Did the Teachers Have It Right

So this is my first time on Nano and I was wanting some advice. I was always told the best way to write is to write what you know. This is why I'm having a hard time choosing between two of my novel ideas.
I have always wanted to explore the idea of what a person experiences during a coma. Everybody makes it seem like they go to sleep and wake up years later with no memory of the time in between. So my first novel idea is about a fantastic land where a group of teens travel to after a horrific accident. This is the land where their minds are protected while their bodies recover. My only problem with this novel is that it seems a bit childish to me. My plot ideas are a bit Disney and I don't know how to make them a little darker to give my story emotion and depth.
My second novel idea is actually based off an experience I had as a freshman in highschool. My protagonist is a young girl who is very shy but very talented and wants to show all the bullies at her school just how amazing she is by auditioning for the winter musical.
So heres my dilema do I write the story I love or the story I lived?

Which one do you get more excited about? That's the one you'll probably have the most ideas for, and the one you are most likely to be able to harness the initial excitement and push it through to the end of the month.

Write the story you love, whether it's something you know or not.

An interesting article on NOT limiting yourself to what you know: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/08/don-rsquo-t-write-what-you-know/8576/

Write what you love.

You know how chocolate tastes, the feel of cold water on a hot summer's day, the smell of cut grass, etc. Use that to make it real.

But I'm going out on a limb here and saying the authors didn't murder people, travel back in time, or fly on broomsticks. They knew about incredible rage, technology/history, air whooshing by your face and a sense of excitement.

Have I made it any clearer?

The story you love. Always, the story you love.

For what it's worth, I have never been a teenage girl, never lived in Maine, and never found three angels in the middle of the forest.

I think writing what you know helps when you start out, but the most important thing is to write what you love. In almost anything you write, there can be something you know, whether it's an emotion you've felt or a character you can relate to. Don't worry about writing something semi autobiographical, just write whatever you feel excited about.

Take the risk, I say. You already know what happens in the latter one because it's based on you. Try being creative and navigating yourself through the realms of creativity and the unexplored. It also seems like, since you've provided much more detail about the former option, you must be trying to give us more insight on that one. Don't be afraid if your plot is too childish. Some of the best YA stories out there aren't dark at all. But, you can easily make it more dark since you are creating your own world from scratch.

I had a hard time with that for the longest time. When I was in grade 6, I had to write a story for an assignment. And the teacher pretty much drilled it into our heads that we were supposed to WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW. Which is all well and good, except being a 12 year old who’d led a very sheltered life, and who’s only adventure had been what came from between the pages of books, I really hadn’t experienced very much that was worth writing about. So I struggled with that for a long time until I learned something really important.

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW is a very true assessment of what a writer needs to do. However, teachers tend to take it too literally.

I have a friend who wants to write a short story. And she had absolutely no idea what to write. She’s a stay at home mom with a whole bunch of kids ranging in ages 2-16. Stuck with the old WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW idea, she can write stories about kids, maybe some stuff about what it had been like to be in college if she remembers it... but I suggested instead, as she’s suffered two miscarriages that were really difficult to deal with, she tap into that grief at losing a child. From there, she can write a profound story about loss in any aspect, because she understands grief in the way only a mother who has lost a child can.

You don’t have to know what it’s like to be in a coma. But if you can identify some of the strong emotions your character is feeling, such as confusion, maybe fear, maybe excitement, and really tap into those emotions, you can make your character believable without ever having gone through what she’s going through.

Write what you feel passionate about. Identify what parts of your character are like yourself and really bring those emotions to the forefront and explore them. In that way, you ARE writing what you know. But you’re just not doing it in the constraining, literal way that teachers have been known to expect from students.

What you love! It's fine to write what you know but because it's what you lived, I would not recommend it. Mainly because, you'll just bored writing a story you already know. With the coma story, you can discover the world with your characters. Your imagination, readers and yourself at 15,000 words will rejoice at writing something you love..

Write the story you love. The teachers had it right, in a sense, to write what you know. When you write what you love, you will end up employing what you know. That's how you'll describe the experiences these teens have, what they see, smell, taste, touch and here. You'll call forth from what you know to create this for them (I know if I saw a gigantic spider, I'd scream and cry, so you know that that's a believable reaction to come from one of them.)

Writing what you know goes beyond just plot, in fact, unless what you know is pretty spectacular, I prefer to write what you don't know, what you haven't lived (hence fantasy, dystopia, science-fiction, etc), but write it employing things you know to make it believable, basically.

I've always thought "Write what you know" is a non-literal piece of advice. It doesn't mean you should only write about things you've experienced-- how could you write about magic, or vampires, or the Titanic, or star-crossed love? Most people on here (thankfully) have limited experience with war, or plague, or oppression-- can you not tackle that because you've never experienced it? I'd hope not.

Some writers, like Hemingway, wrote stories that were basically autobiographical, but in most cases, writers invent stories about things we've never experience first-hand. However, we can still use our experience in life to enrich our writing. I've never fought in a war, for instance, but I have been in meetings with people I found annoying. How can the two experiences merge? Well, suppose my MC is in a unit with a bunch of people he hates. He has to rely in Vin the racist to watch his back when he goes on recon; he has to suffer through Yancy's obnoxious sermons; he has to keep jittery Steven from goes crazy and giving away their position. I can use the frustration I felt in those meetings to make MC's annoyance real; I can borrow traits from the folks who annoy me to make the characters come to life; I can draw on real events to showcase the clashes these people have.

I think that's what "write what you know" is about-- not writing stories about your life, but using your life to make your stories more real and personal.

It's up to you, but I'd MUCH rather read that first story than the second. It sounds great!

I had an amazing creative writing teacher who turned this mantra on its head. He had us write about something we had never experienced. I wrote about eating an olive. He had us describe in great detail how things would smell and taste and how we would feel. It was a great exercise, and really helped me break out of the "write what you know" box. Stephen King wrote Carrie about a female teenage outcast, and it was his first book that got published. I think what teachers mean when they say "write what you know," is that you should write about what you value. What you're passionate about. At least that's how I take it now.

People often misunderstand "write what you know". Don't forget that you can know something without experiencing it .

I think Write what you know should be "Use what you know to write what you don't know." It's about using your experiences in life to create something real for the reader. you don't have to have been thrust into a magical world full of dragon, but you are most likely to know what it feels to face the unknown; the fear and the excitement of discovering new things because it's all common thing for human beings. You use what you know, but you don't have to have live it to know about it.

For me, it's also about doing your research. Go to your library and learn about whatever subject you want to talk about, or talk to people who know about whatever research you do. Don't go on and on and on about hunting if you never hunt, never knew anyone who hunt and never read about hunting, because then, there are chances that anyone you DID hunt will find it unbelievable.

Plus, it's always good to be passionate about whatever you are going to write.

Always write the subject that wake you up at night, not the one that make you yawn because it's basically your day to day life...

Hope it's helped!

i think "write what you know" is mainly directed to people who have a hard time figuring out what they should write. everyone has experiences, so if you have no ideas, then experience is a great source of inspiration. if you have a wild imagination and lots of ideas, why would you limit yourself? for the sake of realism?

I think it all depends on how you do it. While writing what you know has it's good points and it's advantages, so does allowing your imagination to take flight. Just imagine how boring a library or bookstore would be if everyone only wrote what they knew. Entire genres wouldn't exist!

That said, you can use what you know like a piece of clay: mould it, shape it, stretch it, make it what you envision your story to be. Sometimes real experience can give life to an otherwise unbelievable situation. But that doesn't mean you can't use your imagination or use it as a side piece to a fantastical plotline. Take a risk in writing, that's what makes it enjoyable! :)

I knowing a number of teacher they had great fun with the phrase "write what you know."

The best argument that one teacher came up with was that “the pupils always ask ‘what do I write about?’ when given a story writing assignment. The most common phrase that we catch ourselves saying is “write what you know” What we mean is I want to see how you can use creative language.”

They all agreed in the end that the best stories that they have to mark are the ones the pupils have loved writing.
“Loved stories drag you in”. :-)

You should always write what you love! If you don't love, why write it? And seriously, your first idea is awesome. I would read that. It doesn't sound very Disney to me, but even if it is, who cares? There's nothing wrong with that. =)


Anyway, I've always thought 'write what you know' means not writing about the life of a mail man if you don't know anything about mail men. Which only means you'd have to do a little research first.

While I am writing about something I know for NaNo (perhaps because I am too lazy to put in the needed research), I think you should go with what you love. You will enjoy writing the novel more, and I think it will make for a better NaNo experience. If you are worried about getting things "wrong" because it is not about something you know, that's what editing is for later if you so choose!