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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/19351
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Use your imagination. I mean, your imagination should be informed by experiences you've actually had and remembered, but you expand and explore and combine these experiences using your imagination, not your memories.

By 'imagination' I don't mean wild flights of fancy. Don't throw a unicorn into a car crash scene just because your imagination takes you there.

But disciplined use of your imagination would allow you to, for example, remember a time when you were afraid but not so petrified that you lost your memories, and then amplify on that memory to fill in the details of your scene.

More controversially: You should also remember that your readers may not be expecting truth so much as 'truthiness' (to borrow from Stephen Colbert). There are certain expectations in fiction, especially genre fiction, that feel almost more true than reality to many readers. Our fictional heroes are more heroic than real-world heroes, our fictional villains more villainous. You want to be careful that you aren't going _too_ far and creating cartoon characters, but you also want to be aware of the conventions of your genre that you will either subvert or support with your writing.

So at the extreme: if you have a heroic character in a car crash, even if reality suggests that character would be dazed and disoriented and useless, your genre hero probably won't be, unless you're setting up a deliberate subversion of reader expectations.

At a more moderate level: readers expect writing to be more coherent than reality. Writers clean up dialogue all the time (if you don't believe me, read an actual trial transcript and then a fictional version of a trial and see the difference!), we structure narratives in a more satisfying way for fiction (how often do real-world scenarios wrap up with a dramatic climax and satisfying denoument?) and, yes, we describe situations which, in real life, would almost certainly be indescribable by participants.

And we do that by using our imaginations.

Original score: 2