Aspiring writers are bombarded with pathetic platitudes to kickstart their writing skills. On this list of general snoozers is “write every day” and “read as much as you can”. Tips and tricks like these work to be sure but the one I really changed my mind on was the cliché “write what you know”.
What Is It and What Was My Position?
The logic behind the advice “write what you know” goes as follows. “If you’re just starting out as a writer, draw on what you know in your life and use that as inspiration in your writing.” So if you’re a new writer and wondering how you could possibly write about a fictional world where everything takes place underwater, for example, perhaps you shouldn’t start there. It might be a better idea to base your characters on people you know or on things that have happened to you.
I understood where this advice came from, but I always had a problem with it. Namely, it struck me as wildly unimaginative. Why limit myself to writing about stuff that happens in my life? My life, apologies to friends and family, is boring. As a writer, boring is a sin worse than adultery. Your obligation as a writer is to find the most interesting, compelling, and fascinating stories and characters. Sometimes they’re fictional, sometimes they’re not. If what you know is boring, I reasoned, what’s the use in writing about it?
Furthermore, I wasn’t the only one who had qualms with this advice. One of my favourite essays of all time is the late Tom Wolfe’s “Stalking The Billion-Footed Beast”. This essay, first published in 1989, was a manifesto calling for a rejection of the absurdist nonsense novels of the 1960s and 1970s in favour of what Wolfe called “Realist” novels, which chronicle society writ large in the vein of The Grapes of Wrath and Anna Karenina. To achieve this aim and to prevent the novel from becoming an irrelevant art form, Wolfe prescribed journalistic-style reporting as the cure for the baleful Neo-Fabulism dominating American fiction. In doing so, he had the following to say:
“That task, as I see it, inevitably involves reporting, which I regard as the most valuable and least understood resource available to any writer with exalted ambitions, whether the medium is print, film, tape, or the stage. Young writers are constantly told, “Write about what you know.” There is nothing wrong with that rule as a starting point, but it seems to get quickly magnified into an unspoken maxim: The only valid experience is personal experience.”
In Wolfe, I found an unwitting like-minded thinker. Taking “write what you know” to its farthest conclusion means young writers are limited to writing autobiographies because that’s the only thing they could possibly know about.
Where’s the interest in that?
Letters From A Comfy Bristol Jail
For the first several years of my writing career, including the effort to make this blog, I studiously ignored the whole “write what you know” spiel as I drafted stories of private detectives running around London (a city I’d never visited at that time) and spending their clients’ money with cheerful abandon. I wasn’t too concerned about trying to get these stories published; just writing them satisfied me enough. I certainly wasn’t writing what I knew.
My thoughts changed in my second year of graduate school where one of my tasks that year was to, ironically, write a dissertation on based Tom Wolfe’s essay.
For context, in the 2021 spring semester, I was under virtual house arrest in Bristol, England. Covid lockdowns were very much in force, so I couldn’t do much outside my apartment, let alone explore the University of Bristol’s campus and library system. I was assigned three classes, all with the same final assignment: a 4000 word essay.
As I was used to drafting 2500 word chapters in my novel-writing phase, getting 4000 words on the page would be child’s play…or so I thought. The first two essays came easily enough, though still with plenty of the usual challenges. But the third essay was an unmitigated disaster.
Nothing clicked and for the first time in my life, I had writer’s block. I remember the book I based my essay on: George Lamming’s In The Castle of My Skin. Rest assured I burn it in effigy every day. I didn’t have a lot of options and this one came with the benefit of being set on a Caribbean island. Otherwise, it was full of the usual impenetrable prose and postmodern bullshit that I regard as a crime against humanity and civilisation.
Needless to say, I struggled to write anything about it. Words came out like ketchup in a glass bottle. I didn’t know anything about George Lamming. George who? We never covered him in high school (it seems my high school teachers had a dose of common sense after all). I had no knowledge of the modernist tradition he was writing in, no knowledge of post colonial literature, and I couldn’t even find the island of Barbados on a map. In short, I came into that essay with nothing and had no idea where to look for the relevant information to make something.
The Invisible Science Experiment
I didn’t realise it then, but the Spring 2021 semester was a science experiment testing the hypothesis “can you write about things that you don’t know”. I had to write three essays, all with the same length and the same academic requirements. The only variable for each essay was the topic. On one essay, I knew the topic fairly well, on the second I knew a little about the topic, and on the third I knew less than my dog did. Unsurprising, the more I knew about the topic, the easier time I had writing the assigned essay.
Clawing words out of the air for that third essay was a withering repudiation of the idea that I could write about things I don’t know about. As such, I’ve changed my mind. “Write what you know” isn’t just clichéd starter advice; it’s the only way to produce compelling material. Period.
But if that’s true, then what about Tom Wolfe’s position that “write what you know” is bullshit and what about all the times I easily drafted novels taking place in a city I’d never been to involving characters working in a profession I knew nothing about? And what about all the novelists who write fantasy? Clearly there’s something to Wolfe’s position as well.
So how do I reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable thoughts?
My answer is quite simple: expertise and foundational knowledge.
Even Better Than Journalism
As we’ve discussed in previous posts about books that don’t have material backing them, a writer needs a mountain of paper to make their new project work. Without said mountain, the writer’s ability to put material on the page is severely handicapped.
This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but in general, I believe that for every chapter a writer produces, they ought to have consumed ten other books worth of material before the chapter is satisfactory. Do not take this to mean writers must literally read 10 books before writing a chapter. The key word in there is “consume”, not “read”. That might mean consuming the ten books worth of material by simply doing their day job, interviewing sources, and researching specific items.
You can see this in the biographies of some of the most famous writers. The story of their lives and the stories they produced have strong echoes with each other. To be sure, they’re not writing one-to-one copies, aligning with Wolfe’s position that write what you know can go too far. Nevertheless, there’s more than enough evidence to link the author bio and their stories together. For example, John Grisham was a lawyer for 10 YEARS before he published his first novel. Dan Brown’s first novel was set in Seville, where he just so happened to study as a student. And even Tom Wolfe’s case study, John Steinbeck, set most of his stories in California…the state he just so happened to live most of his life. I could go on ad infinitum, but the message is the same: these writers all had foundational knowledge of the material they were putting on the page before putting their imaginations to work.
In other words, they were writing what they knew. Ironically, this was lost on Tom Wolfe, who tried to put his own position on realist novels into practice.
In 2004, Wolfe published I Am Charlotte Simmons, a novel about the status-seeking and sordid relationships going on at elite colleges. Wolfe was fascinated by the hook-up culture of then-contemporary colleges and, in the spirit of his journalistic beliefs, attempted to capture this part of society in his characters. To prepare and to make sure he knew what he was talking about, he spent considerable time on elite college campuses taking notes.
The book received mixed reviews and even won a dubious “Bad Sex in Fiction Award”. I myself was not a fan of the book and found it hard to read for two reasons. First, Wolfe’s firm literary views obstruct his material. His narrative voice is so distinct that it constantly steals attention from the plot he’s telling. The plot, at least if one reads the Wikipedia summary, is a searing indictment of campus hook-up culture, but that never comes across on the page because Wolfe’s narrative voice is constantly getting in the way. But a second, lesser discussed reason is Wolfe’s familiarity with the subject…or lack thereof I should say. Wolfe was in his SEVENTIES when he began prowling around campuses to conduct research. He wasn’t some college student frustrated by the degrading hook-up culture who had the literary technique to turn it into a novel. In order for the plot of I Am Charlotte Simmons to work, the author needed to be someone who lived it rather than merely studied it. Wolfe did his best, and his best is superior to that of most writers, but I suspect his observations were tainted by the fact his research subjects surely noticed the septuagenarian in a dandy white suit curiously observing their every move.
In other words, Wolfe wasn’t writing what he knew.
Conclusion
My position on “Write What You Know” has completely changed. While I’m still with Wolfe that one shouldn’t take the advice so literally that they only write about themselves, I do believe one must have more than a passing knowledge of the material they’re hoping to commit to book-form. Office dramas should be written by people who’ve worked in drama-filled offices. Legal thrillers should be written by people who’ve had some kind of legal training.
Sure that isn’t the ONLY thing one needs. The wide amount of reading required of authors doesn’t somehow disappear because the writer is familiar with a subject. Writers still need to build a mental model of what makes a good novel in their mind and that only comes from reading the best novels as opposed to personal favourite books.
But of one thing I am sure: without the solid bedrock of foundational knowledge, a book cannot stand.