I remember sitting in a conference listening to the great Jo Beverley. She had stated that there was a reason she wrote only in one particular time period. In simple terms, she understood it. Could she write in another time period and be successful. Knowing her, yes she could; however for her to do so, it would require a lot of outside research just to fully understand that time.
But there is another aspect to this that writers might not understand, and that is the impact on your story and plot development.
When you are writing a story, you include information that you know the readers will need to fully grasp what you are talking about. That is understandable, and I think all of you would agree with this. But if you as the researcher now, need to know more and more information to be able to include that in your story, your brain starts to think the readers will need that information as well. As you include that information, you are now getting distracted from the original plot you had in started with.
I remember working with a student in a research class who ran into this same issue. I cannot remember exactly what he was researching, but it was something that was truly over his head. As he dove into the research, he would read something in an article that he did not understand... so he went off to research that new tidbit. I am sure you can see where this ended up going. When he finally got to writing his research paper, he had all of these additional blocks of information that really had nothing to do with his original thesis.
Now, am I saying that you should not try new things. Of course not! But, when you are writing, always stop and ask yourself how much of that information your reader really needs to have. If you can just tell them it is a fact and that is good enough, then stick with that.
As I always tell my writers, follow that phrase we were taught in school. K.I.S.S.
No comments:
Post a Comment