Experience

I find when writing, the very best tool that you have at your disposal is your personal experience. Experience is a powerful device to use in writing because it gives a sense of realism to your writing that no fantastical details could. When you write stories, poems, anecdotes, or whatever, the main goal of writing is to let your reader experience everything that you describe. One trick my English teacher taught me was to place your hand over your face, everything your hand touches are the senses that you want to let your reader experience: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. The cool thing about experience is that when you write based on experience, it doesn't always have to be that specific experience. Confused? Let me explain:

When you write using details from experience, the scenario you describe does not always have to be the exact scenario you experienced. For example, if you're trying to write a mugging scene in a dark alley, you don't have to had actually experienced a mugging to write a descriptive story about it. You can use your experiences from walking at night to describe the setting, describe bouncers you see outside of clubs or people riding the bus to describe the muggers, describe the terror the character feels with the fear you felt at least once in your life The versatile way to use experience is to take bits and pieces of different experiences and weave them together into one cohesive whole. This way your reader gets all the detail without you having to undergo the actual experience. Like, dislike, agree, disagree, let me know in the comments below :)