What Do You Write About?
I recently read a blog by an author who was hedging on venturing into the world outside her familiar realm of prose. Write about what she knows…or write about what she doesn't know. That was her dilemma. She compared it to the deep end of the pool versus the shallow end.
So I pose this question to you…
What makes a better story?
Since I asked, I'll give you my answer–
I think the better story comes from writing what you're passionate about, what you love, AND even what you want to know. Sometimes the best stories come from authors writing about what they know. But if that were always the case, we wouldn't have science fiction, would we?
How many horror writers have actually experienced all that slashing? Most just reached into their soul and conjured something that had excited their imagination.
Nothing is a "cop-out" if your story is good. Whether we intend to or not, we all write about things taken from our own experiences…we just fictionalize them, enhance them, and include them somewhere in our writing. Some story lines come from things we read about or hear about. The rest we just make up and sensationalize.
Fiction writers get to lie for a living. That's the fun part.
So I say it doesn't matter if your swim in the shallow end with water-wings on or take a leap from the high-dive into the deep when you can't swim. If you write a good story, that's all that matters.
Chuck Barrett
