A Word in Your Eye

Writing Excuses Season Five Episode Five: Writing the Unfamiliar

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/10/03/writing-excuses-5-5-writing-the-unfamiliar/

Key Points: Write what you know? But what if I don't know, but other people do? Find elements that are familiar, that you have in common. Find the familiar and build on it. Extrapolate. Research. Make your character an individual. Write what you know in great detail, and then explain lightly the parts you don't know. Write your story, then ask an alpha reader who knows the missing part for help.
( shove the unfamiliar under the carpet? )
[Brandon] Wow. I'm going to go ahead and end us here. I'm actually going to give us our writing prompt. It's going to be a video writing prompt. We're going to have Howard put it in the liner notes. It's because this entire podcast, I've been thinking about this little video which cracks me up because in a lot of ways we are kind of stating the obvious, though I hope that we gave some good information. So watch what is linked and write your prompt based on something you are inspired by in that video.
[Dan] This has me terrified.
[Howard] For those of you just pulling this down to your iPhone, yes, you're going to need to go to writingexcuses.com and pull up the actual webpage with hyperlinks on it. This involves reading.
[Brandon] You will laugh, though, when you watch this video.
[Dan] And clicking on some...
[Brandon] You're out of excuses, now go write.

Writing Excuses Episode 24: Research

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/07/20/writing-excuses-episode-24-research/

Key points: Do just enough research to get by. Be curious, but don't overdo it, stick with a couple of key details, not everything you found. Think it through -- after you do the research, what does your specific situation do to that? Don't be afraid of Dr. Google and Wikipedia.
( What's Inside? )
Writing prompt: write a scene in which a character is performing an activity about which you know nothing. Pick an activity about which you know nothing, go to Wikipedia and read up on it, and then write the scene. [I know exactly what you're thinking. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to go there.]