JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #11
July 30, 2020
I was listening to a recorded writing panel in which an alternate to the advice "Write what you know" was presented. The speakers had all heard the advice as they were learning their craft and entering into the writing life, and over time, dissatisfied with that advice, one of them had adjusted the phrase to suit them. I don’t want to talk about this writer’s particular rephrase, but I do want to say one or two things about the advice to "write what you know."
First, I can’t remember encountering the advice to write what I know except in dismissive terms when I first started exploring the craft of writing, so I never took it very seriously. I’m actually confused that anyone should take it seriously, but apparently there are teachers and books out there that believe it is the utmost imperative that writers write what they know.
To its detriment, this advice is broadly misapplied. New writers are told to look to their own expertise about particular subjects and to write about those things. If you have a degree in biology, it might be suggested that you incorporate biology in whatever story you want to write. Or if you know a thing or two about building cabinets, maybe a character needs to be a cabinet-maker. Auto mechanics should write stories about people who fix cars and tune engines. You can see how this is terrible advice.
Sometimes the advice is made to apply to the idea of writing about your past, of thinking about your upbringing and the shaping influences on your life, and to write quasi- and semi-autobiographical stories that explore those influences. A lot of profound fiction emerges from the impulse to explore our roots, but the advice to write what you know shouldn’t really be meant to elicit autobiographical self-reflection.
Stories at their root are about human beings and competing desires, and the most productive way to understand "Write what you know" is that we should use our own hard-won knowledge of human nature and human behavior, the emotions and impulses and rationalizations that impel people to make choices and pursue different kinds of goals, as a guide for understanding and crafting our own fiction. The setting can be fantastical, on the shores of faerie, or ensconced within the gritty reality of Mumbai in 1964, but it will always be about human beings and the interaction of their intentions. By mining what we know about out fellow human beings, we as writers can bring any setting to life. That’s all we should ever take from "Write what you know."
I’m not sure what the originator of the phrase actually meant by it (in fact, the history is unclear), but we should never use "Write what you know" to limit what we can try to write about. Certainly we should do our research so that we get real-world details right, but "Write what you know" should not be prescriptive and especially not proscriptive; it must be permissive: it should advise us to trust that we know our characters, that we know what they will do and how they will act. We only need to write it down.
Next: On Vision