Write what you know?

[nancylebov]

"Write what you know" is a really standard piece of advice, but I'm not sure there's much evidence it's sound. There are certainly plenty of counter-examples. Did Swift know the Lilliputians? Had Dante or Milton researched the details of Heaven and Hell? Did Shakespeare know anything about Jews? (For more, see Gross's _Shylock_.)

Writing what you know will protect you from certain sorts of criticism, but I suspect that writing vividly about what fascinates you whether you know anything about it or not takes you further in terms of entrancing the reader.

There's more to fiction than immersion, but immersion is a crucial starting point.

I'm especially interested in what writers have to say about this--I just read the stuff.

Addendum: My favorite critical theory is "Criticism, at its best, is an effort to identify the qualities which seem to accompany success". I don't know where I got it from, and the phrasing probably isn't exact. To my mind, it means that you always check your theories about what fiction needs against the fiction which seems to satisfy people in large numbers over a long period of time and at various levels of knowledge and attention. If the fiction is too recent for the long period of time, you take your best guess. I'm not saying this is the only possible measure of success in fiction, but any fiction which meets it is successful.

Any rule which is broken by a significant number of successful works of fiction should be modified to indicate what sort of fiction it covers or else written off as something that just sounds plausible.

Criticism which does detailed, funny savaging of fiction which deserves it might not be criticism at its best, but it's still worth reading.

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about "write what you know" but I'm fairly sure about "don't write what your readership knows better than you". For instance, I could set a story in classical Athens and get away with it. I know far more than nost of my audience about the patterns of life and thought in that universe. I would not try to set a story in a small Liberal Arts College in the mid west in the 1950s because there would be tons of people who know that world and its nuances way better than I ever will.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I agree with Chickenfeet up above. I tend to think of it as "Write what you know when you know it, and if you don't know, learn how to research."

And yes, that can also relate to imaginative creations. Besides magical realism, which is not supposed to convey the frisson of reality--its intention is completely opposite, the frisson of the irrational irrupting into the rational world--parallel research is going to be your best friend. So in other words, if you want to posit a world of centaurs, some research on horse bodies, perhaps some talk with an osteopath on how the bone structure would work, designing a world that really fits human/horse, what kind of dwellings would they build or would they, thinking about notions of private and social custom, etc, etc, makes you "know" your world and it becomes more convincing.

[madfilkentist]

It's a good thing Swift didn't know about the square-cube law, or he'd never have gotten started.

But of course, his point wasn't realism, it was satire. So what he had to know in order to write was human psychology.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Should that not be the given for every writer, to try to understand human psychology?

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

But... IIRC... he apparently did know about Deimos and Phobos, before they had been discovered (voyage to Laputa). Or is that an urban legend?

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of it as "Write what you know when you know it, and if you don't know, learn how to research."

Bingo. That was the point I was going to raise.

-- Steve wishes he could attribute this quote properly; "'Write what you know' is responsible for all those novels about literary professors trying to screw their students."

[(Anonymous)]

I recalled something along those lines by science fiction author Joe Haldeman in some essay or forward or such. Googling seems to confirm it, with the actual quote being:

"Bad books on writing and thoughtless English professors solemnly tell beginners to 'Write What You Know', which explains why so many mediocre novels are about English professors contemplating adultery."

Not the same as your quote, but the same concept.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joe_Haldeman

http://www.knowledgefun.com/quote/j/jo/joe_haldeman.html

- Captain Button

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

There's more than one way of knowing.

I know this landscape I live in, its history, and its lore:
I know what it is like to live the life I have lived:
I know, in a superficial but productive way, something about what it is to live the life of people I have known or observed:
I know, in a superficial but productive way, some other landscapes I have visited or lived in for a short time and something about their history and the lives and feelings of the people who live there:
I know, in a superficial but productive way, some landscape history and lore and lives from places I have never been:
I also know, possibly more deeply than anything else I know, the landscapes I have imagined, and the history and lore and people in them.

Okay, and then, potentially, I can know anything I read about, anythin I can see a picture of, anything I can be told about -- in some way that may be superficial and may be productive.

I don't take "write what you know" to mean "confine yourself to the narrowest interpretations of your own experience" but "draw on what you know to comprehend what you learn second hand, and come to know what you write." In other words, don't be a callow, supercilious dumbass, and get it right, not just in facts, but in understanding.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Did Swift know the Lilliputians? Had Dante or Milton researched the details of Heaven and Hell? Did Shakespeare know anything about Jews? (For more, see Gross's _Shylock_.)

I don't think these really qualify as "counterexamples."

- Swift didn't know Liliputians, because there aren't any; but he knew the British classes he was satirizing, intimately.

- Dante knew the people he was putting into Hell; Hell itself was a structure he created to categorize them properly.

- Milton may not have known Satan, but he certainly knew hybris.

- I don't know whether Shakespeare knew Jews, but the character of Shylock suggests that he probably didn't know any Jews very well: he's full of stereotypes. What makes him work despite the stereotypes is that he's a deeply human character, and if Shakespeare knew anything, it was human characters.

The real problem with "write what you know" is that most people think it's an exhortation to make all fiction autobiographical. It isn't. It's an exhortation to put what you know and are passionate about into your fiction, of any sort.