We make shit up. That’s what we do. It helps if we can make you believe it. It’s great if you’re wondering how much of what we make up is really true or not. But at the end of the day, we’re making it up. It doesn’t have to be true and it’s better if it isn’t. It doesn’t have to be exact. It doesn’t have to be footnoted. We’re all sitting around the fire bullshitting, telling stories

Snips from: When Does Researching Your Fiction Do More Harm Than Good?

So let me repeat here clearly what I told that writer. If you have this myth issue [fiction writing versus non-fiction writing set up], print this out as a big sign and put it over your computer.

IT’S FICTION!!

Yup, I shouted that. Fiction, by its very definition is made up. Duh.

So now comes the really ugly word that I had to look up to spell right: Verisimilitude: An appearance of being true.

That’s the exact definition from my dear old Oxford American Dictionary.

So, in fiction, we writers make stuff up. I give my job description as a person who sits alone in a room and makes stuff up. But what I make up needs to have the appearance of being true, if not in detail, in character action and emotions. There is where the myth is true and not true. *Emphasis mine*

In every story we need enough detail to make it feel right. That does not mean it has to be right, it just has to feel right.

…

Again, you just have to do enough [research] to make it feel right to the large majority of your readers. And trust me, putting in all your research is mostly just dull. In fact, if you are getting feedback on stories that go “You have too many information dumps,” then you might want to try writing a story without any research. It might not be the problem, but often it is. We are all human. Once we do all that work on research and spend all that time, we want it in the book.

Truth: Most research you do does not belong in your story.

A general rule is to do just enough research to feel comfortable writing about the topic in a fiction story.

…

4…Make it up and move on. Yup, I said that. It’s fiction, so if you don’t know something, pretend like you do, pretend like your character knows exactly what they are talking about, write it so it feels real (verisimilitude), and move on. 99% of your readers won’t notice and those that do notice aren’t really your readers.

This post by Dean Wesley Smith originally appeared on his blog. Read the post in full here.