Writing is good for the brain! by Lynne Benton

 New writers are often advised to “write what you know”.  This is all very well, as far as it goes, but when you start thinking about it you realise that if writers ONLY wrote about what they knew, books would rapidly become rather dull and samey, and some would never be written at all.  For example, there would be few, if any, crime novels, (especially those written from the point of view of the murderer!) historical novels, fantasy novels, time-slip novels, etc. etc. etc. 

Did Lewis Carroll ever fall down a rabbit hole into Wonderland?

Did JK Rowling ever go to a school for Wizards?

Did Mary Shelley ever regenerate a monster?

I think not.  Okay, so some writers have a very knowledgeable background in, say, potholing, ballroom dancing, horse-riding, amateur dramatics, police work and so on.  And of course we have all experienced being a child, and some of being a brother or sister and/or a parent.  Some writers have lived in other parts of the world and can call on their experience to set their books there.  Any or all of these valid experiences give their books the flavour of authenticity.

However, not all writers come from exciting backgrounds, and many spend much of their time shut in their studies, writing books using principally their imagination – most notably in the fields of fantasy, historical fiction, crime etc.  But whichever genre you write in, you will sometimes find you need to know stuff that you hadn’t been aware you were going to need.  And that’s where research comes in.

Many writers find research the most interesting part of their job.  Some, apparently, get so wrapped up in it that they put off writing the book for which they are doing the research.  I can’t say the same, though I do enjoy the research.  There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you discover something that links perfectly with something else in your book.  It’s like solving a crossword puzzle!  In most of books I’ve written, I’ve had to find out something I didn’t know.  Over the past few years I’ve had to research such diverse subjects as How to Fly a Hot Air Balloon,

The Price of a Train ticket in 1940

How Roman baths were drained

How Roman women transported their babies from place to place before prams were invented, 

How much a television cost in 1953, 

How guide dogs are trained, and so on.  

The information I gleaned was important to the plot of whichever book I was working on at the time, and even though the books are now finished and published, the information is still there, somewhere, in the back of my mind, just in case it’s ever needed again. 

Brain experts are always telling us that we need to keep making new neural pathways in our brains, and doing research for your books certainly does that.

So, as I said at the start, writing is good for the brain!

 website: lynnebenton.com

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