RWT: On Writing What You DON'T Know

Nobody knows everything, right? Okay, well my mother does, but aside from that, the scale balancing out the information we DO know and the information we DON'T know is heavily tipped toward the DON'T side.

One overused piece of advice I always seem to hear and read about is to write what you know.

Soooo that's great and all. But isn't it seriously limiting to think this way?

Now don't get me wrong. I hear what this advice is trying to say about focusing on your own life experience and interests. For example, don't try to write a story centered on Fine Art when the only thing you know about art is that Picasso cut off his ear or something (that was actually Vincent van Gogh). So yes, I'd say if you're a beginning writer, it's fine to focus on what you know.

But on the other hand, like I said, that advice can be limiting. You have to understand that it doesn't mean write ONLY what you know. In fact, one of my favorite things to do while working on a writing project is RESEARCH! (Yes, I'm a nerd and proud of it)

Some well-placed research can do a lot for your story. If it's done right, it can add important details that help draw the reader in. Or, on a larger scale, it can open up whole new avenues of content for a story you just have the beginnings of an idea for.

Example time!

Let's say you love horses, and you want to write a children's fantasy book about horses who can fly. You grew up with horses, so you think you have everything down, but just in case, you decide to research mythology/history/whatever on horses that can fly. While scrolling through the internet, you are introduced to unicorns, pegasus, alicorns, and hippogriffs (Yes, I'm counting hippogriffs as horses. Sue me). Now instead of just writing a fantasy book about a little girl who finds out one of the horses on her mother's ranch can fly, you've got the research to expand that story into a war between the unicorns and pegasus, where only your character (who happens to be the proud owner of the last living alicorn) can unite the clans and end the bloodshed.

Wow. I really got into that for a second. I realize now that it's unrealistic for someone interested in fantasy to not already know about unicorns and need to research them, but I think you get the idea.

On a smaller scale, in terms of researching for the sake of adding detail, there's no harm in gathering information to support your story and give it depth, or in fact-checking what you think you know.

Another example? Okay!

I'll take this example from my own writing and keep up the theme in this post of talking about flight. Because seriously, who doesn't love magical flight?

I pretty much knew from the get go that one of my stories was going to be about a girl with wings. Not butterfly wings. Not dragonfly wings. But big, awesome, bird wings.

So I started writing, added some other characters, got a plot together, bla bla bla, and got to a point in the story where I needed to explain how she could fly. At first I was just going to go with, it's magic of course! I realized pretty quickly how lame and unsatisfying that was. I knew I wouldn't be happy with that explanation as a reader, so the readers of my story (hopefully I have actual readers someday) probably wouldn't like it either.

Next step, the internet. Yes. I started researching, and to put it simply, my mind was blown. What started as a simple Google search to try and figure out how big this girl's wings would need to be to get her body of the ground, turned into a weeks long research project that sent me down rabbit holes I didn't even know existed!

I learned why birds can't fly upside down, why they have hollow bones, and why it hurts when you pull out one of their feathers. I found out how baby birds learn to fly, how birds of prey use wind currents, and how birds of all shapes and sizes steer, control their speed, take off, land, hunt, sleep, agh! It was endless information and endlessly amazing! The whole time I just kept thinking This is gold! How can I incorporate it into my story?!

Fun fact, did you know some birds can do this thing called whiffling. They use it when they want to land quickly, and it basically means they turn UPSIDE DOWN when they're hurtling toward the ground at breakneck speed, then right themselves just before landing. SO COOL.

Anyway, now instead of some lame, one-sentence explanation for how my character could fly, I was able to add in whole chapters describing not only how she was able to fly, but how she learned to fly in the first place.

Imagine if you woke up one day and had a full set of bird wings. You'd want to learn to fly of course, but who in the heck was supposed to teach you? It's not like anyone else has wings, and you can't exactly talk to birds. So how do you learn?

Well that was an adventure I got to take with my winged character. Armed with my new research, I was able to write some awesome scenes showing her earliest attempts at flight, her mistakes, her progress, and explain how it all worked in a way that was easy to follow along with. Where before I left my reader feeling disappointed and out of the loop, they could now see the layers of information supporting all my character's flight-related decisions, actions, and consequences!

So don't be afraid to write what you DON'T know. It can be fun and exciting to gather new information, and it certainly adds depth to your story!

What do you guys think? Do you wholeheartedly support the write what you know advice, or am I on the right track here? Let me know in the comments!