Lies you Believe

Love the blog. Excited to follow it. Thanks for sharing!

While I disagree slightly with the interpretation of "write what you know," the rest of the post is spot-on.

Michelle Davidson Argyle said:

...use lay instead of lie if you're talking about an object and not a person. Grammar stuff. Those are rules.

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Of course, they could be telling you a lie and sneakily call it "Grammar Stuff".

Otherwise, yeah, that needs to be said now and then.

I thought it was well know that writers are liars. We write about all kinds of things we don't know about or things we haven't done.

Nice!

#4 (if you are bored while writing the reader will be by reading) is a good confidence booster. I get numb to my own writing if I read it too much. That's different than having boring writing.

#5 (you have to hook on the first line). I'm glad someone finally said this. Are most readers REALLY that picky they won't give a book more than a 25 (or even 250) word chance? There are some that picky, but I can't imagine it's the rule.

It's a good post. But it's also good to remember that, in most cases, if those "lies," help you, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. (I like my first sentence to hook you and to know my themes before I start, tyvm.)

When anyone says not to write what you know, they have no clue what write what you know means. The writer of that blog definitely has no clue, and the biggest lie on there is that she doesn't write what she knows.

I haven't looked at Literary Lab in a while. Their new blog layout is so much better than the old one.

Nice blog post. Agree with it all, even number one to the extent "what you know" means you are writing about it, so you must know enough to write about it.

Susan Littlefield said:

Nice blog post. Agree with it all, even number one to the extent "what you know" means you are writing about it, so you must know enough to write about it.

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Agreed, and it's worth mentioning the blog is co-authored by three writers (two male, one female), so it's not necessarily a "she" behind these statements. Looks like more of a group effort.
http://literarylab.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html

Jamesaritchie said:

When anyone says not to write what you know, they have no clue what write what you know means. The writer of that blog definitely has no clue, and the biggest lie on there is that she doesn't write what she knows.

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Unfortunately,there are some out there who say to write what you know, and still have no clue what it means. A poster on another forum once told someone that it meant a character couldn't have a job, or other experience, the writer hadn't done before! Because no amount of research could bring that experience to 'vivid life' for the reader.

As a newcommer to writing, I enjoyed this Thanks for sharing, I will be checking in on this blog for sure.

Dragon Lady said:

Unfortunately,there are some out there who say to write what you know, and still have no clue what it means. A poster on another forum once told someone that it meant a character couldn't have a job, or other experience, the writer hadn't done before! Because no amount of research could bring that experience to 'vivid life' for the reader.

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Well, there goes the entire SFF genre then...

I have always taken "Write what you know" to mean "Write what you know about people, and how they behave". It doesn't mean confine your writing to autobiographical experience. If it did, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Stephen Crane, Lord Dunsany, Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Theodore Sturgeon, A.E. Van Vogt, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rex Stout, Edgar Allan Poe . . . would all be unheard of.

Great post! Thanks! I'll follow the blog now even though I'm awful at keeping up with all the blogs I follow...and writing my own...

Your first sentence must hook the reader? I've never heard that one before. Maybe the first sentence must hook an agent or editor, but readers are generally a little cooler than that. I'm a reader and I've never required a first-sentence hook. I give a book 100 pages or so. Somewhere in there, I've gotta get hooked, but not in the first sentence.

My own guides:

I always try to hook on the first sentence. In fiction, every word must count.

Write what you know about the human experience. Everything else you can get from research.

Know your grammar so you can make intelligent choices with automated spelling/grammar checks.

..

The first sentence should be good enough to compel the reader to read the second one.

The second one should be good enough to compel the reader to read the third.

The third one should be good enough to . . . . .