americanwriters
04-07-2007, 10:21 AM
I. That Tired, Old Adage, Write What You Know
Write what you know.
This of course is the cliché of writing courses and manuals – but is it good, sound advice?
Granted, it is well-intentioned, seeking to flag the well from whence individualized creativity will flow. The matters of subject matter, direction and approach are of concern to all writers of all levels of experience, but it can be particularly disconcerting for the beginning writer who hasn’t yet gotten his sea legs, who hasn’t yet found a routine. It is even more frustrating for the reluctant writer, who may be engaged in a writing assignment imposed by some outside force.
“What do I write about?” is often the cry. The answer most often given, “write what you know,” seems (at least to the conveyors of such wisdom) to be not only reasonable, but inspirational. It is simple and straightforward and can be distributed universally. After all, in what manner can this piece of advice not be applicable to Joe Shmoe? Assuming Joe is sentient, there will be some manner of knowledge-base from which he can reference and draw (which on the surface makes the maxim seem valid). Add to this the fact that it is inherently impossible to draw from an alien knowledge-base (because once we wrap our respective mind around the alien knowledge-base, it becomes native to us), and we come to realize that the adage is so self-evident as to make this whole discussion indisputable.
There. That was simple—but it’s not. The nature of what “known” encompasses can be so far-flung as to make one interpretation of the adage insipid and worthless, and the other, wise and useful. Let’s deal with two interpretations, one at a time.
1) Write What You Know: The Broad Categories
If by “write what you know,” the advisor means to say, “Stick to writing about your profession, your domestic situation, your personal experiences, your academic history, your relationships; don’t stray from the familiar and the safe,” I must wholeheartedly call this adviser a short-sighted prig.
This insulted advisor might reason with me, “Well, I’m not saying that writers can’t write about other things, but it is better if they stay with something with which they are familiar, at least until they get good.” . . . to which I ask, “why should you limit them? Why should you assume low intelligence and low creativity? Why should you actually systematically promote these things? Why do you assume that just because they are starting out, they can only understand things that relate—broadly and directly—to their personal experiences? Why must an Italian-American be confined to writing about the Italian-American experience? Should a man only write about male issues and only from the point of view of male characters? Can not a twenty year old female Liberal Arts student from Iowa be able to write about a sixty-five year old male retired engineer?”
The adage, so interpreted, is insipid advise. If you are a proponent of this (not merely as a possible starting point, but as the best and most inspired starting point), I ask you, can you not yourself fathom worlds other than those circumscribed by your daily routine? If you can’t, then I doubt you are a very good.
When I was in undergraduate school, my creative writing professor asked us to write a descriptive piece. I don’t recall the particulars of the assignment beyond this point, but I recall her telling us to focus primarily on setting and description, plenty of description.
“Write about a place you know,” she instructed us, taking her place among the vast, ageless body of such advocates. Of course I groaned, because even at the age of nineteen, I knew there was something strikingly limited in that scope.
“Write about a place you know,” she repeated, “like your bedroom, or blah, blah, blah.” Of course the blahs are supplied by me, but it might as well have been from her; that’s all I heard from her for the rest of that session.
I remember feeling a mild sense of disapproval toward her assignment. The feeling was not directed against her, mind you, because she was perfectly likable, intelligent and interesting. Still, there it was, this write what you know thing, uninvited and inherently senseless.
I took this qualifier of her assignment as a challenge. I’ll show her, I remember thinking. I would show her that it was possible to write about more than what I knew – that I could vividly conjure a description of a place that had nothing to do with my life. It was an entirely non-combative posture that I took, but I definitely set out to illustrate a greater capacity.
I wrote a scenario in which an unnamed character awakens to find himself trapped in a giant box of Fruit Loops as a result of a packing blunder at the factory. Entrapment was, as you would imagine, a surreal piece of writing, and you didn’t even know until the end where it was the character was trapped. My work was around five pages long, and I received a grade of “12” for it, out of a possible “10.” I was more than satisfied, but I wasn’t smug. She parenthetically conceded, “All right! All right! You win! Do it your way!” This referred to my incessant desire throughout the term to take assignments beyond the narrow confines she regularly established. Now that I look back at it, I don’t think she saw me as representative of the others. I was more the anomaly in her eyes. I think the others just weren’t waking to the potential quite the way I did. They had it in them, but unconsciously agreed to be led by their instructor rather than to take the initiative.
Now, while I think you can readily believe me when I tell you that I have never been trapped in a box of Fruit Loops (or most other breakfast cereals), you might want to point out that I did in fact, call upon my knowledge-base. Firstly, Fruit Loops is an item known to me, and secondly, I wrote about being trapped. Both observations are correct. I did indeed tap into my database of experience, found these two components, and then jumped off into some corner of the ether. This leads me to the second interpretation of write what you know.
2) Write What You Know: The Principles
Without a doubt, we are each a composite of our experiences, relationships, observations, readings, etc. We cannot divorce our creations from our treasure chest of personal things; it is, after all, what makes each of us who we are. In this fashion, writing what you know is a very reasonable guideline. It is unavoidable.
However, it is probably best for a writer to keep the broad categories of his experience base, somewhat nearby, for any items that might just happen to come in handy. It is far more valuable for a writer to explore the underlying archetypes and principles – the concepts that reside within the concrete. It is through this exploration that myriad universes open. By probing a single principle and then imagining all the possible permutations, a multitude of lines are revealed. Thus, tapping into the principle, “spontaneity,” I can come to many different stories. Conversely, if I looked only to the things in my life, both past and present, my creative possibilities would be vastly limited.
No doubt, it is in this manner that I found the spirit of my short story, “Entrapment.” I didn’t need to know what it was like to be trapped in an oversized box of cereal. I needed to understand, in some primal place, what it meant to be trapped. This is something we all understand. A victim of a bad job or a bad marriage knows precisely what I am talking about; so too does the person who has spent a night in a stuck elevator or a locked closet. All of these are different experiences in a broad sense, but they are very much the same thing in a fundamental sense.
Who knows from whence I got my own personal “knowledge” of entrapment? Perhaps my older brother or an older cousin taunted me when I was five and shoved me under the bed; perhaps I remember the sense of enclosure when I hid in my room at the end of the school year, with my report card nearby, knowing that if I entered the other part of the house, my mother would blithely ask, “Oh, where’s your report card, Tommy?” Regardless of the origin of the sensation, I, like everyone else, understand the concept of being trapped. I engaged this knowledge in my story and let the experience of the character symbolically stand for the principle itself.
During my graduate studies, I had another professor who was very much the opposite of the former I mentioned. His name was Ralph Allen, and he was the author of the Tony-winning Broadway production, Sugar Babies. I remember it clearly, to this day, even the room. We sat in a circle, he and his students (about fifteen of us) and were engaged in a discussion about playwriting. We were each to write a small play and the topic came to, you guessed it, the write what you know maxim. He put it succinctly: “You don’t need to have been to Alaska to write about Alaska; you need to have been cold.” The spirit of this sentiment is true. All too often we look at the broad strokes of an experience; however, within the larger categories, we find elemental principles that can be utilized by a writer in any number of directions.
What do I mean? Well, look at the subject of climbing a mountain. To surface-thinkers, climbing a mountain affords the writer the knowledge of what mountain-climbing is like in broad terms, and so he can include some mountain-climbing in his story. However, to one who can dig deeper into experience and see fundamental principles that comprise the broader experience, climbing a mountain can make the writer aware of quite a bit more: self-satisfaction derived from mental and physical endurance tests, exploration, losing the way, discovering the way, calculated preparation for an elaborate task or journey, a person’s relationship with his environment, and all the philosophical musings that come from looking down at the vista.
Hence, there is more to your own experiences than that which sits on the surface. You can tap into dimensions in knowledge that you might otherwise ignore, and bring to life much of the essence of broader experience with which you are technically unfamiliar--because you have keyed into universal principles. You do not even need to showcase these elements in plot, characterization, conflict, etc.; they can be woven subtly throughout narrative itself, giving heart to your storytelling at every moment. Just don't bog down your piece with overbearing exposition and description.
Going on a cruise, standing on line at the bank, visiting another city, walking through a museum, training a dog, wrestling with a computer program, dealing with a bureaucracy, teaching elementary school, kindling a fire and wiping the smudged face of a young child—what elemental knowledge can you find in these experiences that have nothing to do with cruises, lines, cities, museums, dogs, computers, bureaucracies, schools, fires and smudged faces, respectively? Find some, and you will find a more value and usefulness to the “write what you know” adage than will shallow thinkers. To be honest, this is simple stuff; I don't know how people miss it.
Research is also key. If you are going to write of a circumstance, event, place, time period, profession or a station in life with which you have not been previously acquainted, do the necessary research so as to portray things accurately and realistically. Anyone who thinks this is illegitimate clearly doesn’t realize the amount of research fiction writers conduct or employ others to conduct. With the right information, imagination and capacity to bring a concept to life, a writer can write a most compelling and captivating piece by combining investigated information and the principles that inhabit broader experience.
Assume you are going to write a chapter or two that takes place in 19th Century Paris during the World’s Faire, of which you have no prior knowledge. Great. Find yourself the absolutely best books and pictures depicting 19th Century Paris—how people lived, architecture and roadways, the nature of transportation during that era, the clothing, the gender relationships, the economic and political dynamics.
Learn also about the World’s Faire: how they were run, how people regarded and experienced them. Then remember what it was like to walk through a big throng of people at the mall, in the subway system, in a theater. This will come in handy when you write the scene in which the doors are opened that very first morning at the Faire.
Do all that you can to remove yourself from the year and place of your own circumstance. Make certain to leave your American idioms aside, your American perspective, your whole 21st Century demeanor. This is a difficult task for some; for others, transporting like this through time and space is not only easy, but enjoyable. Settle in, focus inward, imagine.
II. Your Characters Are Not You
I find that beginning writers generally write their principle characters as if they are fictional incarnations of themselves. In some cases, the representation reads as straightforward autobiography, but in most cases, the representation is some supped up version of the author’s identity.
This might seem in direct contradiction to what I said in Part I; however, there is a distinction between an author writing what he knows, and an author projecting his ego onto the page.
Many writers genuinely believe that characters—especially principal characters—must naturally reflect the attitudes, beliefs and philosophies of the writer himself. Taken to an extreme, the created character is not so much a child of the writer, but the writer’s clone; it matters not that the writer has fixed him in an alien setting and conditions. The character could indeed inhabit 19th Century Paris during the World’s Faire; still, he is a thinly-veiled replica of the author himself. This is not necessarily a good thing, even if the process of writing that piece is lucid and easy.
I encounter this on a regular basis when asking students to write. For some reason, it manifests even more when I put students into groups so as to write a co-authored story. “Who do you want to be?” they ask one another, as if each requires representation in the story. This is probably borne of the theater mindset, in which each character requires one actor. In many ways, students “see” plots, stories and characters in theatrical terms.
Put together a group of four students, and you will most likely find them writing about four characters; five students will give rise to five characters, and two students will write two. Naturally, there are exceptions; however, I often find myself baffled by the group that timidly asks, “Can we write in another character?”
The key thing that brings about this writer-character fusion is a sense of self-fancy, self-absorption or self-delight in the writer. To a degree, we all enjoy the limelight; even those who outwardly don’t, often inwardly do. Therefore, creating a character enables the writer, in a sense, to take center stage without having to go through the self-consciousness that many often go through in the real, non-fictional world. Watch a beginning writer, and you will often see a face that lights up he throws off all the stops on his personality, and plays out many hidden fantasies (or indulges in some other self-identifying process).
You might say, “Hey, that’s good! Why would you want to change that?!” to which I reply, “I want only to temper it.” I am interested in the quality of a piece, and if a piece suffers because the writer has gone on some out-of-control ego-journey, the process is not enhanced by his indulgence, but rather smothered and broad-sided both at once. It is a process gone out of control.
Naturally, each character is a chip off of its creator’s ego/id/superego composite, and is, in a sense, autobiographical. This kind of writing is unavoidable. A writer who keys into this well within himself has a good shot at bringing out something earnest, primal and universal.
Generally speaking, it is most natural and obvious for a writer to make himself the star of his story in some sense. It doesn’t even have to be something that the writer discloses. Ask this sort of writer to kill off his character and chances are the response will be visceral. The very suggestion seems almost a threat to him. At first, you might think that he has just bonded with the character as some separate entity, or feels that the harm suggested would throw the story off balance; however, I have had students tell me with horror, quickly and instinctively, “I don’t want to die.” . . .or “get divorced,” or “get sick,” or any number of unsavory happenstance.
Creatively speaking, this can be a problem. Firstly, it bespeaks literary immaturity in the writer, not because he has chosen to write a character that is more autobiographical than fictional, but because the concept of writing a character that is distinct from himself is alien. The results are unfavorable in two ways.
For one thing, every character he ever writes—or at least every main character he ever writes—will be pretty much the same; what happens to each of these characters will be dictated by the writer’s personal sense of self. This is more of a psychological process than a creative one, and has no place in the creative arena.
Additionally, and most dangerously, the given story might be thrown off balance. For instance, the direction and force of the piece might beg for a given conclusion, which is completely thwarted by the author himself, who is too bound by his psyche to recognize the distinction between himself and his creation. By losing himself in his own memories and fixation on self, the writer risks bringing his own story into some nonsensical, uninspired, anti-climactic direction, all with a smile, satisfied with either the fulfillment of a fantasy or the sublimation of personal demons.
I have seen student writers do this. You might still say, “Bravo!” and “Good for him!” and the like—but is your judgment really reflective of what the work of fiction needs and deserves, or are you responding solely as his enabler? If this is to be called writing and not therapy, let’s maintain focus on our objective.
You might further say that the creative process comes directly from a person’s psychology, and therefore, who am I to dictate what the best outcome for a story would be. I agree that writing must be directed by the heart, or the spirit, or whatever that intangible thing is that gives rise to art. This thing, this intuitive catalyst, is the best propellant. Still, without the intellect kicking in, without a somewhat detached eye keeping tabs on structure, form and harmony (at least in an abstract sense), the process that is guided singularly by the heart is akin to a car with a powerful engine being driven, absent a steering mechanism. Both components must be in place for the product to manifest as the greatest potential of the process. You see, it is possible for a creator to get in the way of his own work, which in a sense, has a life of its own just as any child does. In the end, the reader will be judging the product—the entire story—and will scarcely give much thought to the course from which it emerged.
III. Your Story is Not Your Pulpit
While I agree that writers can view their writing as a means by which to express their personal point of view, belief, creed, philosophy, etc., I do not personally feel that this end should be exploited to the detriment of storytelling. Granted, your mindset will shape what you write; I have said this more than once in this article. However, too often, as with the case of crafting a thinly-veiled autobiographical character, many writers feel it is not merely their right, but their responsibility to write from their personal belief system. If this were the case, what need would there be for narrators and characters? Are they merely lackeys to the author’s will?
Let’s examine a familiar character type. Jungian criticism identifies him as the “shadow,” but let’s use his more common title, “the Bad Guy.” In your attempt to portray him as bad, one hopes that you don’t write him in a stereotypical, two-dimensional fashion—but rather create an interesting, dynamic personality. You want to give birth to a character that embodies, to a large extent, things for which you yourself do not feel conviction. In all probability, you will need to fashion for him, a demeanor, an attitude, a style, a belief system, a motivation that you do not have in your own conscious mind. In all probability, he will do things that you would never in a million years yourself consider doing. Yet he comes from you. Where he might not represent your desires and beliefs, he might embody your fears and misgivings.
Shallow readers (shallow people in general) might view this or another character’s morality as reflective of your own. This sort of thing leaves me shaking my head in disbelief. Don’t they get it? How can they miss the point? How can they have no clue as to what goes into writing? Sadly, much of the misjudgment a writer might encounter, can very well come from those closest to him, particularly if he writes something disturbing, base or perverse. Let’s say you write a character who espouses Satanism; are you privately a Satanist? You write a character that stalks prostitutes in back alleys; are you secretly in league with Jack the Ripper? What if you write a suicidal character? Are you yourself necessarily suicidal? Of course not.
For one thing, contrast is needed in a story. Representation of the negative must be illustrated, usually vividly and with conviction, if the positive that you intend to put forth thematically is to come across. Imagine Star Wars without Darth Vader talking about the dark side of the force. Imagine Silence of the Lambs without Hannibal Lector being as depraved as he is. Can theme, conflict, drama, etc., truly be translated without the construction of foil elements?
You can write any sort of creed or philosophy, really, that can be far removed from your own. It doesn’t even have to be used as a tool with which you illustrate an opposite pole. Perhaps you are fashioning a society, an individual, a small group of people that espouse a set of beliefs simply because it assists story and characterization, or is an accurate representation of reality.
Oftentimes, acquaintances will walk up to you and say something like, “I didn’t know you thought that way” or “I had no idea you believe that.” This sort of thing has happened to me more than once, and I simply say, “Oh, but I don’t.” More often than not, they look at me, still unsure. I continue: “That was a story I wrote. Fiction.” If you’re lucky, these individuals will come to understand what you are talking about or will feign understanding. If they don’t understand—well, let’s just say that writers sometimes need to exercise patience and diplomacy. Some folks just don’t understand the creative process.
Science fiction writer, Joseph Michael Straczynski (JMS), is an atheist. Nonetheless, when creating and penning the fictional universe of his first television series, Babylon 5, he infused spirituality into many story elements and characters. No doubt, this is perplexing to many people who have heard JMS discussing his own position on God and Creation. So many people simply expect a work of fiction to be nothing more than the personal testimony and homily of its author.
It needs to be pointed out that JMS's handling of spirituality in Babylon 5 was not for the purpose of criticism or very much even for counterpoising the principles of Belief and agnosticism. He grinded no ax and had no grand purpose beyond 1) accurately representing people who themselves believe in a deity and, 2) creating story-lines that generated a certain kind of wonder. The story was his objective, not the conveyance of personal doctrine.
"Let me just lay the foundation here for a moment in the area of religion and Babylon 5. I'm an atheist, that simple. But that's me. If you look at the long history of human society, religion -- whether you describe that as organized, disorganized, or the various degrees of accepted superstition -- has always been present. And it will be present 200 years from now. That may not thrill me, but when one is a writer, one must deal with realities, and that's one of them. To totally ignore that part of the human equation would be as false and wrong-headed as ignoring the fact that people get mad, or passionate, or strive for better lives. So we do deal with the questions of religion, and spirituality, and their definitions, without being abusive. . . In the Babylon 5 universe, all the things that make us human -- our obsessions, our interests, our language, our culture, our flaws and our wonderfulnesses -- are all still intact." Straczynski, Joseph. <straczynski@genie.geis.com> "Religion in B5" 10 Sep. 1993. <alt.tv.babylon-5> (10 Aug. 2000.)
Let it flow. Let it all flow and see where your imagination takes you. Start with yourself, always; but don’t be limited by your autobiography. Look into the heart of experience and dig for all the elemental principles. Compare them to other experience and knowledge you have. Read, research, listen and observe. Build bridges, cross divides, make leaps of logic. Use your imagination. Use all things that come into range, and don’t be afraid to distort them beyond recognition, so long as they remain true on a root level.
Write what you know.
This of course is the cliché of writing courses and manuals – but is it good, sound advice?
Granted, it is well-intentioned, seeking to flag the well from whence individualized creativity will flow. The matters of subject matter, direction and approach are of concern to all writers of all levels of experience, but it can be particularly disconcerting for the beginning writer who hasn’t yet gotten his sea legs, who hasn’t yet found a routine. It is even more frustrating for the reluctant writer, who may be engaged in a writing assignment imposed by some outside force.
“What do I write about?” is often the cry. The answer most often given, “write what you know,” seems (at least to the conveyors of such wisdom) to be not only reasonable, but inspirational. It is simple and straightforward and can be distributed universally. After all, in what manner can this piece of advice not be applicable to Joe Shmoe? Assuming Joe is sentient, there will be some manner of knowledge-base from which he can reference and draw (which on the surface makes the maxim seem valid). Add to this the fact that it is inherently impossible to draw from an alien knowledge-base (because once we wrap our respective mind around the alien knowledge-base, it becomes native to us), and we come to realize that the adage is so self-evident as to make this whole discussion indisputable.
There. That was simple—but it’s not. The nature of what “known” encompasses can be so far-flung as to make one interpretation of the adage insipid and worthless, and the other, wise and useful. Let’s deal with two interpretations, one at a time.
1) Write What You Know: The Broad Categories
If by “write what you know,” the advisor means to say, “Stick to writing about your profession, your domestic situation, your personal experiences, your academic history, your relationships; don’t stray from the familiar and the safe,” I must wholeheartedly call this adviser a short-sighted prig.
This insulted advisor might reason with me, “Well, I’m not saying that writers can’t write about other things, but it is better if they stay with something with which they are familiar, at least until they get good.” . . . to which I ask, “why should you limit them? Why should you assume low intelligence and low creativity? Why should you actually systematically promote these things? Why do you assume that just because they are starting out, they can only understand things that relate—broadly and directly—to their personal experiences? Why must an Italian-American be confined to writing about the Italian-American experience? Should a man only write about male issues and only from the point of view of male characters? Can not a twenty year old female Liberal Arts student from Iowa be able to write about a sixty-five year old male retired engineer?”
The adage, so interpreted, is insipid advise. If you are a proponent of this (not merely as a possible starting point, but as the best and most inspired starting point), I ask you, can you not yourself fathom worlds other than those circumscribed by your daily routine? If you can’t, then I doubt you are a very good.
When I was in undergraduate school, my creative writing professor asked us to write a descriptive piece. I don’t recall the particulars of the assignment beyond this point, but I recall her telling us to focus primarily on setting and description, plenty of description.
“Write about a place you know,” she instructed us, taking her place among the vast, ageless body of such advocates. Of course I groaned, because even at the age of nineteen, I knew there was something strikingly limited in that scope.
“Write about a place you know,” she repeated, “like your bedroom, or blah, blah, blah.” Of course the blahs are supplied by me, but it might as well have been from her; that’s all I heard from her for the rest of that session.
I remember feeling a mild sense of disapproval toward her assignment. The feeling was not directed against her, mind you, because she was perfectly likable, intelligent and interesting. Still, there it was, this write what you know thing, uninvited and inherently senseless.
I took this qualifier of her assignment as a challenge. I’ll show her, I remember thinking. I would show her that it was possible to write about more than what I knew – that I could vividly conjure a description of a place that had nothing to do with my life. It was an entirely non-combative posture that I took, but I definitely set out to illustrate a greater capacity.
I wrote a scenario in which an unnamed character awakens to find himself trapped in a giant box of Fruit Loops as a result of a packing blunder at the factory. Entrapment was, as you would imagine, a surreal piece of writing, and you didn’t even know until the end where it was the character was trapped. My work was around five pages long, and I received a grade of “12” for it, out of a possible “10.” I was more than satisfied, but I wasn’t smug. She parenthetically conceded, “All right! All right! You win! Do it your way!” This referred to my incessant desire throughout the term to take assignments beyond the narrow confines she regularly established. Now that I look back at it, I don’t think she saw me as representative of the others. I was more the anomaly in her eyes. I think the others just weren’t waking to the potential quite the way I did. They had it in them, but unconsciously agreed to be led by their instructor rather than to take the initiative.
Now, while I think you can readily believe me when I tell you that I have never been trapped in a box of Fruit Loops (or most other breakfast cereals), you might want to point out that I did in fact, call upon my knowledge-base. Firstly, Fruit Loops is an item known to me, and secondly, I wrote about being trapped. Both observations are correct. I did indeed tap into my database of experience, found these two components, and then jumped off into some corner of the ether. This leads me to the second interpretation of write what you know.
2) Write What You Know: The Principles
Without a doubt, we are each a composite of our experiences, relationships, observations, readings, etc. We cannot divorce our creations from our treasure chest of personal things; it is, after all, what makes each of us who we are. In this fashion, writing what you know is a very reasonable guideline. It is unavoidable.
However, it is probably best for a writer to keep the broad categories of his experience base, somewhat nearby, for any items that might just happen to come in handy. It is far more valuable for a writer to explore the underlying archetypes and principles – the concepts that reside within the concrete. It is through this exploration that myriad universes open. By probing a single principle and then imagining all the possible permutations, a multitude of lines are revealed. Thus, tapping into the principle, “spontaneity,” I can come to many different stories. Conversely, if I looked only to the things in my life, both past and present, my creative possibilities would be vastly limited.
No doubt, it is in this manner that I found the spirit of my short story, “Entrapment.” I didn’t need to know what it was like to be trapped in an oversized box of cereal. I needed to understand, in some primal place, what it meant to be trapped. This is something we all understand. A victim of a bad job or a bad marriage knows precisely what I am talking about; so too does the person who has spent a night in a stuck elevator or a locked closet. All of these are different experiences in a broad sense, but they are very much the same thing in a fundamental sense.
Who knows from whence I got my own personal “knowledge” of entrapment? Perhaps my older brother or an older cousin taunted me when I was five and shoved me under the bed; perhaps I remember the sense of enclosure when I hid in my room at the end of the school year, with my report card nearby, knowing that if I entered the other part of the house, my mother would blithely ask, “Oh, where’s your report card, Tommy?” Regardless of the origin of the sensation, I, like everyone else, understand the concept of being trapped. I engaged this knowledge in my story and let the experience of the character symbolically stand for the principle itself.
During my graduate studies, I had another professor who was very much the opposite of the former I mentioned. His name was Ralph Allen, and he was the author of the Tony-winning Broadway production, Sugar Babies. I remember it clearly, to this day, even the room. We sat in a circle, he and his students (about fifteen of us) and were engaged in a discussion about playwriting. We were each to write a small play and the topic came to, you guessed it, the write what you know maxim. He put it succinctly: “You don’t need to have been to Alaska to write about Alaska; you need to have been cold.” The spirit of this sentiment is true. All too often we look at the broad strokes of an experience; however, within the larger categories, we find elemental principles that can be utilized by a writer in any number of directions.
What do I mean? Well, look at the subject of climbing a mountain. To surface-thinkers, climbing a mountain affords the writer the knowledge of what mountain-climbing is like in broad terms, and so he can include some mountain-climbing in his story. However, to one who can dig deeper into experience and see fundamental principles that comprise the broader experience, climbing a mountain can make the writer aware of quite a bit more: self-satisfaction derived from mental and physical endurance tests, exploration, losing the way, discovering the way, calculated preparation for an elaborate task or journey, a person’s relationship with his environment, and all the philosophical musings that come from looking down at the vista.
Hence, there is more to your own experiences than that which sits on the surface. You can tap into dimensions in knowledge that you might otherwise ignore, and bring to life much of the essence of broader experience with which you are technically unfamiliar--because you have keyed into universal principles. You do not even need to showcase these elements in plot, characterization, conflict, etc.; they can be woven subtly throughout narrative itself, giving heart to your storytelling at every moment. Just don't bog down your piece with overbearing exposition and description.
Going on a cruise, standing on line at the bank, visiting another city, walking through a museum, training a dog, wrestling with a computer program, dealing with a bureaucracy, teaching elementary school, kindling a fire and wiping the smudged face of a young child—what elemental knowledge can you find in these experiences that have nothing to do with cruises, lines, cities, museums, dogs, computers, bureaucracies, schools, fires and smudged faces, respectively? Find some, and you will find a more value and usefulness to the “write what you know” adage than will shallow thinkers. To be honest, this is simple stuff; I don't know how people miss it.
Research is also key. If you are going to write of a circumstance, event, place, time period, profession or a station in life with which you have not been previously acquainted, do the necessary research so as to portray things accurately and realistically. Anyone who thinks this is illegitimate clearly doesn’t realize the amount of research fiction writers conduct or employ others to conduct. With the right information, imagination and capacity to bring a concept to life, a writer can write a most compelling and captivating piece by combining investigated information and the principles that inhabit broader experience.
Assume you are going to write a chapter or two that takes place in 19th Century Paris during the World’s Faire, of which you have no prior knowledge. Great. Find yourself the absolutely best books and pictures depicting 19th Century Paris—how people lived, architecture and roadways, the nature of transportation during that era, the clothing, the gender relationships, the economic and political dynamics.
Learn also about the World’s Faire: how they were run, how people regarded and experienced them. Then remember what it was like to walk through a big throng of people at the mall, in the subway system, in a theater. This will come in handy when you write the scene in which the doors are opened that very first morning at the Faire.
Do all that you can to remove yourself from the year and place of your own circumstance. Make certain to leave your American idioms aside, your American perspective, your whole 21st Century demeanor. This is a difficult task for some; for others, transporting like this through time and space is not only easy, but enjoyable. Settle in, focus inward, imagine.
II. Your Characters Are Not You
I find that beginning writers generally write their principle characters as if they are fictional incarnations of themselves. In some cases, the representation reads as straightforward autobiography, but in most cases, the representation is some supped up version of the author’s identity.
This might seem in direct contradiction to what I said in Part I; however, there is a distinction between an author writing what he knows, and an author projecting his ego onto the page.
Many writers genuinely believe that characters—especially principal characters—must naturally reflect the attitudes, beliefs and philosophies of the writer himself. Taken to an extreme, the created character is not so much a child of the writer, but the writer’s clone; it matters not that the writer has fixed him in an alien setting and conditions. The character could indeed inhabit 19th Century Paris during the World’s Faire; still, he is a thinly-veiled replica of the author himself. This is not necessarily a good thing, even if the process of writing that piece is lucid and easy.
I encounter this on a regular basis when asking students to write. For some reason, it manifests even more when I put students into groups so as to write a co-authored story. “Who do you want to be?” they ask one another, as if each requires representation in the story. This is probably borne of the theater mindset, in which each character requires one actor. In many ways, students “see” plots, stories and characters in theatrical terms.
Put together a group of four students, and you will most likely find them writing about four characters; five students will give rise to five characters, and two students will write two. Naturally, there are exceptions; however, I often find myself baffled by the group that timidly asks, “Can we write in another character?”
The key thing that brings about this writer-character fusion is a sense of self-fancy, self-absorption or self-delight in the writer. To a degree, we all enjoy the limelight; even those who outwardly don’t, often inwardly do. Therefore, creating a character enables the writer, in a sense, to take center stage without having to go through the self-consciousness that many often go through in the real, non-fictional world. Watch a beginning writer, and you will often see a face that lights up he throws off all the stops on his personality, and plays out many hidden fantasies (or indulges in some other self-identifying process).
You might say, “Hey, that’s good! Why would you want to change that?!” to which I reply, “I want only to temper it.” I am interested in the quality of a piece, and if a piece suffers because the writer has gone on some out-of-control ego-journey, the process is not enhanced by his indulgence, but rather smothered and broad-sided both at once. It is a process gone out of control.
Naturally, each character is a chip off of its creator’s ego/id/superego composite, and is, in a sense, autobiographical. This kind of writing is unavoidable. A writer who keys into this well within himself has a good shot at bringing out something earnest, primal and universal.
Generally speaking, it is most natural and obvious for a writer to make himself the star of his story in some sense. It doesn’t even have to be something that the writer discloses. Ask this sort of writer to kill off his character and chances are the response will be visceral. The very suggestion seems almost a threat to him. At first, you might think that he has just bonded with the character as some separate entity, or feels that the harm suggested would throw the story off balance; however, I have had students tell me with horror, quickly and instinctively, “I don’t want to die.” . . .or “get divorced,” or “get sick,” or any number of unsavory happenstance.
Creatively speaking, this can be a problem. Firstly, it bespeaks literary immaturity in the writer, not because he has chosen to write a character that is more autobiographical than fictional, but because the concept of writing a character that is distinct from himself is alien. The results are unfavorable in two ways.
For one thing, every character he ever writes—or at least every main character he ever writes—will be pretty much the same; what happens to each of these characters will be dictated by the writer’s personal sense of self. This is more of a psychological process than a creative one, and has no place in the creative arena.
Additionally, and most dangerously, the given story might be thrown off balance. For instance, the direction and force of the piece might beg for a given conclusion, which is completely thwarted by the author himself, who is too bound by his psyche to recognize the distinction between himself and his creation. By losing himself in his own memories and fixation on self, the writer risks bringing his own story into some nonsensical, uninspired, anti-climactic direction, all with a smile, satisfied with either the fulfillment of a fantasy or the sublimation of personal demons.
I have seen student writers do this. You might still say, “Bravo!” and “Good for him!” and the like—but is your judgment really reflective of what the work of fiction needs and deserves, or are you responding solely as his enabler? If this is to be called writing and not therapy, let’s maintain focus on our objective.
You might further say that the creative process comes directly from a person’s psychology, and therefore, who am I to dictate what the best outcome for a story would be. I agree that writing must be directed by the heart, or the spirit, or whatever that intangible thing is that gives rise to art. This thing, this intuitive catalyst, is the best propellant. Still, without the intellect kicking in, without a somewhat detached eye keeping tabs on structure, form and harmony (at least in an abstract sense), the process that is guided singularly by the heart is akin to a car with a powerful engine being driven, absent a steering mechanism. Both components must be in place for the product to manifest as the greatest potential of the process. You see, it is possible for a creator to get in the way of his own work, which in a sense, has a life of its own just as any child does. In the end, the reader will be judging the product—the entire story—and will scarcely give much thought to the course from which it emerged.
III. Your Story is Not Your Pulpit
While I agree that writers can view their writing as a means by which to express their personal point of view, belief, creed, philosophy, etc., I do not personally feel that this end should be exploited to the detriment of storytelling. Granted, your mindset will shape what you write; I have said this more than once in this article. However, too often, as with the case of crafting a thinly-veiled autobiographical character, many writers feel it is not merely their right, but their responsibility to write from their personal belief system. If this were the case, what need would there be for narrators and characters? Are they merely lackeys to the author’s will?
Let’s examine a familiar character type. Jungian criticism identifies him as the “shadow,” but let’s use his more common title, “the Bad Guy.” In your attempt to portray him as bad, one hopes that you don’t write him in a stereotypical, two-dimensional fashion—but rather create an interesting, dynamic personality. You want to give birth to a character that embodies, to a large extent, things for which you yourself do not feel conviction. In all probability, you will need to fashion for him, a demeanor, an attitude, a style, a belief system, a motivation that you do not have in your own conscious mind. In all probability, he will do things that you would never in a million years yourself consider doing. Yet he comes from you. Where he might not represent your desires and beliefs, he might embody your fears and misgivings.
Shallow readers (shallow people in general) might view this or another character’s morality as reflective of your own. This sort of thing leaves me shaking my head in disbelief. Don’t they get it? How can they miss the point? How can they have no clue as to what goes into writing? Sadly, much of the misjudgment a writer might encounter, can very well come from those closest to him, particularly if he writes something disturbing, base or perverse. Let’s say you write a character who espouses Satanism; are you privately a Satanist? You write a character that stalks prostitutes in back alleys; are you secretly in league with Jack the Ripper? What if you write a suicidal character? Are you yourself necessarily suicidal? Of course not.
For one thing, contrast is needed in a story. Representation of the negative must be illustrated, usually vividly and with conviction, if the positive that you intend to put forth thematically is to come across. Imagine Star Wars without Darth Vader talking about the dark side of the force. Imagine Silence of the Lambs without Hannibal Lector being as depraved as he is. Can theme, conflict, drama, etc., truly be translated without the construction of foil elements?
You can write any sort of creed or philosophy, really, that can be far removed from your own. It doesn’t even have to be used as a tool with which you illustrate an opposite pole. Perhaps you are fashioning a society, an individual, a small group of people that espouse a set of beliefs simply because it assists story and characterization, or is an accurate representation of reality.
Oftentimes, acquaintances will walk up to you and say something like, “I didn’t know you thought that way” or “I had no idea you believe that.” This sort of thing has happened to me more than once, and I simply say, “Oh, but I don’t.” More often than not, they look at me, still unsure. I continue: “That was a story I wrote. Fiction.” If you’re lucky, these individuals will come to understand what you are talking about or will feign understanding. If they don’t understand—well, let’s just say that writers sometimes need to exercise patience and diplomacy. Some folks just don’t understand the creative process.
Science fiction writer, Joseph Michael Straczynski (JMS), is an atheist. Nonetheless, when creating and penning the fictional universe of his first television series, Babylon 5, he infused spirituality into many story elements and characters. No doubt, this is perplexing to many people who have heard JMS discussing his own position on God and Creation. So many people simply expect a work of fiction to be nothing more than the personal testimony and homily of its author.
It needs to be pointed out that JMS's handling of spirituality in Babylon 5 was not for the purpose of criticism or very much even for counterpoising the principles of Belief and agnosticism. He grinded no ax and had no grand purpose beyond 1) accurately representing people who themselves believe in a deity and, 2) creating story-lines that generated a certain kind of wonder. The story was his objective, not the conveyance of personal doctrine.
"Let me just lay the foundation here for a moment in the area of religion and Babylon 5. I'm an atheist, that simple. But that's me. If you look at the long history of human society, religion -- whether you describe that as organized, disorganized, or the various degrees of accepted superstition -- has always been present. And it will be present 200 years from now. That may not thrill me, but when one is a writer, one must deal with realities, and that's one of them. To totally ignore that part of the human equation would be as false and wrong-headed as ignoring the fact that people get mad, or passionate, or strive for better lives. So we do deal with the questions of religion, and spirituality, and their definitions, without being abusive. . . In the Babylon 5 universe, all the things that make us human -- our obsessions, our interests, our language, our culture, our flaws and our wonderfulnesses -- are all still intact." Straczynski, Joseph. <straczynski@genie.geis.com> "Religion in B5" 10 Sep. 1993. <alt.tv.babylon-5> (10 Aug. 2000.)
Let it flow. Let it all flow and see where your imagination takes you. Start with yourself, always; but don’t be limited by your autobiography. Look into the heart of experience and dig for all the elemental principles. Compare them to other experience and knowledge you have. Read, research, listen and observe. Build bridges, cross divides, make leaps of logic. Use your imagination. Use all things that come into range, and don’t be afraid to distort them beyond recognition, so long as they remain true on a root level.