We've all heard it all to many times before: Write what you know. But what if sticking to what you know means suppressing your imagination? What if, instead of anchoring your work, it simply weighs it down? Most importantly, what if it keeps you from writing what you most want – most need – to write?

In this session we'll discuss the ways in which taking a leap into a drastically different character can open up your writing, how setting a story in a place unsettlingly at odds with what you're used to can force an even greater specificity of vision into your work. There are risks and responsibilities that come with this (especially when the leap takes you into real corners of this world — the focus of this session — as opposed to science or speculative fiction) but also great rewards.

We'll look at the challenges, both internal and external, to breaking far away from yourself in your fiction, and the ways in which doing so can bring you closer to your core at the same time.