: Re: How to write about what you don't know? I am a strong believer in writing what you know. Everything I write is at least partially based on something that I have experienced. My problem is

@Sarah872

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In my experience as a reader, most writers who have done this successfully seem to have spent a lot of time interviewing a range of people native to the area. I don't think there's any great shortcut around this. If you don't want to, or are not in a position to do that kind of research, you might want to replace the real location with a fictional one. Of course, that will just replace the effort put in on real research with worldbuilding.

A good example of a novel successfully written from interviews (although I'm not personally in a position to judge the accuracy of the result) is Pearl S. Buck's classic The Good Earth. The book presents as extremely authentic, probably because it's a composite story built from the real life experiences of innumerable villagers whom Buck personally interviewed.

I can sympathize with this question, because I dislike research, and avoid it when I can. But I've come to accept what a decisive difference it makes to the final result.

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