It is something I hear often when it comes to choosing a theme for your story or your novel. Write about the things you know. It almost sounds like a rule of thumb.
What is your opinion on this ? Actually, I completely disagree. If I had to write only about the things I know, my writing would be reduced to the account of my tedious life, shared between college, my stressful job and my horrendous housemates. A novel is supposed to be an exciting and interesting read and I don't want to bore anyone with my daily rantings. Plus, I already do that on my other LJ and communities. That must be why most of the people I know who are into writing choose to tell about their life or their friends or their travelling experiences - about "true-to-life" stuff.
Plus, how can you be sure you really know about something ? I think I'm well-educated, I beat my relatives at Trivial Pursuit, I read a lot, I've quite a good memory but there's no field I think I really know well about. I know quite a lot of things but mostly I've just skimmed the surface.
Also, I'm interested in writing speculative fiction on the one hand, and I'm an eager learner on the other. So how can you write about what you know if your novel is set on a different planet or a medieval-like fictionnal country ? Does anyone know about dragons or life in the 31st century ? No one I know has lived on Mars or the Middle Ages but informations on these topics can be found everywhere and the Internet has made things a lot easier, thanks to Google and Wikipedia.
And as a former RPG player, I like using novel projects to immerse myself in a character that's different from me and into a world different from the one I'm living in. I may be a woman, shy and gentle but what would keep me from choosing a tough ruthless guy as main character for a novel ? I also know how much credibility is important in a novel (even a fantasy one) and that means a huge amount of research and observarions, but that is what makes the noveling experience more challenging and exciting to my eyes.
- Laboratory:my bedroom
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thoughtful - Music:David Arkenstone - Road to the Sea
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creativewriter (first posted in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jpsorrow) and decided to give a think about it.How much character description do you like? Do you prefer an author to keep things rather vague so you can form your own mental pictures, or do you like a clear picture of the people in the book?
I'm not too keen on very detailed descriptions. I think it's better if the author leaves a little to the reader's imagination.
Generally, I prefer the author to give the essential about the character's appearance, even if it's not a lot. I've read books where the author gives no description or very little information about the characters' appearance. For example, in His Dark Materials, all we know about Lyra's general appearance is that she has blonde hair. But that's OK for me, as the author gives more about her personality.
It also depends on the genre of the book. Descriptions are more than necessary in fantasy and sci-fi since they are about things that normally do not exist in our world. I appreciate a very clear description if the character is from a race created by the author. If the character is human-like, I'll be happy just with the features that jump to the eye or that give you an idea about the character's personnality or occupation or origin.
One thing I like too about descriptions is when the author gives the clues about the character's appearance as you go along rather than giving it all in one block. Actually, it depends on how the author fits it in the story and writing the description in one block is OK as long as it's not long and goes in the narration, instead of breaking it. For example, the narrator stops to contemplate another character and delight at her beauty, and there comes a wee one-block description...
Well, I hope that makes sense. That's quite a tough point to get across.
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tired - Music:Faith & The Muse - Through The Pale Door
