Write what you know--but do you know you know it?

[Feo Takahari]

First, the obligatory:

Now, I'd like to describe what I didn't know I knew.

During a period of volunteerism in my life, I spent many weekends tending to vegetables in a town called Colma. Settlers considered Colma to be worthless land, uneven and perpetually shrouded in fog, so they used it as a place to bury their dead. The town is essentially one giant graveyard, with the dead outnumbering the living a hundred to one, and my vegetables were temporary occupants of a patch that would one day be filled with more tombstones.

Another author realized the potential of the town, and he wrote an urban fantasy, Alive in Necropolis. Prior to reading that book, Colma as a subject simply hadn't occurred to me. It was just something I was used to, and I never seriously considered that other people might find it interesting.

As an open question to my fellow writers: when you write what you know, might there be anything you don't know you know? What things around you might you write about that other people might not know anything about?

 

[Twook00]

I think the key here is being observant. Most of what I think I know seems dull simply because its my life and I'm familiar with it.

I watched Jim Gaffigan last night talk about McDonalds for fifteen minutes in his comedy special. I've eaten there more times than I'm willing to admit to myself, and I've never come out of there thinking "I could use this experience." Yet, Jim Gaffigan had me crying with his routine. He took something so mundane as finding that "bonus fry" at the bottom of his bag and managed to make it both hilarious and relatable.

 

[Philip Overby]

Due to my past experience working in independent wrestling, I've had many people tell me I should write something about that. Sometimes I tell stories about being spit on, cursed, "propositioned," and all the unique and interesting people I met. There really is no other experience I've had that measures up to it. It was surreal, exhilarating, and bizarre all at the same time.

I took the experience for granted I suppose, and I haven't written anything about it as of yet. However, just by verbally telling some of my stories and seeing people laugh or groan, I know that one book on the subject might be a good idea. Not an autobiography or memoir by any means, but just something to reflect that.

That said, I try to take each experience in my life and ingrain it into my writing in some way. It's impossible for me to not inject Japanese culture into my writing in some way since this has been my home for four years. That doesn't mean I only want to write about Japanese culture, but I find myself including things like onsen (hot spring) in my stories. Just subtle influence.

I do think that's one way we can find our niche in a market. Our unique experiences as humans help influence our writing in many subtle ways.

 

[Penpilot]

Well, the novel I'm just finishing up is an urban fantasy set in my home town, specifically in and around an area known as the Downtown Eastside. It's basically the most impoverish area of town and where the homeless and drug addicts congregate. I spent a good part of my pre-school years down there with my grandmother. She lived just outside of that area, but we used to walk through it every day on our way to a couple of department stores. I have a subplot that speaks a little about the lives of the people who live down there.

In my novel I draw a lot from my own experiences and try to capture the feel of the area and extrapolate it out into an imagined 5-block neighborhood that I insert into that area. At first I was going to just drop the neighborhood in and overwrite an existing area that seem to have no character to it, but then after some research I decided not to. I found out the area had no character because it used to be Japantown and for those not familiar with this story, during WW2 all the Japanese got taken and relocated into camps by the Canadian and US governments. Most never came back. It was a very dark point in history, so I didn't feel right about removing this culturally dead zone. I even added a few tiny-tiny-tiny hints at this past.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I come from a medical family - my father was a United States Navy Seal and corpsman (Chief) for my entire childhood and then eventually became a paramedic, and my mother worked in the administrative side of emergency rooms. A bit of a gruesome upbringing that brings with it a familiarity with the results of accident and violence. So there are a lot of things that I take for granted as what I would consider descriptive "gimme's" that surprise me when other people don't understand; for example the symptoms of arterial blood flow or what the phrase "in like a penny, out like a pizza" means in terms of actual damage. I get told by fellow Scribes that I know a little too much about torture to make them strictly comfortable... well, conversations with my now-retired Dad often revolve around emergency surgical procedures he watched on TV and methods for killing people with your bare hands. *sigh*

Yeah, I was a weird kid.

 

[Chessie]

Feo, I'm totally looking up Colma now. It sounds so interesting. Great question, by the way. To answer it, growing up in Alaska has its advantages. This state is vast and ripe with history and the strange. Its a different way of life up here. Sled dogs, reindeer meat, snowshoes, whale oil lamps, outhouses, massive mountains, glaciers, northern lights, sourdough, gold...a last frontier feel is the inspiration for my current project. There is a strong Russian influence up here due to the state's history. Pair that with Alaska native culture (specifically Athabascan) and my fantasy world is a blend of these things.

I've still had to do a fair bit of research into some things but the idea for the story setting itself came from my heart because I'm in love with this place.

 

[Jabrosky]

Between ages six and twelve my family lived as expats in Singapore, and my fondest memory from that place was the jungle that grew there. Much of the country is urbanized and modern as any in America, but there were still patches of tropical jungle scattered here and there. The biggest one I remember grew on both sides of the highway that connected our suburb to the downtown area. I loved gazing out the car window at that jungle whenever we drove past, wondering what sort of beasts, exotic people, and other secrets lurked within. There is something about the tropical rainforest that excites the Western imagination, which may explain why so many of the great adventure stories take place in the tropics. Mind you, I don't set all my stories in jungles these days, but nonetheless I feel a fantasy world is incomplete without at least one big jungle region teeming with prehistoric monsters.

Oddly, growing up in Asia has never stimulated a special interest in Asian cultures for me. I guess dealing with Asian people in my day-to-day life made them seem mundane.

 

[Quillstine]

That is really good question. As a writer, I tend to write about what I don’t know! I mean sure my life and areas of knowledge influence what I write, but on a whole the things I have lived seem to “mundane” for me to actually consider the crux of a story! Instead, I look to other ways of living that I have not experienced; locations and characters that seem “interesting” to me because they’re not the ones I was surrounded by as I grew up.
I had a similarish experience just a month ago when I first moved to New York. I had always wanted to do writing classes, so not soon after getting here I signed up to some. One of the classes I did was focusing on people’s unique stories, the things you didn’t even realize about yourself that makes you a unique writer.
I grew up in taverns, in Australia. Like this one only with a lot less Dragons and Halflings and a lot more 40 year old perpetual drunks with fully pickled livers! I started working behind the bar at 8 Y/O (Odd Australian low that made this legal, I was a pro beer puller and shot slinger by age 10!) and I guess that experience alone has given me a plethora of extremely colorful, if slightly slurred of speech characters I could put in my novels! Like butch, a crotchety old man who wobbled like jelly and spent his life living in a caravan next to the bar (could never be far away!). He looked about 1000, guess he was probably mid 40’s, his skin was rougher than sand paper and I swear he must have bathed in cans of beer. Despite his continual addiction to alcohol and endlessly inebriated lifestyle, the man could doze a line more level than a billion years of relentless desert winds could blow. Often the American Military would come out on training exercise with Bulldozers full of more gadgets than aps on your IPhone. Laser levelers, GPS tracking, and horizontal stabilizing gyros. I kid you not, if the damn thing was not pained “CAT” yellow, you could mistake it for a space ship. Butch, who would sit at the bar and jitter his stubby up to quivering lips, never spilling a drop, would bet the yankies $100 bucks, or a few slabs, he could out grade them. Sure enough, with cocky smiles and assured gestures the Americans would confidently accept. My mum would wrap butch up a meat pie in alfoil, which he would throw in the exhaust of his old diesel “knob and lever” 1950’s dozer (would be cooked by lunch time that way!) and if he would go. As if man and machine were one, Butch would doze a straighter, more level “road” than the American ever could, and in half the time!
I spent all my childhood in the desert. No power, internet, phone coverage. No grass or rain for that matter, town population was a WHOPING 11 folks (2 being my parents, 3 my sisters and 1 being me, meant my family made 50% of the place!). School was done over the radio; the doctors flew into town once a month via aircraft and the nearest town of any substantial population was 200 miles over shimmering horizons. I was driving myself around by motorbike at 5 or so, car at around 9. Out of sheer boredom and lack of other things to do, my dad taught me to fly and I was often out trying to kill myself in a plane by age 13 or so. My life was different, even compared to most other Australians…but I HATED it. All I wanted to do was live somewhere I could have LIGHTS and a FRIDGE. The desert, despite its amazing freedom and beauty, to me represented a sweat inducing and dull existence! I got job and was out by 14…thank the star filled skies of my youth!
I have many tales that often come out over the dinner table, and my friends say “instead of fantasy, you should write this, people would read this”. And I always think…nope it is mundane and boring and endless like the damn place I grew up in, no one would read it because I myself would skip over a book like that in a heartbeat.
But I guess it is what I don’t know I know…..

 

[The Dark One]

It is a good question, albeit related to one discussed here occasionally...

My first two novels were both quite surreal, set in non-existent places. Both got lots of praise and encouragement but neither got published. My third novel was set in a place I know well (London, plus other parts of England that I love) and dealt with two subjects that have obsessed me all my life (football and music). It got published. My next novel was set in the place I grew up (the North Shore of Sydney) and the main character is a lawyer...just like me. It got published also and has just been featured in the big Australian Summer Reading Guide...which is a pretty major coup (so I'm told).

I wonder if there's a moral to my story?

 

[Dragev]

In writing fantasy, I guess we all write about stuff we don't know (hands up all who participated in epic battles between monsters and elves )
But it's true that I tend (as I guess we all do) to put in my own experiences; the subway I ride every day to work goes out from the ground between two towns, so I see a fair share of different mornings, some of which prompted me to jot down a description in my trusty notebook. All the descriptions of sunrise I have are from there.
I could go on about my knowledge of Norwegian and French nature, history and culture and so forth. So I guess I "know that I know" quite a lot; my ex-girlfriend (and now best friend) is studying art and painting, and she taught me the value of observation; weather, nature, buildings, people...Everything around us, even the seemingly dullest or unimportant things can yield interesting and unexpected details.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Can it also be that writing what you know is trickier than what you don't?

If you're writing about something you're intimately familiar, would you hold yourself to a higher standard when it comes to quality? I'm currently working on a scene where the character is at a rave party somewhere. It's something I've got a bit of personal experience with and I find it really tricky to communicate the feeling and intensity of the music in just the right way.

I'm sure there are other situations where writing what you know is easier than just making things up - they may not even be the exception, but still...
Anyone else experienced this or have any thoughts on it?

 

[Jabrosky]

Can it also be that writing what you know is trickier than what you don't?

If you're writing about something you're intimately familiar, would you hold yourself to a higher standard when it comes to quality? I'm currently working on a scene where the character is at a rave party somewhere. It's something I've got a bit of personal experience with and I find it really tricky to communicate the feeling and intensity of the music in just the right way.

I'm sure there are other situations where writing what you know is easier than just making things up - they may not even be the exception, but still...
Anyone else experienced this or have any thoughts on it?

That's odd, because I would think it would be easier to describe something you've personally experienced. All you'd have to do is draw on your memories rather than do research.

A few times in the past I have tried to write male leads with Asperger's Syndrome like myself, and I have found it's a bit easier to characterize them since I can use my own psychology as a resource. However, most of the time I prefer to write dashing action heroes who can easily get the girl. Said heroes still tend to have blond hair and blue eyes like myself though.

Come to think of it, it might be possible to bestow Asperger's Syndrome upon one of these characters. Who says all Aspies must be unattractive geeks?

 

[Svrtnsse]

That's odd, because I would think it would be easier to describe something you've personally experienced. All you'd have to do is draw on your memories rather than do research.

Indeed. It doesn't make intuitive sense that it would be more difficult.
The challenge lies in communicating the exact right feeling of the moment without losing the flow. Since it's something that's a big deal to me, it's something that I care about getting right. I'm thinking this might make me more critical than I perhaps need to be.

After all, it's not a piece I'm writing to publish (other than in the showcase and for different reasons), but I'm still personally vested in getting this detail just right - which is a bit silly really.

 

[Quillstine]

The challenge lies in communicating the exact right feeling of the moment without losing the flow. Since it's something that's a big deal to me, it's something that I care about getting right. I'm thinking this might make me more critical than I perhaps need to be..

I get this a lot. When I write about something I just know, I can skip over the details that makes it legible to others who read it. Just because something is ingrained to me, does not mean my readers will have the experience or lingo to understand what I do!

Sometimes you have to step back, and look at it as if you never had experienced such an event and try to decipher if it makes sense. Currently dealing with this very issue in my WIP!