One of the golden rules for writers has always been “write what you know.” But what does that mean, exactly?
It certainly can’t mean that you must only write about things you’ve experienced or the people or places you know intimately. If that were true, Steven King’s acquaintances would be questionable; all British, like Lewis Carroll, would be familiar with talking caterpillars; and J.K. Rowling could really do magic spells.
The phrase has a deeper meaning.
It’s helpful to have been able to visit the settings of our stories and describe them accurately. Making it a rigid rule, however, eliminates all tales of imaginary worlds.
When I started doing school visits after the publication of my first novel, one of the frequent questions middle school students asked involved the “how” of describing an experience even though I personally had not gone through it. I had certainly never been held at gunpoint by an 18th century Native American. As much as I enjoy learning about the concept of past lives, this wasn’t one I’d been through!
Still, I knew that one of things my main character was experiencing at the time was fear, in this case a terrible terror of impending death. I had gone through those kinds of feelings and could use my memory in my writing.
Here’s how: when my children were young, we would go to amusement parks. I have a fear of heights, but as a mom, I wasn’t going to let my kids ride a Ferris wheel by themselves. The worst parts of the ride were always the beginning and the end: the wheel stops as people are loaded on or taken off. Eventually, your cart is the one at the very top, looking over the entire area. If I had my druthers, we would have sat there quietly waiting for the ride to start or end. But my kids had other ideas.
They loved sitting up there rocking the seat back and forth. They loved the thrill.
Not me.
I envisioned the bolts that held our seat to the giant wheel loosening with each movement. We soon would plummet to our horrible deaths! The rest of the park disappeared for me. I no longer saw the view from our perch. My focus was on our little space. My stomach clenched; my breathing got louder and deeper; I began to sweat. If only we could get out!
My imagination later told me that these feelings were probably similar to those experienced by anyone facing a life-and-death moment. So, when it was time to describe what my protagonist was experiencing, I wrote what I knew—and felt—right there.
# the writing life
#write there
#write what you know
#using emotions in writing
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