Remember what I said the other day about how getting different experiences could be really useful for writing? That the more you experience, the more you can use?
It’s the same for knowledge. Who knows when that tiny tidbit of information might get you out of a tight plothole? Or even allow you to build something on it to make your story really work, really stand out and function healthily.
Most of us pick up these pearls of wisdom all the time, just by being human. Someone will say something on a chat show when you’re watching TV, or you’ll be reading a book and think ‘oh, that’s interesting!’ And your brain will squirrel it away like the efficient biological computer it is, ready to resurface when you least expect it.
I already knew what my character’s power was going to be – but why would it work like that? Turns out, I already knew the answer, from my lectures at university. I could supply the biological basis for it, and away we went. Not that I’ve actually written it into the novel, because their society doesn’t have our level of medical knowledge. They would have no idea what it meant. But I do, and it helps me to decide how it works in such a way that the character is much more believable, because I have set rules.
Similarly, I try to base all of my magic on genetics rather than random chance, because it gives everything a certain order to it that makes it more believable.
This applies to research you do for stories, too – don’t put it all in your story, but keep a lot of it running in the background, as it were, to keep everything ticking over smoothly. And for God’s sake don’t get rid of it – you never know when it might be useful in the future, either in a sequel or in another project.
The more you know, the less you have to work to find things you don’t know, or to fill in gaps with explanations, because they’re already at your fingertips. Awesome, huh?
No comments:
Post a Comment