Philosophy of Craft, Part 1 – WWYK
Linda Cronin / Foter
Time is a rare commodity, and your choice to share yours with me, a brand new author, is the highest honor I can imagine. Hopefully, by explaining how I approach my craft, you’ll understand that I truly do value the gift of your hard-won time.
WARNING FOR THE SQUEAMISH: I have chronic potty mouth. If strong language offends your delicate sensibilities, proceed with caution.
Part One: WWYK - “Write What You Know”
You’ve probably heard this cliché. It’s regularly volleyed at the writing inclined as profound wisdom. Believe it or not, it is sound advice—when you don’t take it literally. If people stuck to writing about life experiences, we’d have a shit ton of literature about paying bills, scrubbing floors, and brushing teeth.
I choose a nonliteral interpretation, and it goes something like this:
Every time I sit down to spin a yarn, I recognize that I’m really writing two stories at once. The first story I’m telling is the “What” story—it’s made up of all the people, places, and events that occur in sequence. I don’t necessarily need to kill someone to imagine how that goes down. I can either make it up, or learn about it in some other way that won’t result in a prison term. Here’s where write what you know really means, “bullshit good enough that your dog will roll in it.” It’s all cow-pucky, but a writer’s job is to make it convincing enough to be called fiction.
The second story—much, much harder to fake—is the “Why” story—it’s made up of the reactions, internal conflicts, and character shifts that take place throughout the course of the tale. Where does the character start, where does he end up, and why? This is where a writer really has to dig into his own psyche for the answers. Good writers can tap into this well and become someone they’re not, proceeding on the premise that everyone experiences humanity on a fundamental level. Base emotions, love, hate, anger, fear, these are common threads that tie us all together. The better a writer’s skill, the further they can stray into uncharted waters.
How does this in any way illuminate my writing? Two ways:
I’m new. I’m mostly coloring within the lines and writing “Why” stories based on what I know. Expect these stories to be lensed through the oculus of my own personal worldview. But brace yourself, because I may not be at all what you’re expecting.
You’re getting two stories in one. How’s that for a deal? To be fair, almost every story ever written is a twofer. (Did I mention I’m a really shitty salesman? I couldn’t sell manure to a fertilizer farm, because I’d be warning them in advance about the smell.)
So there you go. WWYK. I just gave away my deepest, darkest secrets. All those psychoses my characters have? Yup. That’s me.
Up next: Catastrophes Happen in Threes
