Write What You Know: Debunked

Write what you know can be taken literally by many writers who shy away from exploring and writing about what they haven’t directly experienced. I feel it needs broader interpretation:

To know something isn’t just to have firsthand exposure to it.

Knowing something can come from learning about it and being alive to the emotions associated with it. Writers create magnificent worlds without practical knowledge of them. We would have no sci-fi or fantasy or other remarkable works of imagination if only what was experienced directly was written. This holds true even for works of gritty realism. For example, Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage, a successful novel lauded for its realistic battle scenes, without having experienced battle firsthand. In the same vein, every mystery writer is not a detective. Neither is every writer who has ever written a murder scene, a real-life killer.

Storytelling, whether prose or poetry, rises above and beyond the constraints of circumstances, culture, politics, gender. It must not be confined by what we know, but rather set free by what we can imagine.

So how can you write convincingly about what you have never experienced? Check out these Scribe’s Tips:

Research
The best way to put yourself in the know is to find out as much as you can about the subject. If it’s a character, flesh them out as much as you can behaviourally, psychologically. If it’s a setting, research similar environments. Facts ground your work and put you in command of the subject. Even if it’s a world you are creating from scratch, make it as detailed as possible. The most outlandish, fantastical creations are still informed by aspects of human life and emotion, whether it be in their acceptance, variation or negation.

Superimpose
Many writers use this trick: When writing about something that is not a direct experience, they tend to superimpose the nearest experience to it and write about that. Love, loss, hate, betrayal, separation and other human emotions are universal after all. Maybe the character in your story has lost his brother. Your brother is alive and well, but last year you lost your beloved labrador. Think about that. Let those feelings of loss overtake you and then use your writer’s imagination to magnify and embellish. Just because the trigger event is different does not mean the feelings conveyed cannot be authentic. The same can be done for any aspect of your writing. You have never been to the desert but you have been to the beach on a sweltering day. You have never met a serial killer but you know the butcher down the street. Write what you don’t know by using what you DO know.

Empathize
Writers have to be incredibly sensitive to human behaviour. A good way to write in a personal manner about emotions and events never directly experienced is to imagine yourself living through them. It means putting yourself in the place of your protagonist/antagonist, taking on their persona, suspending judgement and imagining how you would feel in the same situation. It means transporting yourself into the skin, setting, situation of a character and bringing empathy to your writing.

Dare to write the unknown. Until next week!