Writing
What You Know
(And Knowing What You Write)
by Tim Waggoner
One of the first
bits of wisdom passed along to beginning writers is to Write
What You Know. On the surface, this seems to be good advice.
Young writers (young in terms of experience and craft, if
not necessarily age) have so much to master -- characterization,
plot, pacing, dialogue, point of view -- that it helps to
have raw story material ready to hand. The easier it is
to come up with ideas for stories, the easier it will be
for the beginner to plop his or her behind down in front
of the computer screen and start grinding out those first
million practice words. Plus, tapping one’s own experience
for stories teaches a writer important skills in observation,
recall, and self-examination.
All well
and good. But Write What You Know holds a special frustration
for the would-be author of fantasy, horror and science fiction
because by definition our stories deal with things which
for the most part don’t exist (or at least don’t
exist yet).
So what
do beginners do? They draw on the only sources of material
they have -- or think they have -- books, stories, TV shows
and films. And usually the result is warmed-over Tolkien,
Stephen King or Star Trek. This isn’t necessarily
a bad way to begin. Student painters often learn by copying
the works of masters, and many of today’s most accomplished
authors went through their own periods of informal literary
apprenticeship. The problem is when beginners don’t
realize they’re copying and thus delay, perhaps forever,
developing subject matter and a style -- a voice -- of their
own.
You can Write
What You Know in speculative fiction, though, without having
to rely so heavily on imitation. The trick is to learn to
interpret our little aphorism in different ways.
First, you
need to realize and -- perhaps more importantly -- value
what you already know. Review the events of your life by
creating what amounts to a basic character sketch of yourself.
Where were you born? Where did you grow up and go to school?
What was your family life like? Ethnic or religious background?
Jot down the details.
Now go over
the inner landscape of your life, examining events and situations
that had an impact on you emotionally. Family relationships,
friendships, first loves, tragic losses, and so on. Again,
write notes.
Now take
a look at the educational experiences you’ve had and
what you learned from them -- subjects that you studied
and enjoyed, camps you attended as a child, museums you’ve
visited, trips and vacations you’ve taken, training
sessions for work. Once more, take notes.
When you’re
finished, you’ll have a fairly decent idea of what
you already know -- experiences, events and knowledge that
are yours and yours alone. You can use these notes as grist
for the story mill. For example, when I was five, my aunt
took me shopping at a large department store and somehow
we became separated. Lost and scared, I panicked, running
up and down the aisles searching for her, not calling her
name (though I desperately wanted to) because I was a shy
child afraid of embarrassing my aunt by shouting.
An emotional
event for me, one whose details I can recall quite clearly
to this day. How can I turn this into speculative fiction?
By using my imagination to transform my experience.
Fantasy:
I’m a youngster with latent magical abilities and my
guardian/teacher has purposely lost me in a large, confusing,
frightening place -- city streets or forest -- in the hope
of forcing my talents to come to the fore. I’ll need
to use my powers to find my aunt and protect myself from
the dangers surrounding me. If I don’t, I’ll die.
Horror: The
reason my aunt has lost me is that she no longer knows who
I am. In fact, as far as she’s concerned, I’ve
never existed.
Science Fiction:
My aunt and I are members of a tribe of space-traveling
nomads visiting a port on a strange world. Not only I am
separated from my aunt, but I have to deal with an alien
culture. When I finally reconnect with my aunt, I learn
that she abandoned me on purpose, to teach me a hard lesson
about learning to fend for myself in an alien environment
-- a vital survival skill for our people.
Not great
ideas in and of themselves, perhaps, but they’re places
to start. And all grown from the seed of one experience
that probably lasted less than five minutes. Your life is
full of such seeds; you only need recognize them and apply
a liberal dose of imagination.
After you’ve
realized what you already know, you can take the next step:
expanding what you know through research, taking classes,
and conducting interviews.
Research
in and of itself is simple, if time-consuming, scut work.
Use a tip that a professor passed along to me in grad school
to make your research more efficient -- get someone else
to do the work for you. Now this doesn’t mean hiring
someone to be your research assistant (as convenient as
one might be). It means researching smart. Need to
know something about time paradoxes for a story? You can
read dozens and books and articles on the subject, piecing
together bits of information on your own. Or you can read
a book like Time Travel, a volume in the Writer’s
Digest Science Fiction Writing Series. The author has researched
time travel theory for you and collected his findings in
one easy-to-use reference.
Need something
complicated explained in an easy-to-understand fashion,
perhaps with some clarifying visuals? Try children’s
nonfiction books. They’re written so kids (and anyone
else for that matter) can read them easily, they cover core
concepts and provide pictures and diagrams. One of the best
reference works I have is The Medieval Castle by
Fiona Macdonald. It’s chock full of interesting facts
about castles and contains tons of detailed drawings. Adult
reference works might tell you more about castles, but this
book shows you.
Taking classes
is an excellent way to expand what you know. Ron Sarti,
author of the wonderful fantasy novels The Chronicles
of Scar, Legacy of the Ancients and the forthcoming
Lanterns of God, takes riding classes in order to
learn more about horsemanship and add further verisimilitude
to his novels. Classes and workshops on just about anything
are offered by colleges, adult education programs, libraries,
and museums.
You can also
fall back on the most common way humans have of obtaining
information: talking to people. Need to know something about
early human civilization? Call up an anthropology professor
at a nearby university. Some years back, I was working on
a story about a lycanthrope. I knew wolves have a keen sense
of smell and hearing, but I had no idea how good their eyesight
was. I had the impression that canine eyesight is poor,
but I wasn’t certain, and I couldn’t find any
mention of lupine visual ability in any of the books I’d
gotten from the library. I needed to know what my main character
would -- or would not -- be able to see once he had assumed
wolf form. I called a naturalist at a nearby park and found
out that wolves actually have quite good eyesight. If I
hadn’t checked, I would’ve gone with my earlier,
mistaken impression, to the detriment of my story.
Research
isn’t only sifting through what other people have written
or listening to what they have to say. As writers, we need
more than mere facts; we need sensory and psychological
impressions of our own in order to create a reality on the
page. We need direct experience.
Writing about
a character who’s a groom in a stable? Get a part-time
job on a horse farm. Offer to work for free, if necessary.
Your payment is the experience you’ll gain, which is
far more valuable to you as a writer than mere money. Mystery
author Patricia Cornwell worked part-time in a coroner’s
office to gain first-hand knowledge of forensic science
for her best-selling novels.
Writing a
story about dragons? Visit a zoo and observe how the alligators,
snakes and lizards move. Watch the elephants and rhinos.
Then go home and use your observations to create a realistic,
believable dragon on the page -- one drawn from your own
experience.
Writing about
medieval times? Visit a renaissance fair. Smell the food
cooking, listen to musicians strumming their lutes, feel
your teeth rattle as jousting knights exchange lance blows.
(Of course, you’ll have to ignore the ATM machine labeled
"King’s exchequer.")
During a
World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, some friends and
I wandered down to the tourist attractions on the waterfront.
While others headed for the restaurants and shopping, we
made straight for a dry-docked submarine and walked through
it, taking in the details and imagining what life aboard
must have been like. In many ways, there’s not much
difference between traveling undersea and journeying through
space, so with a little tweaking of my imagination, the
submarine became an interstellar craft. Now I can write
more realistically about spaceflight because, in a sense,
I’ve toured a spaceship.
Writers of
speculative fiction can write what they know simply by realizing
and valuing their current knowledge, becoming more effective
researchers, and gaining direct experience in creative ways.
Of course, the best advice for how to write what you know
was given to us by Henry James: "Try to be one of the
people on whom nothing is lost."
Live fully,
live deeply, and write.
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