For all you know
(Paid post) Many of us have heard the advice to "write what we know", but we can go deeper than that, with some help from Bill Manhire.
When I wrote my post about notable writers from Aotearoa New Zealand, I mentioned a piece of writing wisdom from Bill Manhire which has stuck with me since the first time I heard it from one of my lecturers during my time studying the Master of Writing. This advice is a take on the old chestnut to "write what you know", which has been irking writers of fiction, especially sci-fi and fantasy, for god knows how long. Manhire's version is a two-step process that grasps the goal of fiction-writing much more firmly:
- Write what you know, and
- Write what you don't know.
Let's explore what it means to write what you know and what you don't, and how that looks in practice.