[musings] Inexperience and Writing
So... here's what I was talking about. These random weird thoughts I get.
You know, I find it funny, how in writing, they say one of the best things we can do is go with what we know. And generally, that's true. But it's also weird to see how some of the most common stuff in any and all writing are things we likely have no way of knowing anything about at all.
For instance? Fight scenes. In medieval literature, or a gritty modern story about gangs on the streets of New York, or even just me writing a fanfic for Tales of the Abyss... true, in the actual published world, authors probably do research, but for the general masses... how many of us have actually been in a fight, let alone a swordfight? And yet so many of us write them every day... well, maybe not every day, but you know what I mean. So often, we find ourselves writing about things that we have no way of knowing how realistically we're doing it.
Then again, RealityIsUnrealistic. Yay for TvTropes!
So why am I bringing this up? Because I noticed an odd duality about this very topic within myself the other day.
I have no problems - well, at least no major problems - writing fight scenes for multiple genres and fandoms. But when it comes to writing about a pregnant woman giving birth, I find myself balking like all hell. Why? I just find myself saying something like "I'm a virgin only child who's never been near a maternity ward, I have no idea what it's even like and therefore have no right in hell to be writing something like this."
Yet the most I've held is a foam sword (and probably was so bad with it I would have made Lord Wyldon from Tamora Pierce's "Protector of the Small" series cry), and the last time I hit someone, I was almost too young to remember it. And I have nowhere near this problem writing fight scenes.
It's just something weird I noticed. Yeah, probably not the kind of topic that everyone expected to see when they came here, but this IS why I made this journal - to post all these weird things that occupy my mind.
Anyway, back to Reaction! Writing Jade is fun. :D
You know, I find it funny, how in writing, they say one of the best things we can do is go with what we know. And generally, that's true. But it's also weird to see how some of the most common stuff in any and all writing are things we likely have no way of knowing anything about at all.
For instance? Fight scenes. In medieval literature, or a gritty modern story about gangs on the streets of New York, or even just me writing a fanfic for Tales of the Abyss... true, in the actual published world, authors probably do research, but for the general masses... how many of us have actually been in a fight, let alone a swordfight? And yet so many of us write them every day... well, maybe not every day, but you know what I mean. So often, we find ourselves writing about things that we have no way of knowing how realistically we're doing it.
Then again, RealityIsUnrealistic. Yay for TvTropes!
So why am I bringing this up? Because I noticed an odd duality about this very topic within myself the other day.
I have no problems - well, at least no major problems - writing fight scenes for multiple genres and fandoms. But when it comes to writing about a pregnant woman giving birth, I find myself balking like all hell. Why? I just find myself saying something like "I'm a virgin only child who's never been near a maternity ward, I have no idea what it's even like and therefore have no right in hell to be writing something like this."
Yet the most I've held is a foam sword (and probably was so bad with it I would have made Lord Wyldon from Tamora Pierce's "Protector of the Small" series cry), and the last time I hit someone, I was almost too young to remember it. And I have nowhere near this problem writing fight scenes.
It's just something weird I noticed. Yeah, probably not the kind of topic that everyone expected to see when they came here, but this IS why I made this journal - to post all these weird things that occupy my mind.
Anyway, back to Reaction! Writing Jade is fun. :D