Writing fiction about things you haven’t experienced yourself
The most important thing you need to write fiction is Teleportation.
The most important thing you need to write fiction is Teleportation.
Yes, you read that right. Try to imagine new locations — places you’ve never been to but only seen on TV.
For instance, imagine standing on a high cliff from which a person can look down to see the world panning out below him. Imagine the morning sun painting the distant snow-capped mountains in shimmering golden hues. The feeling you’d get when a moisture laden cloud softly caresses your skin with a touch of its ice-cold droplets. Think of the chilly air giving you gooseflesh as you hug yourself tighter and stand there to marvel at the beauty of nature — at the softness of the moist dewy grass beneath your feet, the lush green cedars and pines carpeting the opposite slope face and the road paved with big concrete blocks that have turned green after so many generations of moss growing on them.
And as the night’s mists slowly burn away, the town below takes form in front of your eyes, emerging like a shade from the predawn gloom. Oh look, there’s an early riser — an old man with with a bundle on his back, probably off to sell his wares in some nearby town. And look at the fumes coming out from some of the chimneys in the houses below. Seems like the world is already waking up to a new day. If you stay there long enough, you might even get a whiff of tea — a smell so heavenly, it would make you want nothing more than to cup your hands around a steaming hot tumbler and sip to your hearts’s contentment.
Transported to a hilly town, weren’t you?
That is how you get started with writing fiction. Create a mental picture of the things and places you want to write about — and describe them just as you would want your readers to picture them. You need not have felt or seen these things, but imagining them is enough.
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