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Serious question, why does everyone act like 'write what you know' is the only rule?
I was reading an old interview with a sci-fi author and they said they spent 6 months researching deep-sea geology just for one chapter. That blew my mind, because it means 'write what you know' is really 'learn what you need to write'. Who else has a prompt that forces you to research something totally random?
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parker_patel8420d ago
Okay but "research is just part of the job" feels like a huge oversimplification. Sometimes you don't know what you need to learn until you're already writing, and that can stop a story dead. The idea that you can just learn anything as you go sets people up to fail when they hit a topic that's too complex. I actually agree with @the_riley that you should write the story, but you can't just research your way into every situation convincingly. There's a real value in starting from a place of genuine knowledge, because that foundation makes the extra research actually stick. Otherwise you're just gluing facts onto a hollow frame and readers can tell.
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