How to write a story that doesn't suck

Making your story believable

I was just having a discussion with my friend about this because they're having me help them write a story for a comic. This friend of mine is extremely similar to me in terms of how we experience the world and perceive things. However, I've done a lot more things that I've used to gain experience than they have, such as traveling and learning languages.

Why does that matter? Because experience is one of the most important parts of writing to make a story believable. If you, the author, have experienced even the smallest detail in your story, it automatically will make it sound more true or realistic, even if it's straight up fantasy.

My friend and I both grew up in two separate small towns in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains and farmland. For a few years we lived in the same town but before that they lived in a slightly larger populated town, also in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farms and mountains, and they have moved back there now.

So we're both country bumpkins you might say. To write a story set in the country or mountains would be easy for the both of us because that's all we know. We deal with an insane amount of snow in the wintertime and some pretty intense heat during the summer. Those are types of experience that become powerful in writing.

So why am I talking about where my friend and I live?

My friend wants their story to be set near an ocean so that there can be a lighthouse. They've never once been to the ocean or any lake big enough to be almost identical to one. They have no beach experience at all, nor do they know what it would be like to live there. The story we're writing also depends on having heavy snowfall in the winter, which immediately crosses out any coastline in the south of America.

I used to live in San Diego, but I was very young and don't remember what the beach was like, or anything about the city. I can't call that experience because I was only 2-5 years old. The last I went to a beach on the ocean was when I went to the Oregon coast when I was twelve. That's all the ocean experience I have.

Can you understand why that might be problematic? When writing, even tiny details will affect how readers perceive your story. To write a story in a real environment in which you have no experience with will play out to be difficult to do, and if you find it easy, I can promise you that you're probably writing it wrong.

For example:
"The snow was soft like cotton" was a description I remember reading from someone once.

... um... what kind of snow is that and where can I find it?!

This is why experience is important. And it goes beyond just setting/environment. Anything, especially if it plays a large roll in your story or a particular character, can easily be ruined by a myth or lack of experience.

So what if you don't have experience but need to include something like that in your story?

All I can say is research. Research the living hell out of it, especially if it's a big part of your story. This goes for mental illness, environment, situations, disabilities, culture, religious, sexuality, gender identity, and uh... murder I guess. I hope you don't have any experience involving murder. Please don't go and get that experience. Like- yeah.

If you're still confused about what I mean, imagine a scene like this:

You've never ever in your whole life been on an airplane or in an airport. You have no idea how the system of it works and how the process goes in order to achieve actually getting on a plane and flying from one place to another.

But you think you know cause you've seen movies with planes in them, so really it must be simple.

And then, because of that, you end up giving your characters who are sitting in economy the treatment meant for those sitting in first class or business, your description of the take off and/or landing is hideously inaccurate, the depiction of the airport is... off, and- Oh no! You forgot to mention security! Or maybe you didn't and somehow your protagonist was able to bring a sword on a plane! Magically!

Now pretend that didn't happen. You chose to research because perhaps you aren't in a position where you can just go get that experience. The least you can do is just learn about how people on the plane are treated by the attendants and how different types of planes and airline companies have different policies and/or design.

This is important because while someone who's never gotten on a plane before either is oblivious to how it works, people have that experience will likely take immediate notice and often that can ruin the experience of a story. Your reader wants to believe in what's happening, even thought they know it's all just fictional.

Let me give you another example, this time for mental disorders:

Pretend you have a significant character in your book that happens to have ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), and you don't. Even if the story isn't told in their perspective, if you don't know what having ADHD is like, people will immediately see it, especially if they have the disorder for themselves.

I'm the scenario where you don't do the research needed for this, you're going to mess it up. That's guaranteed. It doesn't matter how much you THINK you know, without proper research or real experience, you're doomed to write myths and stereotypes of ADHD. You'll end up talking about how this character just CANT control themselves, how they have constant energy and won't stop moving, always interrupt people and never listen when people are talking. How they just have endless energy because they're just SO SO SO HYPER! And the next thing you know, a lot of your readers will be upset with the character or you, the author. Probably both.

So to avoid that, you do the research. And I mean A LOT of research because with something like this, you can't just do the bare minimum like you could with the airplane. By doing this you'd figure out that ADHD is a spectrum, and is commonly different between male and female brains (but not always). You'll learn that, yes, things are distracting to people with the disorder. In fact, they're very easily distracted... sometimes. Sometimes... or rather often times depending on the person, you'll hyper-focus on any random thing and there isn't a single thing in existence that is going to distract you from doing this one thing that you may be fixated for the next hour or even days. You'll be able to write the character more properly because you've learned how people with ADHD truly do behave and how some things make them feel.

Research is important to fill in a lack of experience, but that doesn't guarantee you'll do it just right.  So to play it safe, avoid writing about things you truly have no experience with, because even the greatest amount of research won't tell you how you may perceive a situation should you be the one gaining that experience.

That is all. Stay safe, don't do drugs, and please don't write a story from the perspective of an autistic person if you don't have autism yourself.

Yay.