Do you really need to “write what you know”?

Here’s what Ursula Le Guin has to say about the well-worn piece of advice, “Write what you know”:

As for “Write what you know,” I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them. I got my knowledge of them, as I got whatever knowledge I have of the hearts and minds of human beings, through imagination working on observation. Like any other novelist. All this rule needs is a good definition of “know.”

This quote really resonates with me because I love writing about things that are outside my personal experience. What gets tricky, though, is writing about these foreign experiences in a way that feels authentic.

For some guidance on how to do that, let’s turn to the author John Marsden.

• “One [solution] is to use whatever experience you do have, then transfer it to the situation you want to write about.”

For example, perhaps you want to write about an astronaut who becomes stranded on another planet amongst a people he doesn’t know how to communicate with. Now, while you have never had this particular experience, maybe you lived abroad for a summer and couldn’t speak the language and felt profoundly disoriented in a new country.

Whatever you felt or did during your personal experience, see if you can transfer it over to the scenario you’re writing about.

• “Milk your experience as much as you can.”

  The most successful stories tend to be the ones that feel “close to home.” In other words, even though an author’s stories may on the surface seem to have nothing to do with their actual life, the little emotional kernel at the center of the story is often real.

  For example, Naomi Alderman, in her novel The Power, wrote about a world where teenage girls have the power to deliver immense electric shocks to others. This power allows them to gain dominance over men. Although the phenomenon is something Alderman dreamed up, the “kernel” of her story came from her experience of being cat-called and spoken down to by men—and wondering what would happen in a world where the tables were turned. Thus, she turned an authentic experience of anger and frustration into a story that delves into the power dynamics between genders.

• “Do some research.”

  While you might not have personally experienced what you’re writing about, doing thorough research can help make your story feel as convincing as if you had.

  The author Ben Fountain, when he decided to write about Haiti, had no firsthand experience of the country. At first, he researched the country in depth, creating a huge Haiti “file.” Finally, he decided he needed to travel to the country to get a better handle on what he was writing about. The result? Stories that, in The New Yorker’s opinion, “feel as if they’ve been written from the inside looking out, not the outside looking in.”

  Are you writing about something a little foreign to you? Try reading first-person accounts of people who have experienced what you’re writing about (or something like it). Interview people to better understand characters, professions, and processes. Look for the “real deal” when it comes to information—not just what you read or see in other books or movies. That way you can be sure you’re giving readers a deep experience, not just a surface-level gloss on things they’ve seen before.

And, as Ursula Le Guin says, remember that you can rely on the rich world of your imagination. The more fully you have imagined your world, the better you can bring it to life for your reader.

That’s why J.R.R. Tolkein was able to create such a fully realized world of Middle-Earth, even though he’d never met a hobbit or an orc. He’d built the world so thoroughly in his imagination that he was able to draw readers into it as well.

Writing exercise:

• Begin writing a story that is set in an unfamiliar future but nonetheless contains some authentic elements from your personal experience.

  • For example, maybe you draw on your experience as a real estate agent to write a futuristic plot about property development on faraway planets. Or, maybe you use a recent experience of heartbreak to inform a love story set hundreds of years in the future.