Write what you know?

How many times have you heard this piece of advice, and what the heck does it mean, anyway?

How could anyone write science fiction or fantasy, or describe love as an old/young/man/woman/girl/boy and write what they know?

I’ve heard that John Grisham writes mostly lawyer stories because he knows lawyering. Maybe he does. Maybe that’s what people expect. I don’t know, but my favorite JG book is “A Painted House,” told by a young boy on an 1950s Arkansas cotton farm. What did he know about that?

I recently read an article by Michael Farrington on this subject. He states that we usually interpret “what we know” as what we know about the subject. Anybody ask Frank Herbert how he knew about the planet “Dune?” No, Farrington says, write what you know about the story.

When we embark on a story writing journey, we usually don’t foresee each twist, turn, stop, and start. Rather, we start with a kernel of an idea. A “what if”, or “why,” or an image comes to us and we expand on it.

I narrowly avoided running down a rabbit recently when it dashed through the glare of my headlights. “Why do they do that?” I asked. That was the kernel, and the story grew from there.

From that point, though, you do need to know some things. Like how relationships work, how people struggle, how they overcome or fail, and why those things interest us.

What do you know about your story?