Write what you know is a common piece of advice you might hear from a writing teacher, but how valid is that proclamation? After all, did J.K Rowling know anything about magic? All those fantasy, sci fi and historical fiction books are not about our times or even our planet or realm, and yet authors write about them, so are they ignoring this advice? And even those who write about murders and describe the corpses, have all those authors actually walked onto a crime scene and seen a body like that? I doubt it. Certainly some might, but plenty of others haven’t.

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What the instruction to write what you know isn’t saying

The advice to write what you know isn’t suggesting that we should all stick to memoirs or contemporary fiction. It’s not suggesting that if we’re a banker that we can’t write about someone who is a scientist. It is, however, pointing out that it is more difficult to write about something that you haven’t experienced to some degree, and so for beginners writing what you know is a very good place to start. But the advice is still relevant for any author, we just shouldn’t take it at face value.

Many stories that have been written could not possibly have been experienced by the author, and so we could say that they have ignored the advice to write what they know. However, if the writing has a depth of understanding of relationships, characters and their reactions, then it’s likely that the author knows about that aspect of their story.

No matter where we set a story, and no matter what events we throw at our characters, if we know our characters and understand why they do what they do, we will have some of the benefits that comes from writing what we know.

The benefit of writing what you know

• It’s much easier to write about things that you know about than to write about things of which you have no personal experience;
• You are more likely to write with greater depth, understanding and clarity;
• You will be more able to accurately describe real places if you have actually been there;
• A personal perspective and writing that springs from one’s experience creates a strong voice that resonates with readers.

My first four books were set in a fantasy realm attached to our world. The fourth book (You Can’t Shatter Me) was set in the high school where I worked as a teacher and was about school bullying. I found it much easier to write and wrote it in about 3 months, whereas the other books took several years.

After completing my YA Fantasy Series (The Diamond Peak Series) I wrote a couple of adult books where the protagonist is a very similar person to me, lives in a similar place and has had similar life experiences. In Worlds Within Worlds the subject matter of cyberbullying by an author upset over a review the protagonist had posted was one I was familiar with. Again, this was a relatively easy book to write, whereas the book about a princess taken as a slave by a neighbouring kingdom after they kill her family is one I may never finish.

Even though these adult books are niche market and haven’t sold as well as the YA series, they are significant literary works with a stronger voice than my earlier words. They gave me a lot of satisfaction to write and I am very proud of them.

Writing your life into someone else’s story

Authors can draw on any and all their life experiences and write them into someone else’s story. Someone working in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, will become aware of issues in that industry, and these could become the basis for a story that examines those issues. Some authors set their stories in similar work environments, where they know the office dynamics. I’m not sure I could ever write about an office because I’ve never worked in one! Reading books sets in an office or watching movies set in an office would suffice to some degree, of course.

My life, like yours, has gone through many changes and each change brought challenges and experiences with it that I can draw on in my writing. I was a teacher who became a performer, then a teacher again and then an author and editor. I used aspects of those life experiences in several books, but the character in the book experiencing those things was not me. I also wrote characters based on people that I’d met and interacted with enough to get a sense of them and their life—at least to some degree.

No character is ever based on any single person, but different characteristics of real people can combine into one ‘hybrid’ character. I don’t do this consciously. It just happens. I also married and had a child, and though I haven’t written that experience specifically into a book yet, The Diamond Peak Series has a parent and child relationship in it, and I drew on my own experience to make the dynamics of the relationship believable.

Most of us have had some experience of romance, even if it failed miserably, so if you have a romantic thread in your book, look to your own experience for insight.

If you’re looking for a weakness in a character look at yourself. Maybe they can share one of your personal challenges—like difficulty trusting, for example.

Write what you can imagine based on what you know

Though my Diamond Peak Series was set a fantasy world where demons roamed, the concept behind it was something I knew very well. The four books are an analogy for the Buddhist path to enlightenment, and since I’d been a practicing Buddhist for 10 years when I wrote it, that aspect of the series—and the key point—was something I knew very well.

I also spent so much time in that imaginative world that I came to know it intimately, and I spent so much time pretending to be my protagonists there, that I really did come to know them well.

What if you are a woman writing a male point of view or visa versa? Then you draw upon your own experience and observations of the opposite sex. If you’re a woman writing a man, then watch men, listen to them talk, see how they react to their own life experiences, and read books written by men about men. The opposite applies to a man writing a woman’s point of view. If you know the opposite sex well, you can write them well.

Learn about what you don’t know

If you don’t know about something you want to write about, then learn about it. Research is vital, and it’s really easy to do now that we have the internet. Want to write a historical novel? Then make sure that you study the time and the people your story is based on until you do know it well.

Want to write science fiction? Then study whatever area of science relates to your story.

Want to write about India or some other place you haven’t been to? Take a trip before you start, and if you can’t do that then watch documentaries, look at photos and talk to people who have been.

In The Locksmith’s Secret Ella went to England before I’d been further than from Heathrow to Gatwick myself. After I’d researched and written the story, I sent the manuscript to a friend who had been to England and asked her if it matched her impressions, and she added a few things that she thought the character might have noticed. When I arrived in London a couple of months after I’d written the book, I found it exactly as I’d written it. I do have a good imagination, but it was the research that enabled me to imagine actually being there as the character so I could write it. I also had plenty of other travel experiences to draw on for things like the plane trip from Australia to London.

What ‘write what you know’ really means

The advice to ‘write what you know’ really just means that you should draw on your own experience for your writing as much as possible, and that you should learn about anything you don’t know about that you want to write about.

Do you write what you know? In what way?

This is part of a series of blog posts on how to write a novel. It won’t just cover the technical details, but also the emotional journey we take and the personal challenges we meet on the road from potential author to author.

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