Modern Good Reads discussion

Good advice? Or not? I'm guest blogging on that topic today and invite your input at http://debbie-peterson.blogspot.com/

Only to an extent. If writers only wrote what they knew, there would be no sci-fi, no dystopian societies, not post-apocalyptic (and between you and me, much less romance). Good grief, we wouldn't have Tolkien or Douglas Adams or Vonnegut! What a horrible world.

I would amend it to this: When it comes to characters, write what you know, because nothing will kill a book faster than unbelievable characters.
This, of course, applies to fiction only. If you're writing non-fiction, you better make sure you know it, because accuracy is everything.

Write about what you know is subjective. It certainly helps if the subjects we are writing about are ones we have decent knowledge of, even if we're changing the settings to dystopian or science fiction. Of course, research can help overcome these difficulties. I've just finished a manuscript where the character studies social work, something I know nothing about. However, I have friends who do, and enlisted their help in getting it right.
In the first part of my new manuscript, my main protagonist is the victim in a hostage drama. While I haven't had any experience in that, I was the victim of armed robbery once, which is what leads to the hostage drama in this case. So I could write on that with some basis in experience, at least. I think it helps more when dealing with your character's emotions than it does with external subjects. It's harder to research emotions than it is something like settings.

I agree with Lynne and Tom. A writer knows about being human, about tragedy and victory, love and hate, poor and rich, etc. All of these can be brought into our prose (or poetry). The human experience can be in the caves of prehistoric Europe or a distant galaxy or fairy land or anywhere in between.

I have two different and possibly contradictory takes on this question.

First an author can only write what they know. Even if you research something you previously didn't know much about, it becomes part of your experience, albeit not a lived one (the above correspondent for example didn't go and become a social worker for example). You can't write about something completely outside of yourself, because the act of writing it, let alone research, immediately makes it part of you.

Having said that, I opt to write about subjects and people far removed from me in my daily life. Through the writing I discover these characters (and discover things about myself). In this way if I am discovering fresh things as the book progresses, then hopefully so will the reader and it will remain fresh for them. But again, I can't help feeling that what I'm revealing are just lesser seen and lesser trodden aspects of my own psyche, filtered through these other characters.

Write what you know?

Well, I suppose I should start with a short introduction.

My name is Jack Elgos - I used to be a smuggler.

My first books (an all action trilogy) have story lines loosely based around the dark world of the contraband business.

I've just released a forth, this one's an out and out adventure tale (motorcycles) of a different kind but this one has elements of contraband in there too.

I also have three more books which are reaching completion and, guess what? These stories are smuggler related.

So, I suppose you're right, writers should stick to what they know.
My area of expertise just happens to have been illegal.
I could say that's because of a mis-spent youth but that would be stretching things.
To be absolutely honest, I don't think I ever really grew up

Anyhow, all the best Helen.

Jack

I think this particular statement is always taken way too literally: my take on "write what you know" is that it refers to the honest emotional bearing of your work and is hence indicative of a self-reflective approach to understanding how your characters FEEL.

Anyone can research the details of Yuan dynasty, China or whatever. But to describe the emotions of a peasant Buddhist monk in The Red Turbans uprising of 1351, now, THAT will take some serious soul searching to align "what you know", EMOTIONALLY, with what such a person must have felt in these most stirring of times.

the difficulty with that example is the likelihood of a limited vocabulary for the character to express themselves, given how all languages have expanded their vocabularies (partially to reflect technology and objects increasing exponentially) into the modern world.

You may not need to be a scientist or engineer to write science fiction, or a detective to write mysteries, but you should be familiar with the genre you're writing in. Know what's been done in the way of material and writing techniques.

I follow the 'write what you feel' dictum. Real-world technical details are not the point of any fiction story. They're nice; but you can't take them at face-value precisely because the work is one of fiction. No one reads fiction with the same expectations as we might bring to a textbook we are studying for school. We read fiction for the feelings, not the facts. I suppose the broader sense here is 'write from experience' or 'write what you felt when you experienced something'. If you walked through a nuclear power plant on a tour, and you wrote what you felt about it; no one should claim you were over-reaching yourself or claiming to be savvy about nuclear physics.

Hm, not sure about that. I like my novels to be plausible, and if I read something in a novel set in the real world that I recognise simply would not happen in the real world then it really bugs me.

When I saw that via a friendA, I'm thinking of Anne McCaffrey, for sometime you find something out that other don't know. Or a understanding of something that you fighting with all your life, like a learning disability plus Dyscalculia, which is a problem with math for me.

I've never met a werewolf as they aren't supposed to be real. So being a horror author and werewolves my favorite subject, I can get away with more.

Helen,
Just saw this, so I'll answer your question in a direct fashion: it's bad advice. Ignoring things like sci-fi ETs, paranormal events, and time travel (if anyone beyond an insane asylum has really experienced these, I want to know about them), authors can write good fiction and basically ignore this moldy old advice. I can use many things I've experienced as background in my writing, but I don't think any reader can examine my prose and say, "he must have been there"--maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. As Clancy said, you just have to make your fiction seem real (I'm paraphrasing).
Just my opinion, of course....
r/Steve

Steven wrote: "Helen,
Just saw this, so I'll answer your question in a direct fashion: it's bad advice. Ignoring things like sci-fi ETs, paranormal events, and time travel (if anyone beyond an insane asylum has r..."

Agreed!

Master Melvin M. wrote: "Hi, I'm Melvyn, I know & understand God, He is wise & merciful, He does justice & rules the Universe with righteousness now & forever! Alleluia! Amen!"

Thanks for that contribution caller. Timely & relevant as ever

He does justice and righteousness but apparently doesn't recognise sarcasm