“Write what you know” is a pretty standard piece of advice given to writers when they are first starting out but the book I am working to get published is not “what I know”. It involves a fantasy land with magic and faeries and one character who has lived for over a thousand years – none of which I have ever experienced and will never experience in, but surely if everyone only wrote what they knew then there would be no fantasy stories?
While the story I am writing is very much a fantasy, it could still be classed as what I know, indeed everything I write can be classed as what I know, why? Because it came from my head.
I may never have seen a faerie or met anyone over a thousand years old, but the core elements of my story are death, family and friendship all of which I do know about – even if I am using a fantasy world with magic to talk about them that doesn’t mean I don’t know about them so by extension I know about faeries because they are related to the topics I do know about.
All stories that a writer writes are going to have an element that they know, and the writer will build on that element with other things like magic or aliens – besides if you do want to write about something that you don’t know there’s always google.
ChristyESWriter 