Six Snarky Strategies to Turn Small Town BS Into Fiction Brilliance

By Bonnie Randall 

Part of the How They Do It Series 

JH: Write what you know is a staple of fiction. Bonnie Randall takes her monthly place at the podium today to share tips on what she knows about a small town--and how you can turn it into story gold.

*Caution: this article does not look fondly—ala’ John Cougar Mellencamp—at ‘small towns’*

Yesterday, a reader halfway through my debut novel, Divinity & The Python, messaged me to say she’d met someone from the small town where I used to live. “I know Bonnie Randall,” this person confided. “And what’s more, I know that book of hers is about real people.”

Now, if I force myself to be completely gracious (and that’s a stretch), then perhaps I can accept that non-writers sincerely cannot fathom an imagination that is capable of constructing entire worlds—including people—wholly drawn from the pixie dust we writers call Inspiration and Creativity.

Then again, being thoroughly ungracious, I took that comment and came up with these:

The Misunderstanding of Write What You Know

By Harrison Demchick, @HDemchick

Part of The Writer's Life Series

JH: Some writing advice has been around a long, long time, and write what you know is one of them. Harrison Demchick returns to the lecture hall today to share thoughts on how to make write what ypu know work for you.

Harrison Demchick came up as a book editor in the world of small press publishing, working along the way on more than seventy published novels and memoirs, several of which have been optioned for film. An expert in manuscripts as diverse as women’s fiction, literary fiction, mystery, young adult, science-fiction, fantasy, memoir, and everything in-between, Harrison is known for quite possibly the most detailed and informative editorial letters in the industry—if not the entire universe.

Harrison is also an award-winning screenwriter whose first feature film, Ape Canyon, is currently in post-production. He’s the author of literary horror novel The Listeners (Bancroft Press, 2012), and short stories “Magicland” and “The Bead” appear, respectively, in literary magazines Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism (January 2019) and The Hunger (Winter 2019). He’s currently accepting new clients for book editing in fiction and memoir at the Writer’s Ally.

Take it away Harrison...

What “Write What You Know” Really Means

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 

The week’s Refresher Friday takes a heavily update look at writing what you know. Enjoy!

Writers hear it all the time: Write what you know.

Good advice, but a little more information on what that means might be nice, right? Does this mean if you're a graphic designer, you should write about graphic designers? Doctors should write about doctors? Third-grade teachers should write about third-grade teachers?

Yes and no.