{"id":1293,"date":"2021-02-10T07:59:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T12:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=1293"},"modified":"2021-02-10T07:59:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T12:59:00","slug":"writers-bravely-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/10\/writers-bravely-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Writers Bravely Go"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On March 12, 2020, Kit Kat Kitty wrote, Does anyone have any advice on how to write about things you don\u2019t know? I know as writers we\u2019re always told to write what we know, but sometimes I wonder. If I were to try to write a story about two people falling in love, could I do it? I\u2019ve never fallen in love, so does that mean I can\u2019t write about that? (I\u2019ve liked people a lot before, and I\u2019ve always been loved by my friends and family and seen couples in love, so would that count?) If I haven\u2019t experienced something (or at least something very close to it) can I still write about it? Should I? Or is it about relating things we have experienced to things we haven\u2019t experienced?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t worry so much about faeries or dragons or vampires, because those things aren\u2019t real. But I do worry about emotions or experiences. Can I write about a character who\u2019s going through trauma I\u2019ve never had to deal with without getting it wrong or offending someone?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m just worried because that seems to be a mental block for me whenever I have an idea. I always tell myself if I haven\u2019t experienced it (or something very close) I can\u2019t write about it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few of you weighed in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa Mead: I\u2019d say go ahead and try! Even if you get it wrong at first, you\u2019ll get better with practice + experience.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

future_famous_author: Speaking of love, I wrote a whole book about love and I\u2019ve never been in love! The love was hardly a subplot, either, it was a huge part of the plot! And if all we did was write about things that we had experienced, don\u2019t you think that our stories and books and poems and movies would all start to get boring? All you have to do is try and picture yourself in that character\u2019s shoes, whether those shoes walk through hard times or good times, and whether or not those shoes would actually fit you. It can be hard sometimes for us writers to make things up- not just a character, but emotions and feelings. It definitely takes practice to conjure up emotions that you\u2019ve never felt and somehow project them onto a page, but it almost has to happen. Female authors oftentimes write about male characters, and thoughts and feelings that they have that the female author has probably never had herself, and vice versa. And in a classic, Little Women, which has been made into tons and tons of movies, the main character falls in love and gets married, whereas the author, whom the character was based off of, never got married herself. And I\u2019m sure that Gail has written emotions that she never actually experienced herself!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christie V Powell: Humans are amazing. Our emotions don\u2019t know the difference between real and imaginary\u2013that\u2019s why stories exist. Have you read books or seen movies where you felt the connection between two characters? Then, to your brain, you have experienced it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it\u2019s a specific trauma that worries you, asking someone you trust who has gone through it is always a good move. If meeting in person doesn\u2019t work, try social media, or even reading a memoir or article they\u2019ve written.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My goodness! It\u2019s almost a whole year since you, Kit Kat Kitty, asked your question, and you may have fallen in love three or more times since then!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

future famous author, you\u2019re right. I have never looked at someone\u2019s earlobe and wanted to eat it! More seriously, I haven\u2019t been in the terrible circumstances I thrust my characters into. I don\u2019t know how I\u2019d react.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019m with Christie V Powell that humans are amazing in our willingness to merge with imaginary beings of all sorts. And writers are an amazing-plus subset of humanity, gifted with the power to create the characters that readers can inhabit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a whim, I just googled \u201cHow does it feel to fall in love?\u201d and many articles and entries popped up, which you and other writers may find helpful. (I haven\u2019t clicked on them.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m revising my Trojan War book for my editor, which means that the heaviest lifting is done and I\u2019m thinking about my next project, which will probably be a take on another fairy tale. In the way I\u2019m approaching this fairy tale, one of the main characters is super selfish, bordering, in my opinion, on narcissism. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m much of a narcissist myself, and, luckily, I haven\u2019t known anyone else I\u2019d peg that way. But that isn\u2019t a reason not to write this character!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I did a lot of googling on narcissism, especially on how to stop being narcissistic, which seems to be very difficult. Fascinating! I don\u2019t know how much I\u2019ll use, but what I read gave me a better idea about how to approach the character and how to move him through my plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I research constantly, even for fantasy. I\u2019ve fallen in love, but I may go back and read my Google entries on the topic. Research helps me feel grounded and stokes my imagination because the real world is full of surprises. The way I fall in love is probably different from the way other people do, and my characters all have their own ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Christie V Powell suggests, we can ask real people about what falling in love was like for them. We can ask people who seem to be happy together and (tactfully) people who seem anything but. How did it start? Slow or fast? What did they think and feel? What was the physical reaction? Chills? Heat? Trembling? Tingling? I bet everyone will have a different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s linger on that. Won\u2019t a shy person and an exuberant person fall in love differently? Writers on the blog often talk about backstory. Won\u2019t people\u2019s backstories affect how they fall in love? We can\u2019t have all the experiences our characters have. We have to make it up. No other option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, just saying, if my characters could come to life, I\u2019m certain they\u2019d tell me I got things wrong. The nice ones would thank me for trying. I don\u2019t know what the villains would do!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I agree with Kit Kat Kitty that we expand from what we do know to what we don\u2019t. We know about forming friendships, about liking and even loving friends, about being loved. I\u2019ve never been hungry for an earlobe, but when I\u2019m ravenous, the sight of a raw chicken about to go into the oven can be almost unbearable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for offending people, I\u2019d say no one has the right to be offended. You\u2019re not writing about them. They\u2019re not experts in how your characters fall in love! You and your characters are the only experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are four prompts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 A thousand-year-old elf falls in love with a nine-hundred-year-old dragon. Write their meeting and how the love develops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The roots of two trees come together deliberately in an embrace. Write how that happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 A shy person and an exuberant person do fall in love. Write their first meeting. Continue with the progression of their romance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 After Snow White wakes up, she goes with the prince to his castle where they get married though they don\u2019t know each other at all. Using the original Grimm story, write your version and make the romance real. Remember that she has quite a backstory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 12, 2020, Kit Kat Kitty wrote, Does anyone have any advice on how to write about things you don\u2019t know? I know as writers we\u2019re always told to write what we know, but sometimes I wonder. If I were to try to write a story about two people falling in love, could I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[259,110],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1293"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1298,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions\/1298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}