Please give my your opinion...

[Haole Girl]

Does a writer need to experience something, first hand, to write about it?

I think not.

[Haole Girl]

1. Whoops... subject should have read "Please give me your opinion..."

Sorry about that.

:blush:

[jotsy]

2. Welcome home!

Did you find anything in the fridge?

Having experience helps I guess, though I don't see it as a prerequisite. I suppose it would depend on the material, I'd expect expertise to be part of the gig writing for a medical journal or something like it.

[Haole Girl]

4. lol! Yes, well sort of...

I'm eating a box of pop-tarts & still waiting to become sleepy. Thanks, btw. :-)

[nuxvomica]

3. Of course not

But I'm beginning to think there are no hard and fast rules about writing except do it well and with authority.

[Haole Girl]

5. If I remember, wasn't Ralph Waldo Emerson trying to explain this concept...

i.e., "Travel is a fool's paradise"?

:shrug:

[SheilaT]

6. If that were the case,

most fiction could not be written.

[valerief]

11. Oops, I posted my response #10 before I read yours. nt

[Orrex]

7. The only ones who say that are people who have interesting experiences but don't know how to write

A broad background of experience can greatly inform one's writing and can give you valuable first-hand experience from which to draw while writing, but such a background is in no way required.

In contrast, a lot of people with experience are nonetheless terrible (though successful) writers. I'm looking at you, Tom Clancy!

[Ozymanithrax]

8. No.

You can write about death convincingly having never died.

When someone tells you "write what you know" they don't mean that you have to have experienced those things, just that you must have experineced something.

[frogmarch]

9. Sometimes it helps.

When I was writing a story in which one of characters builds a fire by using clear ice as a sunlight magnifier, I googled ice magnify sun fire and found instructions for how to do it. After a few tries, I successfully made a small fire using ice as a magnifying glass. I then was able to write from experience.

If I want to describe what it feels like to a story character to walk through gritty mud barefooted, or try to put on clothing while wet and shivering, I'll give myself those experiences, even if I've already experienced them many times. When experiencing them for a story I'm writing, I notice new things about them. While walking through gritty mud barefooted for a story I was writing, I paid attention to not only how it felt to have mud squishing up between my toes and how the mud smelled, but to the various kinds of sounds my feet made in the mud.

You don't have to travel the world to be able to write from experience. :-)

[supernova]

13. Quite possibly the coolest thing

I will learn today. Making fire from ice turned magnifying glass.

:crazy:

[valerief]

10. If that were the case, there'd be no horror, fantasy, sci-fi, or bizarro fiction. nt

[Ozymanithrax]

12. My first published short story was Resurrection Man...

about one of the men in the 1800's who robbed graves and sold the bodies to Medical schools. I have never in my life robbed a grave nor sold a body.

In another Published Story, "Walking the Blade Road" the character faced a God in combat. Haven't done that, either.

On the other hand, I've written about combat and based it solidly on Vietnam.

No, you do not have to experience something to write about it. This is true with contemporary fiction or any other genre. You do need to do research and extrapolate from your own feelings and experiences.

Writing what you know doesn't mean you actually had to do those things. Just do your homework.

At a writer's conference, I attended a lecture by a writer who faced a problem. He was heterosexual and was writing about love between two men. He extrapolated from his own experiences with first love, realizing that those feelings are similar even if the genders were different. He then had a gay friend read those sections to make sure that he didn't make any glaring errors.

What do you want to write about.

[Haole Girl]

14. I asked the question because someone was claiming....

a person has to experience something, first hand, to truly understand it (or write about it). Just curious what DUers in the Writing Group thought. :hi:

[Ozymanithrax]

15. They are repeating the truism "Write what you know."

Which should not be taken literally. I read a lot of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I right that because I know and understand that genre. Though I have started reading some literary novels, I don't have a grasp of that market, so I am not ready to write that.

Good luck with whatever you wright.