Why This is Good

Everyone who has ever taken an English class has heard the old writing advice that you should write what you know. This sounds logical enough, but taken literally, it is incredibly limiting. Most of us, by definition, are average people leading average lives. Writing only what you know makes it seem as if we can never use our imaginations to create new worlds, bizarre situations, or characters who do things we would never dream of doing. This is obviously not true, as successful writers have always written about both their everyday, known lives, as well as impossibly amazing realities no one had ever dreamed of before. Without expanding our writing parameters to include any and all possibilities, we are limited to a very dull set of stories set in the present or very recent past.

Some writers should take this advice literally. There is no shortage of stories about people’s everyday lives, and many of the most touching emotional dramas and poignant portraits have come from real-life experiences and writers simply recalling things that have happened to them. But if you grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and were born in 1983, you aren’t limited to that geographical location and that 26 year time period.

As I touched on in my post about research and fact-checking, if you do your homework, you are free to write about anything you want. Write about a historical time period you love, just make sure you get your facts straight and don’t accidentally feature your characters using a device that wasn’t invented yet. Write about an imagined fantasy world that you have created, just be consistent and make sure you outline how this world works.

You can and should still write what you know in terms of your character arc. Of course you can try to write about a character with experiences nowhere near your own, but the best stories, no matter where or when they are set, are about emotional experiences and thematic elements that the writer understands on a deep level. Your story may not take place in Chicago in 1992, but if you experienced, say your mother dying in childbirth, you can use your experience-what you know-to write a poignant portrayal of someone in post-World War II New York whose husband died in the war. The experience of loss, survivor guilt, and the feeling of being abandoned are consistent with your own experiences, regardless of the setting.  Maybe you’re an expert on breeding miniature schnauzers, because your family did that. This might make a boring movie, but if your character has a dog, it should probably be a mini schnauzer because you’re familiar with the breed and can more realistically portray what they are like. You may not have lived in rural France, but traveling there and researching about daily life there will give your setting credibility nonetheless. As you write down your ideas and develop outlines and stories, you’ll find that you know more than you realize, and you can use your experiences to craft compelling characters whose decisions, motivations, and character arcs are realistic and believable, even if the world they inhabit is something you have never seen.

Research and fact-checking may sound like the boring part of being a journalist, but they are actually essentials for quality screenwriting. I am constantly reading scripts by writers who don’t take the time to find out if the details they’re including are credible. There’s a reason writers are told to write what they know, and that is because it lends authenticity to your work. If you’ve grown up in a small town in Kentucky and worked in a library, then you can write a script about living in a small town and being a librarian better than someone who grew up in Chicago working in a restaurant. Of course, this advice is very limiting. If you can truly only write what you know, then you’re limited to the twenty or thirty years you can remember, and then geographical locations you’ve spent time in. Following this line of thought your characters could only work in jobs you’ve held, and come from backgrounds identical to yours. And if you’re going to be lazy about research, than this advice holds. If you can’t take the time to investigate what it’s like to live in another time, place, or socio-economic setting, then don’t write about it.

If however, you’re willing to take the time and do the work, you can write about anything you want. Considering the wealth of easily accessible information on the internet, there’s no excuse for not doing research. Fact-checking is as simple as typing a search in Google or Wikipedia. There is no reason you shouldn’t know every detail about everyday life for the time and place you are writing about. If your character is a firefighter, research as much as you can about what this entails. Visit a fire station, ask if you can help out, interview them, observe as much as you can. If your story is set in a restaurant with characters working in the kitchen, go to a local restaurant and ask if you can help out. Get a job washing dishes for a week if you have to, do whatever it takes to immerse yourself in the world you are trying to write. Reading articles online is certainly not enough, but start there and see where your research takes you.

Authenticity is vital to your story feeling real and you being taken seriously as a writer. Do not skimp on this important step or feel you can fill in the details later. Each profession, region, and economic class has its own lingo, rules, acceptable behavior, and mannerisms that you must be familiar with in order to write a realistic story. Inaccuracies are easy to spot and not only make you look like an amateur who doesn’t take their job seriously, they pull the reader out of the story by drawing attention to the misinformation, reminding the reader they are reading a poorly written story, when what you want is for them to feel so engrossed in the realistic world you have created that they become emotionally involved and captivated by your story.