Writing outside of your experience

Writing fiction is sometimes easy. When you write what you know (which is what most suggest that you do), you have the ability to understand what you are putting on the page so that it is believable. This is important, of course. The worst thing that you can do as an author is to break the reader’s suspension of disbelief. Doing so breaks the spell you have over their imagination and returns them to the world they want to escape from.

How then do you write something you don’t know? There are thousands of stories that have been written that take place in universes that don’t exist. Some of them cannot possibly exist with the rules that our universe is ruled by. Not all of those stories are bad. Many are good, and some are outright masterpieces.

There are a few options, of course. There is research. There is plagiarism, and there is imagination. Any of those three might work.

Plagiarism (or, if you prefer, homage) is the easiest of the three. Taking a story written by someone else and adapting it so that it is something else has been done for as long as there have been stories. There is, as they say, nothing new under the sun.

When done poorly it is theft, but when done well it is a good story. Taking the Odyssey and adapting it to the depression-era south, or adapting Macbeth to feudal Japan has left us with enjoyable stories. It can also lead to cliche and boring stories.

Research  is almost as easy, but far more time consuming. Burying your nose in reference books (or Wikipedia) is a good way to learn more about what you want to write about. Even a little bit of research can lend a story a kernel of truth that encourages your reader to invest themselves in the story you are telling.

Even more strenuous research can yield even better results. Doing primary research and becoming an expert on a topic makes your story even more convincing. The danger of course is that you mistake research for storytelling. There is a difference between a term paper and a story. Sometimes the line is rather fine between the two, but there is a difference.

The last is the most difficult. Imagination takes talent, and consideration. Putting yourself into an experience that you have never been in, and then writing a story the way you imagine it to be is the most basic and most difficult aspect to writing.

It’s all to easy to assume things would go the way you assume them to go. Arguably imagination alone cannot create a decent story. There must be research or experience to temper that imagination into a story believeable by others.

Still, I think some might have managed it. There are some stories that are beyond anyone’s experience. Those completely fantastic stories rely mostly on the imagination of the writer. There should be at least some research to provide details, since those details allow the reader a sort of mental foothold. Most of the real work however will land squarely on the ability of the writer to translate something unknowable into an experience for others.

I have been asked to write something I am not comfortable writing before. I have been tasked with stretching my imagination outside of my experience to create an interesting tale. I only hope that using these tools I have been up to the task.