Most writing advice comes in for criticism now and again, but remarks directed at ‘write what you know’ in recent times have been caustic. One wit – I’ll be damned if I can rediscover who – observed that ‘write what you know’ was responsible for “so many novels about aging academics cheating on their wives”.
I understand why an author might baulk at this axiom. It is, on the face of it, an anti-creative stricture. If I were to adhere to it literally, every character I created would have to be a journalist/author who lives in Sydney. But that’s not what ‘write what you know’ really means. As Stephen King noted in On Writing, a plumber with a talent for writing could pen a sci-fi novel from the perspective of a plumber on a spaceship. ‘Write what you know’ is especially helpful in speculative fiction, because it makes it easier to ground a fanciful story in convincing reality.
It can be overdone, however, and King is (ironically) one of the worst offenders. Back in 1998, I picked up his novel Bag of Bones, read the blurb on the dust jacket, and groaned. Another novel about a goddamned writer. There was one in ’Salems Lot, and one in The Shining, and one in IT, and one in The Tommyknockers, and one in Misery, and one in The Dark Half and one in Four Past Midnight and… well, you get the idea. If you’re a prolific (and prolifically published) author, it behoves you change things up a bit. To do otherwise is just laziness.*
Putting on an unfamiliar mask doesn’t have to be difficult, especially in the case of a protagonist’s job. A pilot and a watchmaker might react to a zombie apocalypse in certain ways practically speaking, but their emotional reaction… well, who’s to say? That will depend on each man’s personality, which is completely up to the author to create.
I have been pretty good at not churning out thinly disguised facsimiles of myself.** An analysis of the characters in my published work – which I did for the sake of this essay – turned up two journalists, one call centre worker (which was what I did for money while at university), and a couple of characters that could be traced to my tenure as a film critic (a vampire who writes movie reviews, a producer at a film studio). But most characters and their occupations were guided by the storyline: a spaceship pilot, a sheriff, a private eye, a travelling salesman, a 17th century sailor, an ad executive, a nurse. In two of those cases – the ad exec and the nurse – I had absorbed background info from friends and colleagues that I could use. But in most cases I just applied my imagination and then did some research afterwards to plug gaps and correct errors.
Elements of ‘what you know’ will worm their way into your stories subconsciously anyway, so why force it? Take one of my early published stories, ‘Blue Diamond Pool’. It’s essentially a haunted house story, only in this case it’s a dazzling, diamond-shaped pool in a suburban backyard that harbours evil spirits. Reading the story over again for the first time in several years, I was surprised to see how many experiences from that period of my life I had used to add texture and verisimilitude.
The protagonist, Jacob, and his wife have just bought their first house together (as my wife and I had the year before). Settlement on the house sale occurs at eleven a.m. (as ours did). Jacob assembles some new outdoor furniture in the sun (as I did after we moved in). They quarrel about the urgency of house and yard work (as my wife and I sometimes did).
None of these details was crucial to the story, per se, but they made the story easier to write – and that effortlessness translates to the page. Because the characters are a young couple from the suburbs, their dialogue just poured out of me. Which is not to say you have to know a character intimately to give him or her good dialogue. It just takes a bit more elbow grease to get it right.
So I believe ‘write what you know’ is good advice – to a point. Sticking to the familiar can make composition flow, which is most welcome when you’re staring down another 50,000 words to complete your novel. But it can also lead to tedious writing; endless stories about academics cheating on their wives, for instance – or, as with Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story, a childish treatise on the minutiae of married life. Writing what you don’t know might be harder, but it can also be good fun and lead to a more entertaining story.
Let me end this essay with a concrete example of what I’m on about. ‘The Body’ and ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ are two of the four novellas in King’s book Different Seasons and they are two of the finest things he has ever written – yet they exist on opposite ends of the ‘write what you know’ gamut. ‘The Body’ is semi-autobiographical; ‘Rita Hayworth’ is set a decade before King was born and concerns itself with prison life. They prove that ‘write what you know’ should only be a tool, not a law.
--
* When King began to overdo the ‘writer’ stories, they got weaker and weaker. The last good one was probably the novella ‘Secret Window, Secret Garden’ in Four Past Midnight (1990), where the character pretty much had to be an author for the story to work. Compare and contrast that with ‘Big Driver’ in Full Dark, No Stars (2011), where the character is an author because… well, because King couldn’t be bothered coming up with anything else, I guess.
** For those playing at home, here is a complete rundown of the protagonists in my published novels and stories:
‘The Beauty Without’ – A factory worker in a future dystopia.
‘Cut ’Em Down’ – A corrupt sheriff in the Old West.
‘Trouble with the Locals’ – A documentary filmmaker in rural America.
‘From a Vampire Film Review’ – A vampire film critic reviewing a new Jackass style movie.
‘Level Two: Time Trial’ – A spaceship pilot discovering the end of the universe.
‘Blue Diamond Pool’ – A young man buying his first house (job not specified).
Ghost Kiss – A female call centre operator who has an affair with a ghost.
‘Bite Back’ – A psychologist trapped in a psychiatric facility during a zombie outbreak.
‘The Best Laid Plans’ – A private eye investigating a murder case.
‘Modifications’ – A divorced man living in the bush (job not specified).
‘Displeasures of the Flesh’ – A mentor to a young king in a fantasy world.
‘Left Behind’ – A creative at an advertising agency who decides to move his family to a holiday town.
‘Buried Potential’ – A teenager who works on his father’s farm.
‘A Christmas Horror’ – A wilful child.
‘The Pothole’ – A young man (no job specified).
‘Old Secrets’ – An elderly retiree.
‘Even Superheroes Get the Blues’ – A superhero suffering from depression.
‘Mere Symptoms of Living’ – A journalist trapped in his toilet during a zombie apocalypse.
‘Threshold’ – A nurse with unpleasant psychic abilities.
‘Flesh Sandwiches’ – A small-town sheriff trying to make do in the aftermath of a zombie outbreak.
‘The Midway Hotel’ – A divorced travelling salesman.
‘The Devils of Cain Island’ – Salvage diver / 17th century ship’s captain
Hollywood Hearts Ablaze – A female film studio executive.
Invasion at Bald Eagle – A small town sheriff (primary); also a hippie and a journalist.
‘Test Case’ – Worker at an asteroid mine.
‘Unreal Estate’ – White collar worker (unspecified) looking to build his dream home.
‘Night Feeds’ – A recently bereaved parent, now hotel owner.
‘Teething Problems’ – Puzzle maker.