Write What You Know, They Say
“Write what you know” can mean “concentrate on the subjects with which you’re most familiar” and that’s a decent jumping-off place as a new writer, but awfully limiting, don’t you think?
The job of being a writer can encompass a lot of things. For me, it’s about exploration. I create new worlds and see what they show me about this one. My characters come from all walks of life and many of them don’t look like me or share my personal history. They go through things that I never could, simply because our circumstances are so different, or they echo some of my own but they will move through them in their own way. Does that mean that I shouldn’t write them? Of course not.
Talk to people you know are different than you, that come from other backgrounds and experiences than yours. Look for media that features stories that are far apart from yours. Speak with experts, read their testimonies, and invest in hiring sensitivity readers when appropriate. Vet your writing through those who know best, because it’s their lives, and you’ll be able to keep your work feeling genuine and true.
However.I’m “lucky” – I put it in quotes because many would not consider some of my life experiences lucky ones – that I’ve lived through a lot of different events, many of which were challenging and um, character building. [Pun intended, because jokes are what power me.] I draw from those extensively when I write, and I often joke about what part of me various characters carry with them. If you know me well, you probably already can point some of those connections out.
The characters and plots that often feel the most real are the ones that are connected to real experiences and the types of people you’ve known and understood. The more life you live, the easier it is to fill out a world in a way that other people can believe in, because you’re painting it in your experience.
Plunder Your Reality!Dig into your history and excavate the people and scenes that resonate with you, trigger your emotions, and make it impossible to forget them. Use that to power your writing in a way that feels more than just believable.
Caveat: make sure that you use these things as inspiration only unless they are your stories to tell, and even then be careful.
Writing from real life examples is a tricky business, unless you obscure them. Let the people you’ve encountered and the things you’ve lived through be color, not something you rip whole cloth from your life and apply to the page. That’s for memoirs and tell-alls. Let people wonder where you get your inspiration from. Hold them close to your heart and don’t base anything completely on a real person or event you’ve lived through. Let them inform your creations, not be them.
Vali and Sousa are both heavily inspired by real life people and their habits and personality.
Sousa’s picked up traits from a lot of different places. I’ve known too may drummers [and punk guys] who ripped the sleeves off of every shirt they own. His propensity to gather up people and take care of them in a big house [after being dissuaded from shutting himself away from the world] is inspired in part by a guy I knew who did much the same. Big Scene Dad energy, although Sousa would hate being called that.
Vali? I often joke about Vali being a lot like me, but she’s much more principled and driven than I am. When I write about her time being homeless, that’s coming from my experiences, though: some directly, some observed. Her combo of recklessness and luck as a graffiti artist is based on how I used to move in the streets of Baltimore and somehow never got in trouble. The way she takes care of people, too; that’s based on my values and experience, as well as her unshakeable belief in the power of hope.
She’s a lot cooler than me, though.
I’ve talked before about how being in a band helped me write the scenes with The Drawback, and spending a lot of time in clubs shaped those scenes too. Mingling with the art crowd at MICA and with outsider artists gave me some of the background for The Ants and their house, the Compound. I can tell you some crrrraaaazy stories from art student parties I attended. And of course the way that Emmaline feels when she’s at the corporate coffee shop, perpetually an outsider because of her illness, watching the world go by from her table–I’ve had several people with chronic illnesses mention how much they relate to her and that scene, how they could see themselves in it.
All the details matter, and I believe the ones that are drawn from your reality are the ones that will resonate the strongest with the reader. Don’t hesitate to plunder your reality for that treasure of experience! Thread it through the parts you’re creating from scratch and it will lend an air of believability that can win over readers and help them get lost in the story.
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