Suzanne, that'ss excatly and precisely my own lazy strategy. One book about a hostel for homeless women (after fifteen years helping run one) and another about the university where I work. I'm all for avoiding research as far as possible (enough of that in my day job). Sod the 'other'!

Rosy

Hi Daisy, Drama Queen, RT,

'Write what you know' is an old 'saw', but most advisors I encountered did specify background familiarity as one of the keys. If an author has work or life experience in any field, there has to be an advantage in that.

If I tried to write a prison drama for instance, it would be full of clichéd characters and situations even if I found some new angle on it. Maybe those things are unavoidable in that case, but I wouldn't want a spell in jail, to immerse myself. (Although, clichéd situations didn't worry Stephen King with 'Shawshank' and its theme of 'Hope'. Then he breaks the mould with 'The Green Mile', which has an entirely different theme and some highly original situations.) But of course, King is one of the best.

So where background issues are concerned, I stay with Military and Police themes. I know how the charcters would think, talk and generally behave. As I said earlier though, there are aspects of crime, I find difficult to deal with. So 'what I know' isn't necessarily good for my soul. I imagined it might provide self-counselling, but instead it had me in tears. I know better now and steer clear. Authors with the knowledge, but who might have been less closely involved are better at working with such themes. They might still want to cry though.

Happy Writing.

John

I like the Gore Vidal quote.

Isn't it a blend of knowledge and imagination? If there is something real you can base it on then go wild from there?

For example - unlike my main character I have never tried to put a bullet through my best friend - on the other hand I did learn to shoot at school(!) Not very well...

Sarah

There are some inreresting answers to this one...
I have read some books that have been so wonderful that I'm not suprised when it turns out there has been a link to the author's personal experience. I'm thinking of things as varied as The Lovely Bones, Trainspotting, The Secret History.
For me I know I can pretty much make anything up but my writing really comes alive when I delve into my own dark spaces.
HB x

For me I know I can pretty much make anything up but my writing really comes alive when I delve into my own dark spaces. HB x

I think you're right Helen. But some of my 'dark spaces' have become hollow and too dark. In particular, I couldn't write about the things you treated in your 'Damaged Goods'. I am not sure I could read it, any more than I could a novel in similar vein by Val McDiarmid. Nothing to do with the writing btw, so well done on that one.

Now I best get on with it. Cullen calls me to "Word"!


Regards
John

Have to agree with the vast majority of posters here: learn enough background (if you don't already have it) on a subject so that you can make the rest up in a convincing and believable way.

My first novel involves werewolves. I spent a month reading as much as I could on the history of werewolf folklore etc so that when I came to include this in my YA novel I could write from a position of strength.

If I was writing a YA novel about headhunters, I would read everything I could on this subject before starting. That way I am 'writing what I know'.

You just need to know enough so that you can make the rest up.

Stefland

The most disconcerting thing is when you make something up and then find out it is true

Sarah

Lol! Sarah, yes that would freak me out too - especially it it involved horror and a lot of dead bodies.

The most disconcerting thing is when you make something up and then find out it is true

The first novel I ever wrote had a woman being left by her husband. I was happily married at the time, but when I went back to that novel, some years later, I'd got divorced. And I found that I'd been right. That what when I knew I could be a writer, because I could imagine out from my own experience to things I hadn't.

Conversely, I wrote TMoL because I'd never read a book which used photography as it could be used, and as I know it. It's usually just glamorous set-dressing, and never explores the real nature of it, or exploits its metaphorical possibilities, or the fact that darkrooms are very, very sexy places. So I suppose that was very much writing what I knew. I don't know if I could reasearch another art/craft, which I don't practise myself, so as to use it convincingly in a similar way.

Emma

I aint never going to write another financial crisis From now on everyone is going to be rich - very rich!

Sarah

Surely all fiction is made-up? And surely, yes, everything has an element of what we've all learnt simply by living in the world?

It's a mixture. I think if you want to write a novel set in the 14th century, there's no reason why you shouldn't, although you should do as much research as you can.

I think there's some subjects I feel I know and some I don't. Interestingly, I'm rather scared by the thought of writing a 'grown-up' novel because I don't really feel like I know what it is to be a grown-up. But i didn't have any problem writing as a dying kid, because i know what it's like to be a kid and i know what's it's like to have an incurable illness (though not a fatal one) and i know what it's like to lose someone. And as Emma and Sarah said, sometimes you make something up and it turns out to be true. I was adamant that Sam wouldn't feel scared, despite my MA class insisting he would. I was delighted when I went to talk to CLIC nurses, who said actually, children don't get scared like adults do.

Last night I was knocking out a chapter of the new book where one of the characters is reliving her childhood in Romania. Now I've never even been and I don't know any Romanians so it got me thinking...am I writing what I know here? How can I be? And if not, how can it have any resonance and not just be the sum of my research on the internet?
I looked at the passage again and realised it wasn't actually about Romania it was about a child living with terrible fear and hopelessness and that was something I understood perfectly well.
So maybe when we think we're not writing what we know actually we are.
HB x

Yes, I think this is very true - 'what you know' needn't be about your town or your job, there are all sorts of other things.

Emma

I find I always write about what I know even when I think I'm not! So, all my books will to some extent be about a child having a difficult relationship with parents, about not having a sense of identity, and about loneliness. Thankfully, more or less every child has been through those feelings to some extent, so they do have something to identify with.