Ricky Gervais explains "write what you know"

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It's a good video.

"The teacher would write Too melodramatic. Write what you know. and I'd think What does he mean? It's either good or it's not!"

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Aliens and Cowboys

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erin's picture

Even if you write about something fantastic like aliens and cowboys, you can inform your story with the truth by using details from your life or the lives of people you know.

I grew up on a farm; something you don't see very often in movies or read in books is that horses like to lean on each other. And they will lean on you if you are close and they like and trust you. And a 1500 pound animal leaning on you unexpectedly will knock you flat on your ass. Put that in your story.

Cows are very curious. Do something odd in the pasture and the cows will all come over to see what is going on. And cows are polite unless they are in a hurry. If you are a rabid skunk in the pasture, the cows will line up in front of you to get bitten on the nose one at a time. They would do the same thing for an alien.

What's the most alien thing you can see every day? Insects. Find a colony of carpenter bees and watch them for awhile. They have elaborate rituals about going in and out of the nest and making sure they don't run into each other or foul each others wings.

I once saw a fight between a spider and an earwig. The earwig could have cut the spider in two if he could have got his weapon around. The spider could have safely bitten the earwig and poisoned him if he could have immobilized him with his web. But the earwig kept cutting the web and finally got away from the spider, mostly through main strength and awkwardness. Gladiatorial combat on the front stoop!

Write what you know but find out what it is that you do know, first.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

The Grass Is Always Greener

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Cows will stick their heads out along the fence-line as far as they can reach. They will often graze the fence line before they eat the grass in the rest of the pasture. I'm not sure if that suggests optimism or discontent.

When I was quite young I would herd our cattle out onto a field that had been harvested for them to glean. I often wished I could take one of my sister's dresses into the field with me and watch the cows in ecstasy. I do know that suggested total discontent.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

I believe the bard said it best?

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Andrea Lena's picture

Now is the late spring of your discontent
Made glorious summer by this sundress of Dayton’s
And all the clouds of petticoats upon your waist
And your deep bosom of Kleenex buried….

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

I think you may have hit on why I write so little....

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Ragtime Rachel's picture

Because, after all, what do I know? I'm a disabled person who spent nearly my entire childhood in isolation, who never really learned--or understood--how the real world works. It's hard to take Gervais' advice and "be real" if you don't know what "real" is.

Livin' A Ragtime Life,
aufder.jpg

Rachel

Stories are divided in book stores as fiction or non fiction

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BarbieLee's picture

Which begs the question to the above statement. How can anyone write a fictional story if they are only to write about what they know? This would exclude dreams, imagination, and the muse many writers have helping them along with their stories.

Erin, you had lazy horses. I never saw ours leaning on one another or me. I'm thinking you made pets out of your livestock. Our cows would run off, stop, group up in a herd when anything or anyone strange happens in their pasture.

Angela Rasch had cows like ours. Always reaching through the fence no matter how good the grass is inside the fence. They certainly keep the weeds down out of the fence line.

I thank God I'm still on the same farm I was born and raised on even if the livestock and dairy herd are only memories. I never minded getting up at four thirty every morning to feed and milk cows before school which was a vacation. Summer meant long days hauling hay, ridding a tractor for twelve hours a day. Daddy put me on a tractor by myself when I was five. To move the trucks to the next field five or ten miles away, my brother and I took turns driving. One sit on the floor board to work the clutch, brakes, gas, the other stood up in the seat, drove, and shifted gears, until we got big enough to do it by ourselves.

Times change. Our own weren't allowed to drive off the farm even though they were in the seat by eight. By then everything was automatic transmission.

How can they write if they have no experience to draw from? Where is the imagination now when they are plugged into I phones and ear buds and electronic entertainment the moment they open their eyes? Madonna had it right. We have become a material world where the heroes are super sports stars or music stars and chocolate milk comes from chocolate cows.

down Barb, down
always,
Barb

Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl

My version

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To be honest Ricky Gervais totally confuses me. Is he a comedian, comedy actor or writer? Perhaps to some he's all three to me he's pretty much none of them. On the whole I don't get British humor and Mr. Gervais leaves me cold. One of my friends invited me to a one man show he did at her College/University. I'm ashamed to say that I was rather rude and read a book while he was performing. To be honest it's not just Ricky Gervais. I feel the same about Michael Palin both are pretty boring. Although John Cleese is hilarious.

But write about what you know that can be taken in so many ways. I think a good imagination and a reasonable knowledge of a subject is probably the most important. After all what did H G Wells know about Time travel yet he wrote The Time Machine. Along the same vein what did Jules Verne know about paleontology, Geology and surviving for long periods under water? Yet he wrote Journey to the center of the Earth and ten thousand leagues under the sea.

Obviously both writers had some knowledge and interest in Science. You can argue that Verne was probably closer to reality with his stories at that time. But the important thing in my way of thinking was that they both had a good knowledge of the imaginary world that they were creating with their intellects. The skill came with successfully combining the science and a realistic sounding story.

The writer Patricia Cornwall is neither a detective, scientific technician but has had some experience in that field. She used that knowledge plus a lot of help from her wife who is a Dr a psychiatrist I believe. I don't think it's entirely about writing what we know but more a case of knowing what we want to create. And more importantly making it as realistic as possible.

I remember a couple of horses

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I remember a couple of horses one of my Uncles had that would lean on you, and one would always try and step on your feet. 1500 lbs of horse flesh leaning on you or stepping on you, will definitely remind you to pay close attention to the horse you are near. He had one horse that would try and "fence" you, once you were on his back. "fencing" was him running right up to a wooden post and pole fence or a barbed wire fence and then leaning into it and try to get you brushed off him. He did not even care if he got hurt/cut up by the barbed wire. A Vet finally told my Uncle he would be very smart to put the horse down because he would most likely truly injure or possibly even kill someone one day.
Cows are very different, they can be skittish, quiet, moody acting, and sometimes very dangerous to others around them, cows, humans, dogs, and so forth they don't care. That is why you will see on many different occasions two or more horses among cow. It is to keep the cows calmed.
Two interesting things I learned from my Granddad on his farm about being around cows or cattle in general.
a) a female cow is actually more dangerous to you if they are trying to charge you than bull is, as they leave their eyes open.
A bull will generally, not always however, close his eyes when he charges.
b) cows will not eat snow, and will die of thirst standing in snow. That is why ranchers will go out of their way in winter time to get to their herds, not so much for feed, but rather to ensure water availability to their cows.
Saw this happening in Colorado in 2007 and 2008 during several blizzards there. Major rescues going on.

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