Don’t Just Write It. Live It!

Disclaimer: I am aware that some of the suggestions in this post may not be possible for everyone, depending upon an individual’s physical condition, financial situation, and level of daring, but there may be some things here that writers haven’t thought of or didn’t know existed.

Imagination Is Great. Reality Is Better.

Do you dream of being your characters? I definitely do. I’m not strong or athletic or agile. I don’t live on an alien world surrounded by strange landscapes. But I write action heroines, women who fight using weapons and martial arts in exotic locales that don’t exist outside my imagination. They encounter alien creatures. They face dangerous and potentially deadly situations.

Now I have a very good imagination, but when I got about halfway into writing my fifth manuscript (the one that would eventually become my first published novel) I began to worry that my descriptions were inaccurate, not authentic enough, not immersive enough. But what was I supposed to do? I’m 5’5”, a bit overweight, asthmatic, and at that time, in my mid- forties. Well, after doing some digging, I found that there is a plethora of ways writers just like me can either directly experience or come very close to experiencing the things they write about. Here are a few of the methods I’ve tried.

Draw On Similar Experiences

This is the easiest. Pull on the sensations of your own experiences that might be similar to those of your characters. A character is heavily drugged and about to be tortured? No, I haven’t been there, but I did have major surgery, and I remember what it felt like to be given calming drugs and anesthesia, how helpless I felt, how hard it was to communicate my fear, how cold the operating room was, how the medication made me sick afterward. I used that. (You can spot a very similar description in my novel WOVEN.) An experience doesn’t have to be identical to be useful.

Take a Character Walk Through Their World

This is also an easy one, and it costs nothing. Take a walk through your daily life, your town, the area around you, but imagine you are seeing these places through your main character’s eyes. How would your assassin protagonist view this building, this room, this street?

They’d make a threat assessment. They’d look for objects to use as weapons, places to take cover, higher vantage points. (See this method put to use in my novel VICIOUS CIRCLE.) What about your construction worker character? They’d admire the architecture, determine if a building was structurally sound, think about how they might have improved upon that storefront. (Used in my upcoming release DEAD WOMAN’S POND.)

This kind of deep immersion is helpful when including those “telling details” in our main character’s point of view. We don’t all think the same way or notice the same things. It’s good to remember that when writing someone different from yourself, or every character of yours begins to sound like, well, you.

Weapons and Hand-To-Hand Combat

Oh, this is a fun one, for me anyway. Yes, it does require a certain amount of physical ability and funds, but not as much as one might think. My characters use all kinds of weapons, and sooner or later, they all find themselves involved in some sort of physical altercation (usually multiple ones).

For the weapons, you might be surprised how easy it is to get some hands-on experience with a wide variety of them. Try a Renaissance Fair (also great for immersing yourself in a fantasy-type environment if that’s what you write, but I’ll get to that later). For a modest fee, I was able to try throwing daggers and throwing stars.

When I was a kid in summer camp, I was given lessons in the bow and arrow. At a writing conference I attended, a stunt coordinator was giving whip-cracking demonstrations and allowing attendants to try it for themselves. Basic gun-safety, loading, and shooting lessons are available at gun ranges. Right here in Kissimmee we have “Machine Gun America” where you can handle and fire the heavier weapons. And the latest craze at bars is axe-throwing. I know, right?

In case you’re curious, I’m great with throwing stars and deadly accurate with a 9mm pistol. I can’t shoot an arrow to save my life, and my axes just bounce off the target. But the experience! Not only was it fun, but I absolutely discovered I was describing some things incorrectly. After taking the whip-cracking lesson, I added that weapon into my book, WOVEN, because I knew I could describe it pretty accurately.

And for the hand-to-hand, if you’re up to taking a self-defense class or martial arts beginner course, go for it. That’s a bit beyond me, but another thing to look for is “experience” panels at writing conferences. I attended one that was on writing fight scenes which included audience participation. They had us pair up and just tap each other’s hands at random, right to right, right to left, left to right, while performing simple math problems out loud like two plus two. There was also a lot of shouting going on. The purpose was to demonstrate just how little a character can really think about, converse about, or concentrate on when he or she is in the middle of a fight. Many writers over describe when in the pov character’s head in a fight. It was an invaluable lesson.

Another thing to try is a fight scene “walk-through.” I have my spouse help me walk through the actions in a potential fight scene to see if the choreography works. We don’t actually fight or pick one another up, but we position ourselves in such a way that we can imagine the motions that are taking place. If Character A picks up Character B at this point, then throws Character B, where will Character B end up? Which way will she be facing? And so forth.

Unusual Settings and Circumstances

Alien worlds? Impossible to reenact actions? Maybe not as hard to simulate as you might believe. I mentioned earlier that fantasy writers might benefit from a trip to the Renaissance fair. Historical writers, depending upon the time period, can immerse themselves in places like Williamsburg, Old West ghost towns, Salem, and if funds permit, many other countries are filled with still-standing castles and ancient ruins to tour and explore. Or maybe you can take in a battle reenactment. That’s great for getting the big picture and applying it to all types of battle sequences in your work.

How about something a little closer to home? Got a character riding alien beasties? Take a horseback trail ride. No, it’s not going to be exactly the same, but you’ll pull some good sensory details from the experience. Rappelling? Rope-climbing? There are places you can pay to do those things here in Florida. I’ve gone zip-lining. It’s fun, and not as scary as I thought it would be.

Here’s one you might not have thought of—escape rooms. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s a 60-120 minute experience where you are placed in a room or set of rooms with a particular theme which might be anything: outer space, underwater, Old West, pirate ship, insane asylum, zombie-infested middle of nowhere, graveyard. Your job is to solve a series of puzzles to get out within the time limit. These are all the rage right now. There’s one or more companies offering these escape room experiences in almost every town across the country (and around the world). My writing group had a team, and we did a bunch of them together. Not only are they incredible fun, but they are fantastic for getting your head in the right space if you match the theme of the room you choose to the type of novel you are writing.

We’re coming up on Halloween, too. If you write horror, this is your time. Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios does an incredible job of simulating different terrifying scenarios in a safe environment. Scream-A-Geddon Horror Park in Dade City lets visitors choose whether they want to be “passive” or “active” members in their various scenarios. I always choose “active” where the performers make me “part of the action” as I’m dragged through a jailhouse scenario or made a victim of the zombie apocalypse, and all the while I’m cataloguing sights, sounds, smells, and my emotional responses to use later.

Keep your eyes open for advertisements that offer simulated experiences. A few years back there was a performing arts group here in Orlando that offered interactive theater featuring a dystopian setting in which paying guests got to take on a variety of roles in a “choose your own adventure” sort of game. In another one, they simulated a kidnapping experience complete with isolated locale, bags over your heads, noise canceling headphones, and a trip in the back of a car to an undisclosed location where a party was held afterward.

Seek Out the Unusual

Last but not least, seek out things that are different from your day-to-day. When I travel, I look for the most unusual locations and activities I can find. I’ve boated across an underground lake, been swimming in a different underground lake with hundreds of bats flying overhead, (see WOVEN for how I combined those two), slid down two-story slides in a salt mine, slept in haunted bed and breakfasts, toured historic mansions, sung karaoke in dive bars, and much more. Just don’t forget while you’re having fun to be collecting all those sensory details to use later. Every experience you have might be useful in a book someday. The trick is to have as wide a variety as possible to choose from.