Aristotle believed a story does not only have a beginning, middle, and end; but also, a story must have a moment of recognition--"Ah-ha, that's me!"--between the reader and the text. A moment of recognition is any connection the reader makes to the text (i.e. emotional). So, the question is, where do writers write from, in order to write a successful story?
We use our own life experiences
We all write out of ourselves and the world we live. Or in other words, we write what we know. And we connect to people and the universal out of our own peculiar stories. The one problem with only writing what you know is that your stories become parochial, small, repetitive, and any other synonymous adjective.
We, as writers, are wide readers
We begin with a genre we know well and write out of those genres we know well. For example, I tend to read James Patterson, Jeffery Deaver, Michael Connelly, etc. and I am working on writing "thriller" type novels. Thriller is the genre I widely read in, and thriller is the genre I am attempting to write in. Anyhow, writing in a genre we know, provides a form that we build off of. Whether we choose to stay within the form or break the genre conventions, we are still responding to genre in some way.
You have to love the material you work with
For writers, the material we work with is words. If we want to be writers, we have to love how they sound, how they look on page, how they create different meanings, and how they create tension. No matter your reason, love the words. What words delight you? What words do you hate?
If you readers of this blog have any other suggestions of where we write from, then, please, leave a comment. Say where you write from.
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