Writing Blog Number 2

20240115 Write What You Know

Write What You Know

This was the first bit of advice I was given that I can remember when it came to the content of my writing: Write what you know!

This was emphasised in primary school, and then through high school.

As such, in the early years of my writing, a lot of the incidents I included were autobiographical. In fact, my first few long works, written when I was in high school, my friends had great fun trying to work out who was who. (In primary school, my long work my friends knew because I didn't change the names!) Even in the novel I wrote in my final year of high school that got me out of other work, it was pretty obvious who the people were.

As I've got older, I will still use little incidents that happened to me or around me or viewed by me because it just adds a touch of realism to my mind, And considering I write predominantly horror, it helps to make the horror (again, to me) more visceral.

If I look at the story Lines of Communication in my port... the first three chapters happened almost exactly as I wrote them to the coupling pair. The stuff around them was an amalgamation of various incidents from other parties, but they all happened as well. They were both my friends, but after that third year, we'd left school and it just stopped. I just took it and ran with it. The later chapters were based on other things I saw with other couples. Only a few of the incidents actually came whole-cloth from my imagination; I just made them into a coherent story. Autobiographical? Maybe.

I do not tend to do that so much any longer, for what it's worth. I will base stories on the incidents, but to tell them whole-cloth? Not nowadays.

So, how do people write fantasy and science fiction, about monsters and unreal creatures? They've been invented whole-cloth, surely.

This is what the phrase Write what you know means, I feel.

You cannot just write. Even for a pantser like me, you cannot just write. You need to know the area, the characters, etc. Every character you write is based on a combination of people you know, people in books you have read, people you've seen on TV and in films, characters from plays, emotions from songs, people you've heard about from other people. You cannot just create people out of nothing - there is a basis or a lot of bases upon which you've built. It also shows the value of world-building. A lot of my stories are set in South Australia because I know the place really well and that gives it a sense of realism. But if I want to set a story in a city I make up or, like in my fantasy, whole worlds, then I need to make maps, give at least some sketchy outlines to what is what and where. If I set it in, say, the USA, then I need to do research on the place (and the joy of the Internet is I can email real people, use Google maps and post questions on fora to get answers to questions). There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Readers will pick up if you make it up without this knowledge. It is why so many magic systems in books do not work - because people do not bother to world-build it properly. It is why books written by people from other countries who rely on Wikipedia do not work - they have no idea and have not asked (like the idiot who said Melbourne to Adelaide was one day by horse... 800 km, sure).

Write what you know means "do your research, create your characters and build your worlds before you start." Even pantsers like me need to remember this!