Experience

Experience This can have two meanings, experience as a writer, or having experience in a topic. Obviously experience as an author hones your skills and makes you a better writer. What about experience in a topic? What does that give you? "Write about what you know." This advice is given so often, it is practically meaningless. But expressions become cliches because there is truth in them. Writing about topics, events, situations, places, etc., that you know gives authority to your writing, and an authenticity that is hard to create by imagination. You do not make the little mistakes that destroy your credibility when you are writing from experience. When you are writing about what you know, you can concentrate on the craft of writing, instead of having to learn a topic first. There can be so much involved in learning something: the language of a profession, or class, or area; the psychology of the people involved; the day to day activities, and on and on. Writing what you know frees you from having to think about that. It can make a good starting place--especially if you are on a deadline!

Observation Learning to observe the world closely is a very necessary tool for the writer. The more closely you have looked at a thing, a person, or a situation, the better you can describe it. Like first hand experience, observation gives your writing authenticity and authority. More, it gives your writing color. When you have described your character to clearly that your reader would know her walking down the street, then you have done your job. When you bring your magazine reader into the situation so he can understand what you are feeling by seeing the situation in crystal clarity in his own mind, you have done your job. When you create a fresh metaphor because you have observed something closely and thought about how it relates to something else, you have done your job. Writing clearly about what you have observed brings your own unique vision of the world to your reader. He sees, hears, smells, tastes and touches what you think is important about what is going on. So look closely at the world around you, and bring that observation to your reader.

Observation

Imagination

Imagination Imagination brings experience and observation to life. Without imagination, they are nothing but dry words on a page. Here's how Kris Kringle describes imagination in the 1947 version of Miracle on 34th Street: ""How would you like to be able to make snowballs in the summertime? Or drive a great big bus right down 5th Avenue? How would you like to have a ship all to yourself that makes daily trips to China? And Australia? How would you like to be the Statue of Liberty in the morning, and in the afternoon fly south with a flock of geese? It's fairly simple. Of course it takes practice." Of course it takes practice! Imagination can take the commonplace and create something very uncommon out of it. It can encourage the reader to look at things a new way, or to look beyond the here and now, or from a point of view quite alien to her. Imagination finds the greater meaning in the day to day. It can set you and your reader free. As Willy Wonka sang in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: "There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there you'll be free, if you truly wish to be."

Experience, observation, and imagination are three important skills in a writer's repertoire. Begin with experience, observe your topic or characters closely, and use imagination to bring out the meaning. Use them as a way to organize your thoughts, or as a quick outline. You may find your words coming to life as never before.

"You may find your words coming to life as never before."

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