Quote:
Originally Posted by EileenG
Don't make up a lot of crap and expect people to buy it.
If you have a specific expertise in something, use that to give your book realism. If you are writing about something you don't know about, do the damn research.
As an example: I know about horses. If I'm writing a scene with horses, I know exactly what the horse can do, how it moves, how it smells, how it will react in verious situations. I don't have to lecture the reader about horses, it's obvious.
On the other hand, I don't drive and know nothing about car engines. If I attempted to write a scene with a car engine, it's likely to be "he connected the shiny thing to the round thing and twiddled a knobbly thing". So my choice is either not writing scenes that involve more driving than "He ignored the red light as he raced after the grey car" or I can get an expert to supervise my technical car scenes.
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I really enjoyed this response. It seems to me then that writing what you know can also be writing your ignorance on a topic through the eyes of a character as ignorant about it as you are. In that case: ["He connected the shiny thing tothe round thing and twiddled a knobbly thing." Alyssa sighed; she was hopelessly lost.] a writer like you (or pretty much me too for as little as I know about what actually makes a car work) is writing what they know and adding a real genuiness to the scene. This is good stuff. Thank you for the teaching!!!!