Write What You Know
Greeting & Salutation Scribblers!
Today we’re chatting about Generalized Writing Advice. You know–those adages that people throw around and sometimes treat as gospel? Yeah, those. Now, taken with a grain of salt, they can be worth listening to and taken into consideration. But if you haven’t already realized it, creative writing is as much about breaking the rules as it is following them.
We follow the rules at first–they’re like training wheels on a bike. We need them to learn the craft. We have to understand how sentences work and how to use punctuation. Even formatting our work follows an expected set of standards. When we break from those norms, the reader notices. When it’s done intentionally, bravo! If it’s done without intention, not so much. You’re going to leave your reader feeling out of sorts at best and dnf-ing your book at worst.
All that to say, know your rules before you break them and of course, be very precise with your intentions in doing so.
The specific piece of writing advice I want to talk about today is:
Write What You Know
As with all writing advice, there are upsides and downsides.
Let’s start by breaking this down. Are they being literal?
Maybe. I have no idea. The advice is usually credited to Mark Twain, but there is some disagreement as to whether it existed before him, or if Ernest Hemingway was the writer who uttered it into the writer’s lexicon.
So, if, and that’s a big IF, they were being literal, it means you can only write about the things you know about. You can’t do research. This would apply to situations, characters, locations, etc…
Which sounds terrible. I mean, we wouldn’t have any speculative fiction because the whole purpose is to speculate! And could he allow historical fiction? Because you wouldn’t have lived it, so how could you “know it”? The more I think about this, the more I don’t like it. We would all just write contemporary–which, no shade to contemporary, but that wouldn’t be very fun if that was the only option.
So if you hear this advice, don’t despair. It doesn’t mean you can’t write that amazing bank heist on a space ship just because you’ve never heisted a bank or been on a space ship. Head to internet and do your research.
The more common way to take this advice is to take smaller elements like character traits (either your own or those you’ve experienced in others) and emotions (which we’ve all had tons of experience with) and put those into the story you’re writing. That space ship bank heist might be organized by someone who just had a horrific break up with their paramour and robbing this bank will be the ultimate revenge because their ex is the manager of this space bank. You’ve never robbed a bank. You’ve never been on a space ship. But you have had a rough break up and maybe you did end up leaving some bad reviews for the company your ex worked for and caused problems for middle management.
Voila! You’ve written what you know!
The heart of this advice is to focus on the human experience. What is the universal emotion and feeling you can tap into and how can you piece that in around the things you “don’t” know?
I’ve never been an orphan, or been a personal bodyguard for a queen, or been part of a crime syndicate. But I’ve written characters who have been those things while facing very real experiences I’ve had. Betrayal, depression, anxiety, slander, falling in and out of love–just to name a few. I’ve experienced all those things and those are universal human experiences. By tapping into my experiences, I’m able to craft something on the page that’s going to speak to my readers.
It will make them feel seen and they’ll engage more deeply with the story.
So, dear Scribblers, write what you know, but keep up those questionable google search histories that probably have all of us on watch lists somewhere!
Do you have a writing adage you’d like me to talk about? Leave a comment below and I’ll get on it asap!
Until next time, Happy Writing Scribblers!
As always, your mileage may vary! If you have any tips for recognizing burnout before it takes over completely, please drop those in the comments below.
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