When one is writing fiction, a little knowledge may be exactly what the doctor er, the publisher, ordered. Let me explain. Your first impulse is probably wrong. That s because fiction and nonfiction are technically very different animals.
Nonfiction tries to give the clearest and most vivid view of what happened in a situation, and why.
Fiction, on the other hand, is about what might have happened. There is magic in the process of what-iffing, because it s a train of thought that allows your imagination and your intuition to temporarily take the reins away from your logical, analytical brain. Anything, literally, can then happen. If you, as a writer, are willing to take the plunge down a blind alley to find out what happens next, you re likely to have readers willing to follow you. That magnetism is called storytelling.