"How to Write Fiction" Free Sample!

Hello friends, for the next two days, I am offering my book, How to Write Fiction: Wrangling with the Written Word free on amazon.com. This book is intended to help writers become better at their craft. I deliberately  made it a short book so that writers don’t have to spend all their time reading it. They can read it in the space of a few hours and then get back to doing what they love, writing.
Today, I thought I would share a sample of my book. This sample is the whole of Chapter Seven, which is called “Write What You Know.”

There is a saying in the literature world: “write what you know.” This means that, as an author, you should write fiction based in some part around your own personal experiences. By inference, it also means that your writing should reflect the accumulation of your knowledge. If you want to write about police officers, but don’t know a lot about them, you’ll have to resort to research. Research is a great way to learn more about your subject. It has a way of making fiction sharper, more in focus. It also reduces the glaring errors that police officers would see if they read your book.

Remember: four thousand fans of a book don’t guarantee its success; one critic can hurt the book’s chances enormously.

But, if you write about what you know, the more you know, the more you will be able to write about. An author, of all the people in the world, must be well-versed in a variety of subjects. An author should not assume knowledge of any subject where knowledge does not exist, either through experience or learning. In consequence of this, I have made it my business to read as much as I can about everything I can during my time as a writer. I have read physics books, nature books, economics books, philosophy books, psychology books, sociology books, anthropology books, history books, political books, biographies and, of course, fictional books.

All of these books have added to the knowledge I now possess. For example: I can describe a bell curve, and why it behaves the way it does. I can tell you why bitcoin is very, very difficult to counterfeit. I can describe the life of Gaius Marius, who was consul of Rome a record seven times. I can tell you how gravity works, why the sky is blue, and what causes the wind to blow.

These facts, when taken separately, may seem entirely meaningless. When put together in a story, they give the author an undeniable authority that comes from knowledge of a wide range of subjects. This does not mean that the author is free from making mistakes, even with all he knows. It simply means that everything he has learned becomes part of the stories he writes.

As a result, my recommendation to any author seeking to improve their craft is: read as much as you can. Read everything you can get your hands on. Don’t shy away from complicated subjects. If your brain isn’t impaired by a medical condition, you can go from being a part-time cashier to a professor teaching trigonometry. Though you may find some subjects more difficult than others, difficulty and impossibility are not the same.