Last night my family and I spent the night in a cabin in the woods. I wrote a little bit about the cabin on my website<\/a>. This entry isn’t about the cabin. Not exactly, anyway. It’s about one of the most misunderstood pieces of writing advice: “Write what you know.”<\/p>\n

This sage piece of writing advice has been attributed to Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, and several other classic authors. Taken at face value, it’s not very helpful. I suspect Tolkien never met a Hobbit, nor has Stephen King ever encountered a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury. If authors literally only wrote about things they knew about, there would be very few novels featuring space travel and supernatural encounters.<\/p>\n

The true intent behind the advice is that authors should write about emotions they know. Then again, I think that’s what it means. If you Google what does ‘write what you know’ really mean?<\/a> you’ll get 369,000 results. Take your pick.<\/p>\n

One of the things “Write what you mean” means to me is that the people, places, and things in your stories should seem real. Whether you’re writing about a can opener or a time machine, your reader should believe that in the universe your story takes place in, that items exists. Obviously an author has to put a lot more work into describing a time machine to his readers than a can opener, but both are equally important when selling the reality an author builds to his or her readers.<\/p>\n

For the past two days I spent a lot of time investigating our cabin, just looking at things. I looked at the layout of the cabin, its decor, and the decorations. At some point, I’m sure I’ll need a cabin in one of my stories. This one might just fit the bill. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night my family and I spent the night in a cabin in the woods. I wrote a little bit about the cabin on my website. This entry isn’t about the cabin. Not exactly, anyway. It’s about one of the most misunderstood pieces of writing advice: “Write what you know.” This sage piece of writing advice has been attributed to Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, and several other classic authors. Taken at face value, it’s not very helpful. I suspect Tolkien never met a Hobbit, nor has Stephen King ever encountered a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury. If authors literally only wrote… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9251,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/9251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}