I've very rarely received any advice on writing. The classic one "write what you know" is not bad advice it's only misunderstood. Writing what you know doesn't exclude fantasy. A good writer, say Alan Moore for instance, is able to concoct fantasies which are often filled with tremendous detail and real world references to known things. Classic fairy stories are usually structured around elements familiar to the people who created and passed on those stories. For instance the Grimm Brothers lived in the area now called Germany but in their time the area had for centuries been known as The Holy Roman Empire and was composed of many little kingdoms and principalities, often with castles, village blacksmiths and roving mountebanks. So the Grimms were collecting stories of characters and beliefs and fantastical fears which were known to them from the lives and beliefs of people in the real world. When 21st Century writers turn to fantasy they too often treat it as a "genre" which has to be produced according to a formula which includes recreating the world of the old Holy Roman Empire via Walt Disney and then retro-fitted with the blood and gore that Walt left out. We would get a better story from something more original. Something from the writer's own experience translated into fiction.
I love all these. I see similar bad advice being doled out in Facebook writing groups as if one size really does fit all.
Take the one word dictum, ‘Plan’, quoted here. I’ve done a ton of (well, 60) non-fiction books with various publishers and some of them were very closely planned. Guidebooks, for example, tend to follow a template. I’ve also done a bunch of camera manuals which the publisher would only greenlight once I’d given them a page by page plan.
The point of this is to show that I am no stranger to close planning. However all attempts to carry this across to fiction were abject failures. I have had to accept that in this context I am an irredeemable pantser. And autocorrect obviously approves as it wants to change it to ‘panther’.
I like Ursula K. Le Guin on "Write what you know":
"As for “Write what you know,” I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things."
From her essay 'On Rules of Writing, or, Riffing on Rechy'.
I've very rarely received any advice on writing. The classic one "write what you know" is not bad advice it's only misunderstood. Writing what you know doesn't exclude fantasy. A good writer, say Alan Moore for instance, is able to concoct fantasies which are often filled with tremendous detail and real world references to known things. Classic fairy stories are usually structured around elements familiar to the people who created and passed on those stories. For instance the Grimm Brothers lived in the area now called Germany but in their time the area had for centuries been known as The Holy Roman Empire and was composed of many little kingdoms and principalities, often with castles, village blacksmiths and roving mountebanks. So the Grimms were collecting stories of characters and beliefs and fantastical fears which were known to them from the lives and beliefs of people in the real world. When 21st Century writers turn to fantasy they too often treat it as a "genre" which has to be produced according to a formula which includes recreating the world of the old Holy Roman Empire via Walt Disney and then retro-fitted with the blood and gore that Walt left out. We would get a better story from something more original. Something from the writer's own experience translated into fiction.
Just brilliant!
I love all these. I see similar bad advice being doled out in Facebook writing groups as if one size really does fit all.
Take the one word dictum, ‘Plan’, quoted here. I’ve done a ton of (well, 60) non-fiction books with various publishers and some of them were very closely planned. Guidebooks, for example, tend to follow a template. I’ve also done a bunch of camera manuals which the publisher would only greenlight once I’d given them a page by page plan.
The point of this is to show that I am no stranger to close planning. However all attempts to carry this across to fiction were abject failures. I have had to accept that in this context I am an irredeemable pantser. And autocorrect obviously approves as it wants to change it to ‘panther’.
I like Ursula K. Le Guin on "Write what you know":
"As for “Write what you know,” I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things."
From her essay 'On Rules of Writing, or, Riffing on Rechy'.