Write what you, Know?

So bear with me a moment. I know that you’ve heard write what you know. So I’m here to say that this doesn’t mean that you only right what you know. It means that you right what you know.

Confused? Well let me see if I can break this down. So when it says you right what you know that’s exactly what you do. Now this doesn’t mean that if you don’t know about something you don’t write about it. What it means is that you need to know what you are writing. Which means that you can educate yourself about it and then write about it.

I feel like it must all look like a poem to you where the words go round and round. So let me see if I can make it easier.

Research is the friend of the writer. We research what we don’t know so we can learn it and be able to write it. Sometimes our life experiences give us what we write about. We have gone through something or learned something as we have lived. Hence we write about it or use it in our writings.

For example we go through heart ache and we use this to write stories. Our heartache becomes the basis for our characters heart ache. Or we write our relationship into the character so we can flesh out the character.

Better yet the people in our lives go through things that we have seen or heart about. Then we take that and put it in our story. Or as the studiers of humanity we are we pick it up from our journeys through life. I am a watcher of people maybe it’s more that i am constantly paying attention to things around me. So a conversation catches my attention. Not with the intent to eavesdrop but just cause we are there.

For example I remember being on a train just minding my own business and someone came on the train and sat by themselves in a two seater. She looked heartbroken and just sat there staring off into no where. I don’t think she even saw the people around her on the train. Her pain was intense and it caught my attention. She looked numb as if all life had been sucked from her. I felt sad for her and this moment stayed with me. Then in my head a story started to form.

She had lost her job and the one she loved had broken up with her. That person had taken her children from her and thrown her out of the house. When she called her mom to tell her what had happened her mom ripped into her telling her it was all her fault. Cause you see her mom had never been a good mom to her. Now here she was on the train by herself with no where to go. Everything she had known was taken from her and now she had nothing. This weighed heavily on her soul and she sat there on the train lost.

Of course some of this was things I had experienced in my life maybe not these specific details but things like this. Here I used it to flesh out her story to find common ground and give her a voice. Was this what she was going through, I am not sure but it was how I was empathizing with her. I took what I knew and I placed it into the situation.

Now let’s say you want to write a story about a serial killer. You don’t know how to write a serial killer so what you do is research them so you can gain an understanding of them. Then after you have learned you can write what you know. Extreme case you say well how about this.

I was writing a story about a disease that is very infectious making people sick and leading to death. (This was before the pandemic and my experience with COVID) This patient comes into the hospital but they don’t die from the disease they actually start getting better. My story goes into how the doctors using this patient are able to heal people. Find a cure for the disease and people get better with it. In my story there is a supernatural component to it. But I use the medical story as the bases of my bigger story. Now I have to research to figure out how I can ground the story. Which means researching diseases and how my story can be believable. I have to know what I am writing understand it so the audience can go oh I get it. That’s easier done with research then adding it in. Learning and writing what I know.

Now let’s put all this together and try to give you an example. I’ve been writing this story for many years and here is the beginning. It’s a super hero tale because as a kid reading many comics (research) I figured i understood them. I also thought to myself let’s add an anger to it from life experience to make the character more relatable. I’ve also been studying writing comics now for an eternity.

So my character has had a bad day the kind of day that makes you question life. It’s one of those days when Murphy’s law is the Law of the land. He’s lost his job, his wife left him, took the kids and threw all of his stuff out. As he walks he fumes anger boiling to the top each thing adding to his mood. Some guy bumps into him almost knocking him over. A car passing by splashes him with a puddle. Some lady starts screaming at him that he’s a pervert and that he should stop following her. He walks on making his way through the city. A car turns trying to avoid another vehicle it screeches hits the curb then slams into him sending him flying crashing through a stores display window. He slowly gets up his eyes glowing with fire he lets out a guttural scream as he explodes flames erupt from him and out of the display window. When the flames subside he stands there engulfed in a fire that seems to mimic his rage. Looking upon the people staring at him with disgust.

Now I’ve written this exert many times and it has changed much over the years. But what is consistent is this rage it a rage i probably will never forget and I will write it in many ways and many times. Especially to create characters such as this one. The years of reading comics has helped me try and frame this for the comic. Because in reality unless you saw my comic script the majority of this would never be seen. Or I may write it as a novel and you will see this in a much more refined format.

Now go out there and write what you know put it into your writing to give it more. And if you don’t know something then research it so you can place it in your take effectively. As always if you have questions ask away. I may revisit this topic again to add more to it.