of true love, the hardship of living with five messy dwarfs or two evil stepsisters. That means you, as a writer, can draw on your emotional experience to give our characters depth and realism that will stay with them long after they close our books.

NO! Don’t limit your stories to what you know. If you’re anything like me daily life is pretty normal —dare I say boring? A writer’s job is to take something we recognize and turn it into something we don’t. A chance meeting becomes an epic romance, walking the dog and seeing a shooting star becomes a Sci Fi novel. Your imaginations should not be limited by the familiar. I write legal and police thrillers. I am not a cop or a lawyer, but I am is curious. I have a sincere fascination with the world of law enforcement. In order to write effectively about something I don’t know I research, I take classes, I talk to people in the profession. I will never be a cop or a lawyer, but I can write about their challenges because I take the time to learn about them. My love of the profession, translates into a love of the genre in which I write.

Marry what you do know with what you don’t, and you will create an exciting, genuine work of fiction that will leave your readers wanting more.

Author Bio

Rebecca Forster

Author Bio

She marketed a world-class spa when it was still called a gym, did business in China before there were western toilettes at the Great Wall and mucked around with the sheep to find out exactly how her client’s fine wool clothing was manufactured. Then Rebecca wrote her first book and found her passion. Now, over twenty-five books later, she is a USA Today and Amazon bestselling author and writes full-time, penning thrillers that explore the emotional impact of the justice system. She earned her B.A. at Loyola, Chicago and her MBA at Loyola, Los Angeles. Rebecca has taught the Business of Creativity at University of California Long Beach Writers Certificate Program, UCLA and UC Irvine extension. Married to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, she is the mother of two grown sons and spends her free time traveling, sewing, and playing tennis.

http://www.rebeccaforster.com

Rebecca Forster

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